15TB M1015 Build Check

[screwdad]

Building a pretty generic box using what seem to be reliable parts (from what I've seen on this forum), I'm getting ready to actually buy parts after a few months of procrastinating, have a few questions. Hardware currently is:

Intel Celeron G530 2.4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116409

Foxconn H67S LGA 1155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186211

(2 x 8GB) Mushkin 16GB DDR3 1333
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226261

M1015
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ServeRA..._RAID_Cards&hash=item35bf70b4d9#ht_975wt_1139

Lian Li PCQ25
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339

7 x Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844

Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D (380W)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371033

I'll be running RAIDZ2 off of a little 4GB (or 8GB?) thumb drive.

The box will be used primarily for dumping large files - I'll be bringing in (roughly) 150GB of large video files per week up to about 8TB, then much more infrequently than that. No torrents or anything hitting the drives constantly off the bat. Sometime later, when I recuperate from this purchase, I'll be building 2 HTCPs that will stream videos, sometimes concurrently. So for my first use case, I think my little 2.4 GHz Celeron will do alright - I'm really worried more about the second one. Do I need to step up the CPU a bit?

What about the PSU? Am I going to be able to get away with 380W, under load from the 2 HTCPs?

For the cases I described, there is zero point in getting an SSD for caching right? I do have one remaining physical slot for a 2.5 drive, which I could stick an SSD in.

Is there anything I'm forgetting / glaringly wrong with this build?

 

[electricd7]

Why are you buying 7 disks when the case only holds 5? Spare cold-spares?

 

[Stephens]

A 4GB thumb drive is fine. If you don't have/can't find one, 8GB will work fine but the extra space will be unused.

I believe your 2.4Ghz Celeron will be able to serve up 2 streams just fine. I don't see where you mention it, but I assume you're talking 1080p video? Compressed MKV's? Raw Bluray?

380W will be fine. Are you getting a UPS? ZFS is pretty resiliant, but I'd still recommend protecting your investment with a UPS.

I don't believe you need a SSD cache, especially with 16GB of RAM.

From what I can see, Newegg doesn't list which NIC chip is used on this board. You won't be able to replace it since you'll be using the M1015 in your one available slot, so I'd make sure it's supported.

It looks like a pretty good build to me.

 

[screwdad]

I wasn't planning on getting a UPS, but you make a good point...I think I saw another post on here with a decent UPS for 100-150, which compared to the overall cost isn't that bad. I'll look into it.

As far as the NIC, it looks like it's using a Realtek RTL811E, which per http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?1798-Realtek-RTL8111E-compatibility and http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.3R/hardware.html#ETHERNET (says 'RTL8111' is compatible, figure that means the 'RTL8111E' one is too).

It will be 1080 compressed MKVs that are streamed. I'd really like to make sure the CPU is good enough; if you think I should jump it up a few notches just to be safe, let me know. I just don't want any stuttering in my future. Originally I think I priced this with a 3.2GHz Core2 @ ~$130, so I'm not averse to spending more cash - just don't want to waste all that power.

Why are you buying 7 disks when the case only holds 5? Spare cold-spares?

It holds 7; only 5 are hot-swap, though.

 

[StephenFry]

I agree with Stephens, serving up two streams is nothing, the Celeron will be fine.

Because that is the most demanding task you'll do, please don't use a cache SSD. You'll only make it more complicated, not better.

Do consider a UPS.

16GB is fine (half that would be enough), motherboard is fine, M1015 is fine - be sure to flash it to LSI 9211-IT - and your PSU is fine. I expect this build to pull about 150/160W at startup, then 120W during operation.

However, it can't hurt to get a slightly more powerful PSU, because pulling 120W off a 380W PSU might actually be less efficient than pulling that same 120W off a 550W PSU. Slightly more expensive to buy, but slightly cheaper to run.

One thing I don't quite understand, is why 7 drives? 6 (or 10) are optimal for Z2.

 

[screwdad]

16GB is fine (half that would be enough), motherboard is fine, M1015 is fine - be sure to flash it to LSI 9211-IT - and your PSU is fine. I expect this build to pull about 150/160W at startup, then 120W during operation.

However, it can't hurt to get a slightly more powerful PSU, because pulling 120W off a 380W PSU might actually be less efficient than pulling that same 120W off a 550W PSU. Slightly more expensive to buy, but slightly cheaper to run.

One thing I don't quite understand, is why 7 drives? 6 (or 10) are optimal for Z2.

As far as memory goes, I was basing that off of the rule of thumb of 1 GB per TB. But if I can get away with 8GB, then awesome.

7 drives because 7 fit in the box, and I want to get as much storage as I can. I'm confused about the quantity - why are 6 or 10 drives more optimal than 7? I saw the note in the hardware recommendations, but it doesn't explain why. One of the links below talks about performance (http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?16-Getting-the-most-out-of-ZFS-pools!), but looking at the chart there, it doesn't seem like there is a significant drop.

I'll look into the PSU bit; didn't know they worked like that.

 

[Stephens]

I wasn't planning on getting a UPS, but you make a good point...I think I saw another post on here with a decent UPS for 100-150, which compared to the overall cost isn't that bad. I'll look into it.

Your power supply will be Active PFC, so you need an Active-PFC compatible UPS. They cost more. Also, only certain UPS's officially work with FreeBSD/FreeNAS. You should check the compatibility list to get a feel. My CyberPower PFC850LCD isn't officially supported, and I haven't taken the time yet to get it fully working (in case of an extended outage, it would not automatically shut down the system). I know UPS isn't ***y, but you really want one.

As far as the NIC, it looks like it's using a Realtek RTL811E, which per http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?1798-Realtek-RTL8111E-compatibility and http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.3R/hardware.html#ETHERNET (says 'RTL8111' is compatible, figure that means the 'RTL8111E' one is too).

I have the 8111E. It works. Not as good as an Intel add-on, but it works.

It will be 1080 compressed MKVs that are streamed. I'd really like to make sure the CPU is good enough; if you think I should jump it up a few notches just to be safe, let me know. I just don't want any stuttering in my future. Originally I think I priced this with a 3.2GHz Core2 @ ~$130, so I'm not averse to spending more cash - just don't want to waste all that power.

Spend it on the UPS. ;) FYI, playback of 1080p video isn't really a data challenge for modern computers. When it used to be a challenge, a lot of it was the decompression and display, not grabbing the data. Most of the decompression and display had been offloaded to video cards/chipsets these days. And hard drives are pretty fast, as are gigabit connections. You really will be fine. As a test to put your mind at ease, I just fired up 2 1080p movies... one on my HTPC and one on my desktop, and my NAS, which I believe is less powerful than what you've outlined, handled it fine. And by fine I mean it was laying by the side of the pool drinking umbrella drinks. ie, not stressed at all.

 

[screwdad]

So SSD is nixed, and I'll drop the memory down to 8GB.

One thing I don't quite understand, is why 7 drives? 6 (or 10) are optimal for Z2.

So I wanted to revisit this question, since I did a bit more research: The main reason is because I have 7 slots, and want to get as much space as I can. Secondarily because I couldn't find an explanation of why 6 or 10 drives are preferred that provides actual numbers regarding performance of non-(N+P) configurations that are relevant to what I'm using the box for. The links in the hardware recommendations section show the performance being slightly behind with 7 drives; some other random evidence. The best explanation I found required a lot of other reading to understand at the end I'm still not sure if this affects Joe Blow the guy building a NAS for a few HTPCs to use. As far as I can gather, having 7 drives does not affect stability - it affects performance, and in my situation, I think that's going to be alright.

That said, if there is something I missed somewhere about my RAID exploding arbitrarily because of 7 drives instead of 6, I'll switch that sucker up and have a hot swap instead of a cold swap. I'm just trying to keep that extra 3TB :)

Spend it on the UPS. ;)

I have very much taken this to heart, and have started to look into them. I plan on ordering parts in the near future, so all the time building (and replacing the parts that will inevitably be DoA) will give me time to give this the attention it deserves.