Creating my 1st storage server criticism are welcome :) (server not for home use)

[okoma]

hi there ,
heres my project in hand .
project : to scan millions of hardcopy papers , ocr it , put it on a storage , give the client a searchable way to access the data via web .
number of clients accessing the data: around 30~
average 1 scan file size 9mb~

hardware :

STX-NL Nearline Storage Solutions | Thinkmate

Browse our catalog of solutions.

www.thinkmate.com

my plan is to create a ZFS RAID-Z2 (like raid6) so i can lose up to 2 drives . (or raid-z3 up to 3 drives but for that i will need to add another drive )

so heres my questions .
1, is the hardware enough (ram-cpu) ?
2, can deduplicate be enable with this sort of hardware ? (would it be a good/bad idea?)
3, is the price ok ? suggestion are welcomed (i need an onsite warranty incase something goes south )
4, incase the client wants to add space , what is the procedure to do that ? (is this even possible ?)
for example , he has 80tb of space and soon he will fill them up, is that possible to purchase more drives to add capacity (extend the space?)
5, note that the 2 480gb max ssd are for cache (i dont think they would need it , but just incase)

6, what else can u suggest .

thanks !

 

[c77dk]

1: The controller is a no-go - go for HBA instead of RAID. If you can afford it I would go with the 4215R CPU for the higher clock - SMB is still single-threaded if I'm not mistaken. And get as much RAM as the customer will pay for - it will be used for ARC, and if you go with deduplication, it will also be used for DDT.

2: Deduplication performance on this hardware is questionable - there's some posts regarding how powerfull hw you need for it to really shine. It's one of those features that sounds cool on paper, but seldom works out as imagined, without really powerfull hw.

3: Depends on where you're located, and how hard the local market has been hit by shortages.

4: Expanding capacity in TrueNAS is quite easy. You can go two ways: replace drives, or add drives. To add more drives you need an HBA with external connectivity (in the face of a whole new server it's cheap to put in at once), and then you just add a JBOD chassis.

5: please explain what you think when you write the word "cache" - it's often mistaken. Is it L2ARC or SLOG (which isn't a cache, but a lot mistakenly think it is)

 

[Constantin]

1. See above. No RAID, you need a LSI HBA card flashed to IT mode

I'd also use 4x32 GB RAM instead of 8x16 so you have room to expand. The price should be the same.

No idea why 10GbE Copper RJ45 and SFP+. I suggest you get a switch with a pair of 10GbE SFP+ slots as well as a bunch of 1GbE ports. Ubiquiti and Mikrotik make a whole bunch that are inexpensive and performant. Then use the other SFP+ slot to daisy-chain additional, similar switches to fill up the office. You will never outstrip the 10GbE network re: capacity until you have added your fourth HDD VDEV, maybe.

2. Doubt dedup makes sense. You are only planning on reading in the data once, right? Dedup has other applications. That said, I think you should look into sVDEV drives or consider a meta-data-only L2ARC. That should speed up searches a lot. Of the two, I'd prefer sVDEV but a L2ARC can also be configured to be metadata-only and persistent. Over time, it will get "hot" and serve you well. Read up on the costs and benefits of both, then decide which would work better for you.

5. See 2) L2ARC might make sense for your application. However, your client may also benefit from a mirrored SSD pool if you plan on hosting the search indices there for all to share (think Foxtrot search and the like). So the index goes to the SSD pool and holds all the keywords while the data itself resides on the HDDs.

Think carefully what you will use to OCR the data. I have been very happy with scansnap ix500 but it's for home / office use, not industrial. It produces a scanned image + OCR text (in a PDF), which usually works.

 

[okoma]

1. See above. No RAID, you need a LSI HBA card flashed to IT mode

I'd also use 4x32 GB RAM instead of 8x16 so you have room to expand. The price should be the same.

No idea why 10GbE Copper RJ45 and SFP+. I suggest you get a switch with a pair of 10GbE SFP+ slots as well as a bunch of 1GbE ports. Ubiquiti and Mikrotik make a whole bunch that are inexpensive and performant. Then use the other SFP+ slot to daisy-chain additional, similar switches to fill up the office. You will never outstrip the 10GbE network re: capacity until you have added your fourth HDD VDEV, maybe.

2. Doubt dedup makes sense. You are only planning on reading in the data once, right? Dedup has other applications. That said, I think you should look into sVDEV drives or consider a meta-data-only L2ARC. That should speed up searches a lot. Of the two, I'd prefer sVDEV but a L2ARC can also be configured to be metadata-only and persistent. Over time, it will get "hot" and serve you well. Read up on the costs and benefits of both, then decide which would work better for you.

5. See 2) L2ARC might make sense for your application. However, your client may also benefit from a mirrored SSD pool if you plan on hosting the search indices there for all to share (think Foxtrot search and the like). So the index goes to the SSD pool and holds all the keywords while the data itself resides on the HDDs.

Think carefully what you will use to OCR the data. I have been very happy with scansnap ix500 but it's for home / office use, not industrial. It produces a scanned image + OCR text (in a PDF), which usually works.

1, i dont have an option to purchase/select an hba card but surely will buy an external one .
but why ? , whats wrong with a raid controller ?
1.a, why it mode is so important ?

2, sure u'r right , the ram can be change , i dont mind adding abit more for them .

3, could you please explain what did you mean here?
"You will never outstrip the 10GbE network re: capacity until you have added your fourth HDD VDEV, maybe"

4, why adding lots of 1gbs ports ?
i dont plan to attach work stations to the system .

heres how the process will go
scanning work-stations will send the scanned file to the ocr server , when the ocr is done it will put original file (scanned file) and the ocr file into the storage server (as a hot folder for the web app) , the webapp/big data will fetch all the files from the hot folder and move it (the files) accordingly on criteria /rules that we set (and index them into the db)
thats my solution.

so to picture it .

scanning:
workstation 1gb > switch 10gb > ocr station 10gb > switch 10gb> storage server 10gb> switch 10gb> web app 10gb > storage server 10gb

users accessing via web app:
user workstation 100M-1gb> switch 10gb> webapp 10gb> switch 10gb > storage 10gb

i dont see why 1gb ports will help me there.
i picked those cards just incase something goes wrong , or incase i want to contact the storage and the wepapp server directly .



5 , well , in short after scanning it will be archive on the storage ones, depending on the users if they will look for it "search it" or not.
on second thought i dont think i will be using dedup , since i dont think i will let the users have access to it , that way they wont be able to copy / duplicate the files .

6, the webapp/big data will have its own server with ssds as raid 1 , the files itself will be in the storage while the indexed text/data (which weight nothing) will be on the webapp/big data .

7, about the ocr app , i already tested and choosen one ("industrial")

1: The controller is a no-go - go for HBA instead of RAID. If you can afford it I would go with the 4215R CPU for the higher clock - SMB is still single-threaded if I'm not mistaken. And get as much RAM as the customer will pay for - it will be used for ARC, and if you go with deduplication, it will also be used for DDT.

2: Deduplication performance on this hardware is questionable - there's some posts regarding how powerfull hw you need for it to really shine. It's one of those features that sounds cool on paper, but seldom works out as imagined, without really powerfull hw.

3: Depends on where you're located, and how hard the local market has been hit by shortages.

4: Expanding capacity in TrueNAS is quite easy. You can go two ways: replace drives, or add drives. To add more drives you need an HBA with external connectivity (in the face of a whole new server it's cheap to put in at once), and then you just add a JBOD chassis.

5: please explain what you think when you write the word "cache" - it's often mistaken. Is it L2ARC or SLOG (which isn't a cache, but a lot mistakenly think it is)

1, not that this is 2 cpus of 4210R Processor 10-Core 2.4GHz in total there is going to be 20cores and 40 threads .

2, i changed my mind i wont be using deduplication sounds like unnecessary in my case as i wont let the users to access the drive

3, im looking for on-prem warranty which is super crucial , if you have some worldwide stores please share them with me .

4, replace drives ? (do you mean all the drives or only one)
it does not work like raid ? as all drives as to be the same size ?

5, "in the face of a whole new server it's cheap to put in at once"
what did you mean ?

6, the ssd are for l2arc

 

[jgreco]

1, i dont have an option to purchase/select an hba card but surely will buy an external one .
but why ? , whats wrong with a raid controller ?
1.a, why it mode is so important ?

https://www.truenas.com/community/t...s-and-why-cant-i-use-a-raid-controller.81931/

 

[c77dk]

4, replace drives ? (do you mean all the drives or only one)
it does not work like raid ? as all drives as to be the same size ?

One drive at a time - and then resilver. Once all drives in a vdev are replaced, the new extra space will be available - just as in a raid5/6

5, "in the face of a whole new server it's cheap to put in at once"
what did you mean ?

When you look at the price of a whole server, another HBA with external connectivity is cheap to put in (and then you know it will work with the rest of the system). And especially as you want onsite warranty you don't want to add the card later (will void the waranty, or just be estremely expensive to have some tech come and put it in)

 

[ornias]

1, i dont have an option to purchase/select an hba card but surely will buy an external one .
but why ? , whats wrong with a raid controller ?
1.a, why it mode is so important ?

I'm going to say something quite harsh, but still quite relevant:
If you need to ask these questions, are you really the best one to supply this solution to begin with?

Don't get me wrong:
I'm all for learning while doing.
But not when doing projects for a client at this pricepoint/scale. This sounds to me like learning at the clients expense.

 

[Constantin]

It might be a wise to have a chat with a sales engineer at iXsystems. Describe what you're trying to do, then have them put together a solution. I have found iXsystem support to be fantastic.

I agree with ornias that you should likely do a lot more reading about ZFS, servers, networks, and storage in general before you buy a system. The use case is very important and you don't want to find out after the fact that you bought the wrong hardware.

 

[ornias]

It might be a wise to have a chat with a sales engineer at iXsystems. Describe what you're trying to do, then have them put together a solution. I have found iXsystem support to be fantastic.

Thats great advice indeed, at the 10K+ pricepoint it's almost none-sense not to look at iX first for a TrueNAS Solution :)

 

[okoma]

i might not be an expert in data storage but my knowledge overall is pretty damn good if i say so myself .
i do get you wrong @ornias , what that suppose to mean ?!
i indeed have to ask those question to learn , the forum is here for that no ?
alot of users/people buy the hardware and then come to the forum and ask their questions and complaints why their system does not work properly ,
i in the other hand , have a different approach , ask questions before buying the hardware .
perhaps i should have made the title "good criticism" , whats funny is , instead of being happy with someone (me) that think ahead and dont want to fuckup early on you laterally thinking why is he doing this.

when buying a prebuilt machine you learn nothing in the process , learn as you go , is my way to go , BUT "as you go"/"while" does not mean buy the hardware and ask question later / without asking questions beforehand .

and just to make it clear ones , no i dont learn at the clients expense , actually the client does not pay me anything (he do pay for the hardware).


@Constantin ixs were the first one who i contacted , 3-4 days later no response .

i really dont like those type of negativity in the air , specially where i need to "convince" , im not here for that really .

would be awesome if you could answer those .

3, could you please explain what did you mean here?
"You will never outstrip the 10GbE network re: capacity until you have added your fourth HDD VDEV, maybe"

4, why adding lots of 1gbs ports ?

 

[ornias]

i might not be an expert in data storage but my knowledge overall is pretty damn good if i say so myself .

You might very-well be a professional IT person, but that general knowhow isn't really relevant in this case.

i indeed have to ask those question to learn , the forum is here for that no ?

Yes and No.
We on the forum do expect basic research,.

alot of users/people buy the hardware and then come to the forum and ask their questions and complaints why their system does not work properly ,
i in the other hand , have a different approach , ask questions before buying the hardware .

Thats okey and great, But I'm not saying YOU shouldn't buy hardware, but you shouldn't be buying hardware at other people's expense (your client) and using that to learn.

instead of being happy with someone (me) that think ahead and dont want to ****up early on you laterally thinking why is he doing this.

Thats not even the problem i'm explaining.
Learning is something you do at home or on a homelab, not on 10K+ worth of hardware from a client.

when buying a prebuilt machine you learn nothing in the process , learn as you go , is my way to go ,

You're still buying a prebuild, just with some selection boxes on the website.

BUT "as you go"/"while" does not mean buy the hardware and ask question later / without asking questions beforehand .

You completely missed the point about it.
My comment was that you shouldn't shill very expensive hardware to a client and use it to learn basic ZFS knowhow. You should learn at your own time, on your own 2K worth of hardware.

and just to make it clear ones , no i dont learn at the clients expense , actually the client does not pay me anything (he do pay for the hardware).

You already admitted ordering a 300+ dollar Hardware raidcard, just to replace it with an HBA.
Also "at the clients expense" doesn't mean "it costs the client money", it only means "it costs the client". That could also mean "frustration", "downtime", "higher prices" etc.

@Constantin ixs were the first one who i contacted , 3-4 days later no response .

Days or work days?
I doubt they would respond in the weekends.

i really dont like those type of negativity in the air , specially where i need to "convince" , im not here for that really .

I think no ZFS/Storage new-person ever managed to "convince" any of the powerusers here, so don't even try. ;-)


In short:
I stick with my argument you shouldn't be doing this. If I knew your client, I would've informed them that the person installing their 12K storage server doesn't even has basic ZFS knowhow and point them to this thread.

Ask yourself, would they still allow you to continue in that case? ;-)

In case your answer is yes, well... I guess stupidity has it's price, so have fun making them pay :)

 

[Constantin]

coming back to the OP questions

1, i dont have an option to purchase/select an hba card but surely will buy an external one .
but why ? , whats wrong with a raid controller ?
1.a, why it mode is so important ?

IT mode is what's known to give the best performance. The whole point behind ZFS is direct access to disks, without a RAID controller in the middle. If you want to go RAID, don't bother with ZFS. A RAID controller inside the ZFS box will likely only interfere - not a good thing. Using hardware RAID storage within a ZFS is a bit like putting a horse-wagon wheel on a car. Technically possible, but a really bad idea.

For external DAS, RAID does make sense, this could be an option for off-site backups, for example. However, the optimum approach would likely be offsite TrueNAS and ZFS send.

3, could you please explain what did you mean here?
"You will never outstrip the 10GbE network re: capacity until you have added your fourth HDD VDEV, maybe"

10GbE networking gives you up to ~1GB/s bandwidth. You are proposing to run a pool with a single Z3 HDD VDEV (collection of drives). That VDEV will perform about like a single hard drive, i.e. ~200-300MB/s if its pretty empty. Until you have added more VDEVs, the 10GbE network will not be a bottleneck, it will be the HDD disk array. However, also consider how many HDD drives you need to add multiple VDEVs.

In my case, each VDEV consists of 8-drives, thus requiring 32 drives to make my pool a 4VDEV pool (each VDEV add-on should be structured similarly to the first one). That's a lot of drives! So this is why I do not think you need multiple 10GbE interfaces. Unless you go with pools consisting of SSDs, the HDD latency, read, and write speeds will be the gating factor.

You can speed up certain aspects such as browsing by adding faster metadata storage, either in the form of an sVDEV or L2ARC. The sVDEV is likely more performant but its setup takes a lot more care than the L2ARC. After all, if the sVDEV fails completely, your pool will go with it. Not so with L2ARC, which is completely expendable.

4, why adding lots of 1gbs ports ?
i dont plan to attach work stations to the system .

...
scanning:
workstation 1gb > switch 10gb > ocr station 10gb > switch 10gb> storage server 10gb> switch 10gb> web app 10gb > storage server 10gb

users accessing via web app:
user workstation 100M-1gb> switch 10gb> webapp 10gb> switch 10gb > storage 10gb

You must have misunderstood me. The 1GbE ports are on the switch. For example, you could consider this 48-port Ubiquiti switch as the backbone to your system. Every client would connect to it with 1GbE copper RJ45 except for the storage NAS, webApp, and the OCR server. The three could use optical transceivers via SFP+ or even twinax DACs to connect to the switch. A simple, inexpensive solution that has been proven over and over. FWIW, I use a similar (much smaller) switch at home for my system. The NAS interfaces with the 10GbE SFP+, ditto my laptop, the rest of the clients all interface with the 1GbE ports. Plenty fast.

 

[Constantin]

ixs were the first one who i contacted , 3-4 days later no response .

This is disappointing and at odds with my experience when I have dealt with iXsystems for post-sale technical support (including 4 board changeouts). Perhaps contact one of the iXsystems folk here like @morganL to see who you should be talking to inside iXsystems?

FWIW, @ornias can be painfully blunt in his assessments, don't take it personally, and instead focus on the valid technical points he is making and leave aside the personal stuff that doesn't add to the discussion. Similarly, I'd suggest being a bit more humble with the time that people are willing to give you for free.

You do raise red flags when you don't seem to know the basics, such as what a VDEV is, a desire to run a RAID controller inside a TrueNAS, and so on. We're basically all here because we care about the data, so having something in the system spec that we all likely have experienced a data loss with (XFX hardware RAID in my case) again sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

[okoma]

@ornias
i must correct my self , the whole system(s) are a gift , the client does not even pay for the hardware . (apparently thats not even something that we must do for this client , therefor a gift .)

i did not admitted ordering a card of any sort , you should read what i've wrote again .
you can stick with your argument , in the end of the day there is no one else to do that for me :) , and i will keep asking questions to understand alot more before purchasing anything .
what you could however instead of telling me to "gtfo" , is help me understand by explaining how can i build this better and what to consider and how to plan it better. (like other members did) i will gladly learn from you .

@Constantin

thanks alot ,
you raised multiple interesting points about the bottle necks in the system , it wont be the network speed , but more like the hdd themself .
note that i said Z2 not Z3.
my initial points was to take the 7 drives as Z2 as a vdev and create a pool out of that .
problem is the reading speed , which TBH should not be a problem since they dont have alot of users top 25-70 users , not everyone at ones will access the webapp , and even if they do they will wait couple of sec for it to display.
it isnt suppose to be blazing fast like streaming or working on adobe footage for edit.

to make it faster what is required of me is to create multiple vdevs to split the workload and increasing the write/read speed, however to do so its require me to purchase extra hdd , 3 more hdd to be exact to be more or less the same size of the pool , 10 in total since i cant create a Z2 vdev with 4 drives ,so in the end 5 drives as Z2 in each vdev , so 2x vdev to create a pool of 96tb instead of 80tb with 7 drives with Z2. (it is 1.5k$ more)
the question that would be asked is, is it worth it or/and needed ?.
the answer to that is idk.

quick question,
in here > https://www.truenas.com/docs/core/storage/pools/managingpools/
in the "Add Vdevs " tab , it says it is possible to expand the pool by adding to the pool vdevs .

im trying to understand this sentence "the vdev being added must be the same type as existing vdevs"
i've read the example but could not grasp what type mean , does the type mean what type of raid was used ? or also the numbers of drives .
in the example they wrote the same example twice, that got me confused , for example i have a vdev with 7 drives as Z2 , after a year we decide to expand the pool, would 5 drives will be enough (as it is the minimum requirement for Z2) or i would need another 7 drives to identical match the first vdev .


another question, about a spare drives, isnt it better to purchase drives which will sit on the shelf incase of something happen and replace the bad drive instead of attaching the spare drive to the server which feed it power (not sure about disk spin) and consume the hdd life (hdd mobo)


btw,
do you have a good place to read about IT mode and other modes so i can understand it better.

thanks alot

 

[morganL]

This is disappointing and at odds with my experience when I have dealt with iXsystems for post-sale technical support (including 4 board changeouts). Perhaps contact one of the iXsystems folk here like @morganL to see who you should be talking to inside iXsystems?

@okoma Not sure how you contacted iXsystems. However, our primary business is whole systems or Open Source software. For advice on DIY builds, hosting these forums are how we help the community.

 

[danb35]

i indeed have to ask those question to learn , the forum is here for that no ?

Indeed. But if you're a vendor, and I'm your customer, and you're providing a solution for me, I expect you to know how it works, how it should be configured, and how to optimize it for my use case--you should be the expert, otherwise I could just order it myself. And while you may indeed be a general IT expert (or you may not; that really isn't at issue here), your questions make it plain that you not only are you not a FreeNAS/TrueNAS expert, you don't even know what you don't know. Is there not a file server solution with which you're more familiar, that you can provide to your customer? And if not, should you really be undertaking this project?

 

[Constantin]

to make it faster what is required of me is to create multiple vdevs to split the workload and increasing the write/read speed, however to do so its require me to purchase extra hdd , 3 more hdd to be exact to be more or less the same size of the pool , 10 in total since i cant create a Z2 vdev with 4 drives ,so in the end 5 drives as Z2 in each vdev , so 2x vdev to create a pool of 96tb instead of 80tb with 7 drives with Z2. (it is 1.5k$ more)
the question that would be asked is, is it worth it or/and needed ?.
the answer to that is idk.

Adding a second VDEV will roughly double the throughput of the pool. If significant growth is expected, I'd consider buying a 3U or a 4U case and only filling it with one VDEV but have enough spare hard drive caddy room for four. That way , you can add capacity later keep pretty much everything else constant (except maybe RAM and L2ARC, those might need expansion also).

im trying to understand this sentence "the vdev being added must be the same type as existing vdevs"

Let's say you start a pool with a 5-drive Z2 VDEV. Once you want to add a VDEV, TrueNAS expects you to use the same structure of VDEV, i.e. ideally another 5-drive Z2, with the expanded pool now sporting 10 drives split among two 5-drive Z2VDEVs. In the past, some users got into a real pickle when they added a single drive as a VDEV to a pool and then put the entire pool at risk due to a single-drive failure. So that's why iXsystems wants the same structure in every VDEV you add.

another question, about a spare drives, isnt it better to purchase drives which will sit on the shelf incase of something happen and replace the bad drive instead of attaching the spare drive to the server which feed it power (not sure about disk spin) and consume the hdd life (hdd mobo)

I would qualify all drives you want to ever use by subjecting them to badblock and like torture testing for at least a day or so while looking for SMART and like errors. If they pass these tests, detach and pull the spares and put them on a shelf, the rest can stay in the server. No point wearing them out as hot spares unless this server cannot be serviced.

do you have a good place to read about IT mode and other modes so i can understand it better.

Here is one resource explaining the process. There are additional resource guides in the resource section that you might want to also have a look at. Basically, with IT mode, you're turning the HBA into the equivalent of a JBOD interface - allowing ZFS direct access to both the drives as well as the controllers. That in turn allows ZFS to look for SMART errors, etc. in ways that it likely will not be able to if the drives are managed by a RAID controller. Yes, you still get some benefit (scrubs, snapshots, etc.) but SMART errors are one of the canaries that ZFS looks for and which RAID may obfuscate.

Good luck!

 

[Constantin]

@okoma Not sure how you contacted iXsystems. However, our primary business is whole systems or Open Source software. For advice on DIY builds, hosting these forums are how we help the community.

His wording suggests that he contacted iXsystems for a iX build, not advice for DIY purposes. Perhaps you can DM him the contact info of someone who has dealt with this sort of use case / application before, so they can quote a system?

 

[okoma]

@Constantin
(3-4 days ago i already looked into a 3-4U setup with alot more slot to expand no worries there.)
about the vdev , what if i decide to create first a vdev with 7 drives Z2 (as my example) , and later on expand it with another vdev with 5 drives Z2 , is it possible ? will it even work?
from what you explained it is possible (because that person put his stuff at risk while putting one drive) . just making sure it is.

you helped me greatly understand how why IT mode is important and necessary for zfs to look into the hdd errors.

anything else do you think i need to know/change/fix/replace/purchase before i begin this journey ?
i've noted everything that you pointed out and they will be fixed.


@morganL
via email , even received an email from "Michiel Bouwens" replied back to him (3 days ago) , no answer .


@danb35
im not a vendor , i am here for this "client" (its not even a client but for the sake of the discussion it is, since he is not paying for anything) as a courtesy , the simple solution would be just to create a raid6 and that it , but i decide to look elsewhere and try something else ,
i am indeed not an expert in zfs but learn pretty fast , up until 5~ days ago i didnt knew zfs , and today i can say i know alot more thanks to @Constantin which was kind enough to explain in details , if you want to add knowledge to the discussion instead of responding like @ornias did you are more then welcome , i will just copy past it here incase u missed it "what you could however instead of telling me to "gtfo" , is help me understand by explaining how can i build this better and what to consider and how to plan it better. (like other members did) i will gladly learn from you ."

i really do mean what i write , i will learn from any knowledge (even if its not in my liking) , but let it be constructive criticism and not gtfo or let someone else do it, this i wont accept or listen to .

 

[ornias]

@Constantin which was kind enough to explain in details , if you want to add knowledge to the discussion instead of responding like @ornias did you are more then welcome , i will just copy past it here incase u missed it "what you could however instead of telling me to "gtfo" , is help me understand by explaining how can i build this better and what to consider and how to plan it better. (like other members did) i will gladly learn from you ."

You do realise you are annoying some of the core users of this forum right? People you or your "client" might come to depend on in the future.

I never said "GTFO", I said "start small, learning on your own personal expense, not your client's". There is a significant difference.

I should also suggest you learn to do some basic research first, before comming onto the forums to ask for help.
Actually, thats even a rule here, not my personal preference. A basic read in the docs (ZFS primer), some google searches and reading the introduction texts on the forums readlly would be enough...

That does not mean "GTFO" that means "RTFM and come back afterwards".
Just because you don't like the responses you get, also doesn't mean they are not constructive. They just don't want to assist with the way you want to run things and advice alternative solutions (such as: Getting a prebuild iX machine and/or forwarding your client to a professional with required knowhow).

The problem here, for some of us, is not the fact you are new (new people using ZFS is awesome). But the fact someone else is fucked when you fuck up. Why? because most users here run ZFS because of it's great data security. However: ZFS can also become super data-insecure if used incorrectly.

Hence we tend to advice components that do not put your data at risks too. That include the human component.
In your build/proposal, the weakest components are the RAID-card and you yourself. So we suggest replacing both components. Thats quite constructive in my book, just not the advice you wanted to hear.