Hello everyone!
As mentioned in my introduction post, I am building a novel Data Center (DC) and Backup (BK) servers for which I have the following configurations (not yet purchased):
Data Center (DC)
CPU: Intel Xeon Gold 6326 16C/32T 2.9GHz 24MB
RAM: DIMM 64GB DDR4-3200 ECC (2x 32GB)
MB: Supermicro UP LGA4189 DDR4 ATX M.2 2X1GBE (8x DIMM slots)
HBA controller: Supermicro S3808-8I PCI-E 4.0 SATA/SAS3 / AOC-S3808L-L8iT
CHASSIS: Supermicro 3U 16XHSWAP SAS3
BOOT (mirror vdev):
Samsung PM893 240GB SATA3 2.5’’ 1.3DWPD
Samsung SM883 240GB SATA3 2.5" 3.6DWPD
STORAGE (2x dRAID2: 3d+2p+1s):
6x Seagate Exos 7e8 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
6x Seagate Exos 7e10 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
Backup (BK):
CPU: Intel Xeon E-2314 4C4T 2.8-4.5Ghz
RAM: DIMM 32GB DDR4-3200 ECC (1x 32GB)
MB: Supermicro C252 UP LGA1200 m-ATX M.2 2XLAN (2x DIMM slots)
HBA controller: Broadcom 9341-8i SATA/SAS3 - ZERO MEM
CHASSIS: Supermicro 2U 8xHSWAP SAS3
BOOT:
SSD Kioxia XG6 256GB NVME PCI-E 3.0 M.2 1DWPD
STORAGE (1x dRAID2: 3d+2p+1s):
3x Seagate Exos 7e8 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
3x Seagate Exos 7e10 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
Both systems are intended to work with TrueNAS SCALE, enabling a Linux environment and mainly the possibility to scale the systems to increased storage (HDDs, JBODs and RAM; possibly other DCs) which is already taken into account in the configuration (not shown here). With this configuration, I am planning to have two OpenZFS dRAID pools with 6x HDDs per pool enabling 18TB free space (3 data, 2 parity and 1 hot spare). The reason for the independent pools is due to the types of data (1 pool for read-only data and 1 pool for user accounts data – this is the only one targeted for backup since the other pool has backups in offline external drives). This way I think I can make the DC more resilient without one pool affecting the other. The BK is configured to mimic the DC storage, here with a single pool for the user accounts data only.
I am looking for help in the following questions:
1) Are these configurations valid, considering the OS and described (dRAID) functionality? Otherwise, what changes would be recommended? More RAM :)?
2) Assuming I want to use hot spare drives, if I add another vdev to one of the pools, do I need another hot spare drive or the one in the initial vdev is enough? Or better said, is it necessary to have a hot spare drive for every new vdev?
3) The data stored in both pools will in principle contain also large files (~200MB to ~3-5GB or more), does it make sense or required to have all the HDDs formatted in 4KiB blocks? Should it be done in all pools in both DC and BK?
3.1) I read somewhere that for smaller files an additional configuration or hardware would be necessary, where the word “mirroring” was mentioned. What does this mean? Would this be necessary? (sorry, I am currently unable to cite this information).
4) If I understand well, OpenZFS by default enables compression (by LZ4 ?), what pros and cons are derived? Would I get more space available? Would I also get more difficulties in recovering the data or disks in a worse case scenario?
5) When establishing the user accounts in the DC, will users have access also to the read-only pool (with differing permissions and quotas)?
6) What would be the best RAID scheme for the BK, is this (dRAID2) ok? Or is this too much? Would it be required (or beneficial?) to use the same scheme as in the DC?
7) Still not sure, but I am planning to have the BK shutdown most of the time, and perform the backups only at specific times or dates (like 1 – 2 times a month) possibly using automated WoL and maybe cron jobs (from the DC), is this possible and acceptable?
8) With TrueNAS I came to know that it is possible to perform replication and/or synchronization; how would these work exactly? Do I need both operations? The idea here and most important, is to have the latest copies of the DC pool, and secondly if possible, recovery in case files are accidentally deleted or corrupted in DC pool.
If you have any other suggestions regarding the configurations, please let me know.
Thanks in advance for all your time and help.
As mentioned in my introduction post, I am building a novel Data Center (DC) and Backup (BK) servers for which I have the following configurations (not yet purchased):
Data Center (DC)
CPU: Intel Xeon Gold 6326 16C/32T 2.9GHz 24MB
RAM: DIMM 64GB DDR4-3200 ECC (2x 32GB)
MB: Supermicro UP LGA4189 DDR4 ATX M.2 2X1GBE (8x DIMM slots)
HBA controller: Supermicro S3808-8I PCI-E 4.0 SATA/SAS3 / AOC-S3808L-L8iT
CHASSIS: Supermicro 3U 16XHSWAP SAS3
BOOT (mirror vdev):
Samsung PM893 240GB SATA3 2.5’’ 1.3DWPD
Samsung SM883 240GB SATA3 2.5" 3.6DWPD
STORAGE (2x dRAID2: 3d+2p+1s):
6x Seagate Exos 7e8 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
6x Seagate Exos 7e10 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
Backup (BK):
CPU: Intel Xeon E-2314 4C4T 2.8-4.5Ghz
RAM: DIMM 32GB DDR4-3200 ECC (1x 32GB)
MB: Supermicro C252 UP LGA1200 m-ATX M.2 2XLAN (2x DIMM slots)
HBA controller: Broadcom 9341-8i SATA/SAS3 - ZERO MEM
CHASSIS: Supermicro 2U 8xHSWAP SAS3
BOOT:
SSD Kioxia XG6 256GB NVME PCI-E 3.0 M.2 1DWPD
STORAGE (1x dRAID2: 3d+2p+1s):
3x Seagate Exos 7e8 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
3x Seagate Exos 7e10 6TB SATA3 7.2rpm 256MB 512E 3.5" 24/7 4KN
Both systems are intended to work with TrueNAS SCALE, enabling a Linux environment and mainly the possibility to scale the systems to increased storage (HDDs, JBODs and RAM; possibly other DCs) which is already taken into account in the configuration (not shown here). With this configuration, I am planning to have two OpenZFS dRAID pools with 6x HDDs per pool enabling 18TB free space (3 data, 2 parity and 1 hot spare). The reason for the independent pools is due to the types of data (1 pool for read-only data and 1 pool for user accounts data – this is the only one targeted for backup since the other pool has backups in offline external drives). This way I think I can make the DC more resilient without one pool affecting the other. The BK is configured to mimic the DC storage, here with a single pool for the user accounts data only.
I am looking for help in the following questions:
1) Are these configurations valid, considering the OS and described (dRAID) functionality? Otherwise, what changes would be recommended? More RAM :)?
2) Assuming I want to use hot spare drives, if I add another vdev to one of the pools, do I need another hot spare drive or the one in the initial vdev is enough? Or better said, is it necessary to have a hot spare drive for every new vdev?
3) The data stored in both pools will in principle contain also large files (~200MB to ~3-5GB or more), does it make sense or required to have all the HDDs formatted in 4KiB blocks? Should it be done in all pools in both DC and BK?
3.1) I read somewhere that for smaller files an additional configuration or hardware would be necessary, where the word “mirroring” was mentioned. What does this mean? Would this be necessary? (sorry, I am currently unable to cite this information).
4) If I understand well, OpenZFS by default enables compression (by LZ4 ?), what pros and cons are derived? Would I get more space available? Would I also get more difficulties in recovering the data or disks in a worse case scenario?
5) When establishing the user accounts in the DC, will users have access also to the read-only pool (with differing permissions and quotas)?
6) What would be the best RAID scheme for the BK, is this (dRAID2) ok? Or is this too much? Would it be required (or beneficial?) to use the same scheme as in the DC?
7) Still not sure, but I am planning to have the BK shutdown most of the time, and perform the backups only at specific times or dates (like 1 – 2 times a month) possibly using automated WoL and maybe cron jobs (from the DC), is this possible and acceptable?
8) With TrueNAS I came to know that it is possible to perform replication and/or synchronization; how would these work exactly? Do I need both operations? The idea here and most important, is to have the latest copies of the DC pool, and secondly if possible, recovery in case files are accidentally deleted or corrupted in DC pool.
If you have any other suggestions regarding the configurations, please let me know.
Thanks in advance for all your time and help.