12TB NAS Hardware help

[Cwhitmore]

I plan to build a backup NAS for my non-profit and need some help spec'ing it out. Here are the requirements:

Case - I want something small, but has the capacity for at least (6) 3.5" SATA drives. I like the look of the Fractal Array 2 Mini.

Motherboard - needs at least 6 SATA ports, max memory 16GB, SATA controller, and 1GB NIC

CPU - I prefer Intel, i3 enough for this load?

Power Supply - 300W okay with 6 SATA drives?

Drives - SATA 7200rpm 2TB or 3TB Hitachi, I've heard a lot of good things about these drives, but I see a big price difference in Deskstar and Ultrastar. Can I get by with Deskstar drives?

Did I miss anything?

 

[zoo]

Configuration?: I'm assuming you wish to use ZFS. That said....You say 12TB NAS but with only 6 drives, you'd have to run without any redundancy to get close to that in usable space if you use 2TB drives which you consider under Drives. You could accomplish the 12TB usable if you had 6 3TB drives and had two drive parity (RAIDZ2).

Case/Motherboard: The Fractal Array 2 Mini is a Mini-ITX case. Last time I checked I couldn't find a Mini-ITX motherboard that had 6 SATA, and supported 16GB of memory.

CPU: The i3 should be more than capable. However you may get more value from AMD. You can get a quad core AM3 chip for the same price.

Power: Again should be fine here as long as it is an efficient psu.

Drives: Pretty good Intel PDF from 2008 (link). If you're considering enterprise drives you should probably think about getting ECC memory and a board that supports it.

 

[Erwin]

For the case that your are looking for a low cost and low power configuration, I can give you my configuration:

ASUS E35M1-I (supports 6 SATA 6Gbps Ports), 2x4 GB Memory and 6 x 3TB (WD30EZRX)

With a ZFS R2 config I got 12 TB capacity, The total power consumption is about 60W (Disk Seek), about 45 W (Disk idle) and 30W (disks in spindown state, working well since 8.0.1 RC2). When you access the array, the disk seems to spin up drive by drive, so there are no real need for a big powersupply. There is a PSU already in the Fractal Design box, as I can remember.

In a first test, I got about 30 MB/s transfere rate with 1 client, the memory fills up to 6 GB.

 

[Cwhitmore]

Erwin,
That transfer rate seems very slow. Is that because of your drives or network setup?

 

[Erwin]

ok, I have to correct my values (it was just a first trial): In fact, with big files it reaches up to 80-90 MBps in the first seconds (until the RAM fills up to 6GB) and then it slows down to 40-60MBps. That is quite ok in my eyes, compared to my first FreeNAS which was running in a VM. I hope that I could resolve your doubts.

Erwin

 

[TheyCallMeCharles]

@zoo My ten cents:

Case/Moterboard: Last time I checked was four hours ago and I found this:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157275

Pretty amazing considering its just about alone in its category: Micro ATX/32GB RAM/ AMD socket..

But that's a personal choice, I've always preferred AMD for their super-cross-compatibility between boards/CPU's with the AM_ socket. (Intel fans gets plenty of choice, albeit somewhat pricy i find)

@Erwin above:

I've recently disassembled my rig, but only using 4GB's of RAM and low-quality CAT5 cables and 4X 2TB , I've seen values around those only for large files (in the GB's); smaller files gets more modest speeds around 20-40 MB/s. I've heard that CAT6 cables allow faster speeds. I have yet to test that out though.

 

[psreekanthteach]

Hi, Just bought HP n40l and it is pretty amazing.

it has 4 hdd slots so you can put 12TB (4x3TB HDD).

 

[warri]

The threads kinda old, but another 2 cents about the case:
It's a really compact and nice built case and you can put 6x 3,5" hard drives and an additional 2,5" into it (SSD-Cache maybe?). Enough for many people I guess.
Well, but today I would choose another, bigger case, because i'm already beginning to run out of hard disc space, and there is just no easy possibility to add more drives to the server due to lacking physical space in the case. I should have thought about that earlier, but I didn't expected to run out of storage space _so_ fast.