32 HDD with NAS

[xccess]

I am about to put 32x5TB 2.5" HDD in my Dell PowerEdge t630. What your take on this?

 

[Chris Moore]

I am about to put 32x5TB 2.5" HDD in my Dell PowerEdge t630. What your take on this?

What is the reason for the design?

You shouldn't do it just because you have the money. What is the purpose?


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[HoneyBadger]

Seconding the statement of @Chris Moore above - why do you want to do this? Bulk storage can probably be done more efficiently with LFF drives, performance-oriented probably necessities some SSD in there somewhere. What's the end goal?

 

[Chris Moore]

By the way, that is a nice looking server.

 

[Chris Moore]

I am about to put 32x5TB 2.5" HDD in my Dell PowerEdge t630. What your take on this?

I took a look at the configuration options for that server and it matters how it is configured, so you might want to tell us what else is in there because if you are using the PERC RAID controller, as and example, that wouldn't be good for FreeNAS.

 

[jgreco]

Bulk storage can probably be done more efficiently with LFF drives, performance-oriented probably necessities some SSD in there somewhere.

Facts not (necessarily) in evidence.

The 2.5" drives burn less power per TB. As a function of raw capacity, six 2.5" drives fits in the same space as three 3.5" drives, and with the state of the art in 2.5 being 5TB and 3.5 being 12TB, that works out to 30TB and 36TB respectively. However, having a much larger number of spindles in the 2.5" form factor means that you could construct high reliability 2.5" as three 10-drive RAIDZ2 vdevs with two spare drives - a 120TB pool, whereas with 3.5" disks that would be around 16 drives (not that that'd fit in this chassis), which works out to two 7 drive RAIDZ2 vdevs with two spare drives - also a 120TB pool.

If you just look at raw, 5TB * 32 = 160TB whereas 12TB * 16 = 192TB, and the current 5TB 2.5" drives may not perform as well as the current 12TB 3.5" drives, but on the other hand, the proposed configurations have differing amounts of redundancy, so there is some room for debate in both directions. My point is that it's quite possibly reasonable to do 2.5" stuff.

A long time ago, I kinda thought 2.5" drives were the future as they were lower power and more flexible, along with SSD being mostly deployed in that form factor. Small HDD's have a lot going for them in terms of faster access times, and laptops and servers seemed to be major drivers of the technology.

Then, as SSD started to chow down on the PC market, it became clear that HDD needs to evolve towards massive storage, which would favor reintroduction of the 1.6" high full-height 3.5" form factor, allowing the fixed component costs of the drive to be amortized over more platters, or maybe even HH or FH 5.25" drives, but so far no one has actually done that.

As others have suggested elsewhere, it seems quite possible that the disk manufacturers know that the format will eventually die as other, denser technologies such as flash continue to drop in price. As it stands, consumer flash (4TB Evo) is only about an order of magnitude more expensive than consumer 2.5 HDD (4TB Barracuda) and the prices on flash are dropping faster than they are pumping out new HDD capacities. In the meantime, I expect that manufacturers will try to avoid favoring one HDD footprint over another too much. They're already dirt cheap.

 

[rvassar]

Facts not (necessarily) in evidence.

Then, as SSD started to chow down on the PC market, it became clear that HDD needs to evolve towards massive storage, which would favor reintroduction of the 1.6" high full-height 3.5" form factor, allowing the fixed component costs of the drive to be amortized over more platters, or maybe even HH or FH 5.25" drives, but so far no one has actually done that.

There was a point, around late 2014, where I expected someone to announce a FH 5.25" drive with massive storage capacity... But it didn't happen. I suspect the 3D NAND numbers coupled with the forecast integration advancement map killed it.

 

[xccess]

well, you guys all have a point, however, I just like to build one to run VM, Media center and so on, I may not need all the power, I was thinking doing all SSD drive but that just way overkill even with my current set up. Currently, I have Dell PowerEdge (PE) R330 1U have ESXi and FreeNas sit on VM with PCI passthrough for PERC RAID with HBA passthrough for the drive.
R330 configure as
CPU: e3-1230
54GB RAM
dual port 10GB SPF+ NIC
ESXi 6.0
256 GB SSD drive for ESXi VMware host
4x8TB HDD connect to Perc h730 with HBA mode passthrough for drives, I know this is a wasted and not approve way for everyone, but this is a personal use and not in production, the FreeNAS being host by R330 ESXi with the PCI passthrough as mention above. I used to have PFsense. windows media center and freenas run on this same server. it does work well for the most part. However, when I have to reboot the R330 it took down the internet, share NAS and iSCSI connect to Windows media center.

Under VM I created two vSwitch. one is connected to T1700G-28TQ the other vSwitch just for connected between Freenas and windows media center for iSCSI.

Since then I have split off PFsense and put on Dell Optiplex 7040 Micro desktop. This also run under VM and host PFsensens, the 7040 has two USB-to-Ethernet bonds and connect to physical T1700G-28TQ switch for internal internet access, and the build in Ethernet for this box connect to cable modem.

I had Dell PE t630 been sitting there collecting dust for last two years with power off. server spec as follows
CPU will be either dual Xeon E5-2630 v4 or Dual Xeon E5-2697A v4. I have the option to swap out CPU between this server and my Dell Precision T7910
128 GB RAM
two PERC H730P card, but may swap out for PERC H330
10GB NIC ether copper or fiber
PCI-e SSD Samsung 950 pro
32 slot for 2.5" HDD
my plan is to use this server replace the above R330 so I can run more VM and testing, I also plan to use it to host NVR like Blue Irish to record 16 camera mix 4K and 1080P.

I realized some of this setup and setting configuration set up is questionable. but this is not a company use and it is just a personal use. and if anyone wants to know, each 4k continue to record one hour of RAW 4K content requires close to 110GB of storage; approximately 2GB per minute. so if I just have 4x4K camera it will cost me 440GB an hour disk space.. that put me to 13-15 days record time keeping and I really want 30 days keep the record

 

[xccess]

Facts not (necessarily) in evidence.

The 2.5" drives burn less power per TB. As a function of raw capacity, six 2.5" drives fits in the same space as three 3.5" drives, and with the state of the art in 2.5 being 5TB and 3.5 being 12TB, that works out to 30TB and 36TB respectively. However, having a much larger number of spindles in the 2.5" form factor means that you could construct high reliability 2.5" as three 10-drive RAIDZ2 vdevs with two spare drives - a 120TB pool, whereas with 3.5" disks that would be around 16 drives (not that that'd fit in this chassis), which works out to two 7 drive RAIDZ2 vdevs with two spare drives - also a 120TB pool.

there is an option for this Chassis to fit in 18 3.5 HDD, but to fit 12TB in this chassis cost me more than 2.5" HDD.

if price were not a factor I would have 18x100TB SSD drive in there :)