8TB nas build questions

[BrokenSpring]

Hello All

I am looking at building a new NAS box and have a few questions for all the seasoned pro's.

So far i have
1 x Fractal Design Array R2 case = mini itx and 6 hdd spaces
1x 8gb ram (2x4)
1 x Asus E35M1-I Deluxe AMD M1 motherboard

I would like to use 4 x 3tb wd green drives in the zfs version of raid5

a) Is 8gb of memory enough for the ammount of storage?
b) Is the dual core e350 going to die under the load of the system?
c) can i build a 3 disk array and then expand it to 4 in zfs raid5?
d) and finally is it advisable to use 3tb drives?

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[peterh]

a/ 8GB might do, but make shure it's a 64-bit cpu
b/ depends on load (of course)
c/ no
d/ why not?

 

[BrokenSpring]

a/ 8GB might do, but make shure it's a 64-bit cpu
b/ depends on load (of course)
c/ no
d/ why not?

Thank you for the reply
the e350 is a 64 bit cpu so no prob with the ram.
I have gone throught the forums and cant see many builds with 3tb drives so thought there was some problem in using them.

 

[peterh]

one problem with 3TB drives is the long "resilver-time". It's takes a while to rebuild 3TB

 

[louisk]

a/ 8GB might do, but make shure it's a 64-bit cpu
b/ depends on load (of course)
c/ no
d/ why not?

Your answer to C, while technically correct, leaves unanswered certain capabilities in ZFS. While it's true that you can't expand a vdev (virtual device where the RAID actually takes place), you can hot add multiple vdevs to the pool, which will grow the amount of storage space available in the pool. For example, you can start with a pool called tank, and a 4 disk RAIDZ. Later on, you can add another 4 disks in RAIDZ to the pool. This would give you the storage space of 6x(size of spindle; such as 6x1T or 6x2T). Additionally, you would be able to tolerate up to 1 spindle failure per vdev, and in the above example, 2 failures in the pool with out losing data integrity.

 

[peterh]

The original question was "can i build a 3 disk array and then expand it to 4 in zfs raid5?" The answer to
that is No.

In a broader sense you are correct that a zfs vdev may be extended by adding vdev's ( not single disks)