Advice needed for low power FreeNAS & high transfer

[Dariusz1989]

Hey

I'm in a bit of a pickle.

One one hand I think of buying Qnap TS-831x which runs at 1.9/700 read/write. On the other hand for 800£ I could probably build my own little nas station.

Main usage of nas is going to be work - 1 user + few render nodes - I'm an artist.

The idea with Qnap was to get 8x raid 10 hdds 6tb each(as I already have r red pro nas ones) + m.2 ssd 1tb for cache read only / in future read/write with mirrored 1tb. - sadly qnap would never be able to max out 3gb/2gb read/write so the m.2 would be a bit of waste.

I looked around xeon-D configs and some other supermicro systems still going over them trying to find ideal one. Not sure how many cpu cores do I need?

The HDD on its own eats 10-25w. 8x 10 - 80-200W of power for cpus, add CPU 35W and I'm at 250w max. On side note I hope that there is a way to tell nas to go "idle" during the night, lets say slow speeds 100mb/read/write or something like that to conserve power. This way as it will run 24/7 I can minimize cost while I'm sleeping but allow readers to continue.

Does any1 know of any board/cpu that would allow low power combo? Looking for 8+ satas + m.2 + 2x 10sfp + possibly more sfp extensions as m.2 would reach 30gbs transfer rates with more in future... I guess pcie slots could do it but xeon-d usually have only 1 pcie slot? Bit new to xeonD...

Thanks for help.

Regards
Dariusz


EDIT - current proposal rig... still researching

Motherboard:
On second hand maybe this mobo is better, As the previous m.2 is crap then this one would allow me for pcie card.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supermicro-X11SSM-F-workstation-motherboards-DDR4-SDRAM/dp/B018AX44Q4


CPU :
E3-1260L v5 45W - if I can get 1

On top of that 8-16ECC ram.

Dual 10gb network or 2x 2x 10gbe for 40gb

m.2 pcie adapter

I also need to somehow get HDD for os, either USB or use pcie sata card for extra hdd?

Question is how much power would that eat ? I guess around 45W cpu, 10w m.2, no idea how much board takes and ram. 10W all ? 65W total + hdds.

Case :
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/node-series/node-804

 

[Stux]

What NAS protocol are you going to use?

SMB, AFP, NFS or iSCSI?

 

[Dariusz1989]

What NAS protocol are you going to use?

SMB, AFP, NFS or iSCSI?

No idea, just need to transfer files...

I need to learn about these options didnt even know it existed.

 

[Stux]

It matters because SMB is single threaded, and for max throughput you want high clockspeed. Others are multithreaded and can utilize many slow low power cores for high throughput

 

[Dariusz1989]

Oh I see thanks!

In this case I would go for whichever works with windows and offer fastest transfer speeds.

Regards
Dariusz

Edit1. so far I did not find any xeonD options with 8+ satas, the next thing I could find was this https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asr...iii-6gb-s-vga-2x-gbe-lan-1x-ipmi-lan-2x-usb-2. Sadly I can only have either m.2 cache or 10gbe ports here :- (

 

[Dariusz1989]

Hey

Oki so after more research. There is no xeonD options nor builtIn cpu that has 8 ports, 10gbe + other gimmicks.
The next step is xeon so for now I'm looking at:

Motherboard:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supermicro...qid=1503477070&sr=1-1&keywords=MBD-X11SSH-F-O

On second hand maybe this mobo is better, As the previous m.2 is crap then this one would allow me for pcie card.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Supermicro-X11SSM-F-workstation-motherboards-DDR4-SDRAM/dp/B018AX44Q4

How many lanes PCIE do I need for m.2 raid 0/1 ? and for 1 card with 2x 10 gbe or 2 card with 2gbe each? Yeah looks like PCIE 3.0 x4 should cover 2x10gb nic. I only have to find pcie 3.0 nics I guess.

CPU :
E3-1260L v5 45W
The only one I could find that was quad core at low power. But very hard to get - they dont sell them anymore. And v6 has no low tdp - how stupid lol.

On top of that 8-16ECC ram.

Dual 10gb network or 2x for 40gb.

m.2 is onboard so thats good. - actually its not, its NFG connector so I still need m.2 adapter I guess?

I also need to somehow get HDD for os, either USB or use pcie sata card for extra hdd?

Question is how much power would that eat ? I guess around 45W cpu, 10w m.2, no idea how much board takes and ram. 10W all ? 65W total + hdds.

Case :
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/node-series/node-804