Are these specs good?

[Itay1778]

Hi, I'm just about to build a new TrueNAS and before I buy I want to be sure I'm not wasting my money on something I'll be disappointed with.

The old specs
CPU: i3 540
RAM: 16GB
Motherboard: intel DH55HC
Boot SSD 120GB
HDD 3TB WD Red
HBA: Nope

So you understand why I have to upgrade...

So what I was thinking about
Motherboard: Supermicro X9SRL-F
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2. If I find an E5-2667 V2 for a low price then I will buy it.
RAM: 32GB ECC RDIMM
Case: Rosewill RSV-R4200U
Boot SSD and Storage HDD will currently move to the new server until I upgrade them.
PSU: Probably something from Corsair
HBA: For the near future the disks will be directly from the motherboard, but I will buy an HBA when I need more drives. so I will probably buy an LSI 9207-8i - According to what I read, it is the most recommended, right?

My TrueNAS runs SMB mainly and Plex, plus a few small jails.
3-4 users simultaneously connected in SMB.

If you have any advice or anything I should pay attention to before I buy, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Arwen]

How are your 3 x 3TB WD Red configured?
Are you using RAID-Z1?

The larger the hard drives, the more risk of an un-correctable read error. This is a situation when you are replacing a failed disk, and get a failed block on another drive. Thus, loosing that file data.

One way to help mitigate that problem, is if the disk to be replaced has not completely failed, use another disk port on the server and ZFS' replace in place. Basically it uses the redundancy of all the existing drives to replace the failing one. For example, if you are replacing disk 1, and disk 2 has an error, but disk 1 still has valid data for that block, then the new replacement disk 4 can use disk 1's copy of that block.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Given the amount of RAM, I assume you do not plan to run VMs/jails on this system. In that case, i.e. for a pure storage scenario with conventional HDDs, both CPUs are way more than needed. If you get them for a good price, why not. But 4 cores with 3+ GHz would suffice as well (see my system in signature).

Speaking of RAM: When possible for a decent amount of money (not sure what DDR3 RDIMMs cost these days) I would go for 64 GB. Two years ago I got 32 GB RDIMMs for 40 Euros, so that was a no-brainer for me then.

Only just read that you want to use Plex and other jails. In that case I would definitely go for 64 GB of RAM and an 8-core CPU. I leave my first thoughts here, for context and perhaps someone else can benefit.

 

[Itay1778]

How are your 3 x 3TB WD Red configured?
Are you using RAID-Z1?

The larger the hard drives, the more risk of an un-correctable read error. This is a situation when you are replacing a failed disk, and get a failed block on another drive. Thus, loosing that file data.

One way to help mitigate that problem, is if the disk to be replaced has not completely failed, use another disk port on the server and ZFS' replace in place. Basically it uses the redundancy of all the existing drives to replace the failing one. For example, if you are replacing disk 1, and disk 2 has an error, but disk 1 still has valid data for that block, then the new replacement disk 4 can use disk 1's copy of that block.

Yes, they are currently configured as RAID-Z1. Thanks for the explanation but I know how RAID redundancy works. That was not my question.

 

[Itay1778]

Given the amount of RAM, I assume you do not plan to run VMs/jails on this system. In that case, i.e. for a pure storage scenario with conventional HDDs, both CPUs are way more than needed. If you get them for a good price, why not. But 4 cores with 3+ GHz would suffice as well (see my system in signature).

Speaking of RAM: When possible for a decent amount of money (not sure what DDR3 RDIMMs cost these days) I would go for 64 GB. Two years ago I got 32 GB RDIMMs for 40 Euros, so that was a no-brainer for me then.

Only just read that you want to use Plex and other jails. In that case I would definitely go for 64 GB of RAM and an 8-core CPU. I leave my first thoughts here, for context and perhaps someone else can benefit.

I get the ram from a friend for free. Right now, as I wrote, I currently have 16GB and it works relatively well, I will probably add RAM (to 64GB or more) when I add drives. And the two CPUs I mentioned are 8 cores and simply one has a faster frequency, here only the price will decide what I will buy.
Other than that, everything looks good to you?

 

[Arwen]

Yes, they are currently configured as RAID-Z1. Thanks for the explanation but I know how RAID redundancy works. That was not my question.

Understood.

It is that some people don't know about ZFS' replace in place, which basically mirrors the failing drive until the new drive is fully populated. Then ZFS will detach the failing drive, leaving the pool configuration same as before. In your case, a 3 disk RAID-Z1. This is somewhat unique to ZFS. This explanation is for others that may run across this thread and my comment.

 

[joeschmuck]

HBA: For the near future the disks will be directly from the motherboard, but I will buy an HBA when I need more drives. so I will probably buy an LSI 9207-8i - According to what I read, it is the most recommended, right?

You have 10 SATA ports on this motherboard. Are you looking to really expand this NAS into a monster? And the case you have selected only holds 11 3.5" HDD's so I'm not sure if you really need to add an HBA? If you can just live with the motherboard SATA ports, you would save a lot of power and heat generation, and that would support one SSD boot drive and up to 9 HDD's.

 

[Itay1778]

You have 10 SATA ports on this motherboard. Are you looking to really expand this NAS into a monster? And the case you have selected only holds 11 3.5" HDD's so I'm not sure if you really need to add an HBA? If you can just live with the motherboard SATA ports, you would save a lot of power and heat generation, and that would support one SSD boot drive and up to 9 HDD's.

Yes, you are right, but note that only 2 of them are SATA 3 all the rest are SATA 2 and 4 of them go through SCU.
That's why adding an HBA makes sense to me.

 

[Arwen]

Most hard disk drives can't push more than perhaps 160MBytes per second average. So they fit within the bandwidth of SATA 2's 3Gbit per second, (about 300MBytes per second). So you can reserve your 2 x SATA 3 ports for any SSDs you may add in the future.

 

[Itay1778]

Most hard disk drives can't push more than perhaps 160MBytes per second average. So they fit within the bandwidth of SATA 2's 3Gbit per second, (about 300MBytes per second). So you can reserve your 2 x SATA 3 ports for any SSDs you may add in the future.

You're right, that's why I'm not currently buying an HBA. Only if I see a need then I will buy. Even so, I will probably add a PCIe SSD.

 

[joeschmuck]

Most hard disk drives can't push more than perhaps 160MBytes per second average. So they fit within the bandwidth of SATA 2's 3Gbit per second, (about 300MBytes per second). So you can reserve your 2 x SATA 3 ports for any SSDs you may add in the future.

Very good point.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I have basically the same motherboard (see signature) and the number of SATA ports, together with the RDIMM slots was basically the reason to go for it.

What I would like to emphasize here is that the transfer rates of SATA drives (roughly 160-230 MB/s) that are usually talked about, are for sequential transfer under optimal conditions. So even if one day we have 400 MB/s for many workloads a 3 Gbps interface would still more or less suffice.

 

[Itay1778]

Thank you all for yours answers! I ordered the parts. Now I just have to wait for them to arrive