Build advice for HP server

Joe_Papa

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I have an HP ProLiant DL380 G9 server I want to use for TrueNAS. It has (2) Xeon E5-2667 v3 @ 3.20GHz CPUs (16 physical cores) and 256GB of ECC RAM. It has (12) 3.5" SAS bays in front (populated with 12x1TB SAS drives) and (2) 2.5" SAS bays in back (empty) and a 2-slot NVME card (empty) in a PCIE slot. Currently, this server is running ESXI 7.0 and vCenter Server appliance and that's it. I am working on gathering the right hardware to put together a solid NAS/backup machine with additional VMs.

This server has a P840 RAID card, but I know I need (2) 8-port HBA cards or (1) 16-port HBA to run the 12 drives directly and give TrueNAS direct access to the drives. Do I need to remove the RAID card or can I just add the additional card/s and not use the RAID card?

Also, I can get my hands on up to (20) 3TB 7200 SAS drives (Seagate Constellation ST33000650SS) used for $20/ea. Would these perform well in a TrueNAS setup? I know they are used and not huge, but the price is very good and I could fit 12 of them in my server with lots of spares. Or should I switch the drives to 5400rpm SATA drives and will this work without too much hassle? Any advice or suggestions on this are welcome.

Also, would it be reasonable to install 2 NVME drives and use one for a boot drive for TrueNAS and the other for possible SLOG or L2ARC use?

Are there other factors that you think I'm not considering? Thanks for the help. :)
 

Samuel Tai

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Joe_Papa

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Thanks for that link Samuel. I read the whole thread. Some good info there about the need for the HBA cards that confirms what I planned to do with new HBA cards.
 

Samuel Tai

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Although SAS drives work, the experience here is that plain SATA drives have better SMART reporting, and are easier to see failures emerging.
 

Joe_Papa

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Wow! That is good information too. Thanks. I'm glad I didn't buy all those 3TB SAS drives...
 

Etorix

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As for your question about L2ARC and SLOG, no advice can be given without knowing your use case.
My uninformed guess would be that you don't need either. 256 GB RAM makes for a very nice ARC already and SLOG is for NFS or databases (sync writes).
 

Joe_Papa

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Thanks for that bit of info. Yeah, I haven't gotten deep enough to know if either one might benefit me at all. Glad I have RAM to spare though.
 

Joe_Papa

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I've been hunting around a bit to see pricing on NAS drives in the 3-4TB range and about the best pricing I can find is ~$70 for used 4TB drives. So... If I can get an abundant supply of used 7,200rpm SAS drives at $6.66/TB vs used 5,400rpm SATA drives at $17.50/TB... would the lack of good SMART reporting be a big deal? In practical terms if both types of drives function properly and notify me of failure... then I can just replace drives if they fail. In which case the SAS drives are much more appealing.

Am I oversimplifying this? Are there other implications from the difference in SMART reporting that I'm not considering?
 

Samuel Tai

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You can compensate somewhat for the lack of SMART reporting by provisioning spares in your pool to take over for drives that go belly up, along with increased alerting.
 

Dan Tudora

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I can find is ~$70 for used 4TB drives
hello
why not 100$ + VAT for new HDD with 3 years guaranty ??
abundant supply of used 7,200rpm SAS drives
someone have mannnny of that drive (becouse is standard in industry) and want to dispose that and upgrade to another capacity and with a new HDD for guaranty/reliable/RMA/etc.
7,200rpm SAS drives
that drive make a lot of noise/temperature. in a datacenter that thing is not a concern
but I MUST buy a lot of electrical energy to keep cool that datacenter everyday
and keep cross fingers for power outage every day
BTW for what is that NAS use ??
 

Joe_Papa

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hello
why not 100$ + VAT for new HDD with 3 years guaranty ??
Fair question. It's purely a cost/TB issue for me. I'm used to working with IT leftovers and the bang-for-buck of such hardware is great.
someone have mannnny of that drive (becouse is standard in industry) and want to dispose that and upgrade to another capacity and with a new HDD for guaranty/reliable/RMA/etc.
Yep. My willingness to use the leftovers means I can get a lot more capacity and performance than I could if purchasing retail. But I don't want to be stupid about it. For example if my approach led to dramatically higher chance of catastrophic failure.... I would rethink. As it is though I have an 11TB NAS/file server I built that is running Windows Home Server (yes, WHS), a server with 3.5TB of usable storage in RAID 6, and then whatever I build with this server.
that drive make a lot of noise/temperature. in a datacenter that thing is not a concern
but I MUST buy a lot of electrical energy to keep cool that datacenter everyday
and keep cross fingers for power outage every day
BTW for what is that NAS use ??
Currently I just need a NAS to contain all of my family photos, videos, ISOs, PC backups, documents etc. (around 2TB so far) but I would like it to be capable of much more down the road.

To be honest I never tackle a project like this because I have a necessary end-use in mind... I do it because it's fun. I enjoy the process of researching, implementing and then using a complex machine/IT project/craft.
 
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Joe_Papa

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Perhaps I am thinking about this wrong? I am kind of looking at my server with (12) 3.5" bays as something I should fill up to get the highest GB/$ volume possible... Perhaps I should instead focus on building a single vdev with 4 new larger drives in RAIDZ2. And then I could use the remaining 8 bays for smaller vdevs with my current 1TB drives or leave 4-8 bays empty for future expansion.
 

Samuel Tai

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@Joe_Papa, given your stated use case of simple file sharing and backups, you don't really need high IOPS and a wide pool, like you would if you were sharing out iSCSI volumes to multiple VMs. A RAIDZ2 with 4 large drives will be plenty fast enough, and you'll have slots left over for a 2nd pool for replication later on.
 
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