Building Nas, Easily expandable

[zeeric]

Alright new to this forum and new to freenas.

I did some research and read the freenas guide from Cyberjock.

First of all I want a NAS that can be easily expandable. Without deleting the current zpool and making a new one with additional drives added in and I do not want to add additional VDEVS.

ZFS allows for a zpool to expand in only two ways.
Option 1: Replace all of the hard disks in a VDev with larger hard drives (aka autoexpand)
Option 2: Add additional VDevs.

I am going with Option 1.

Since I am looking for future expansion this is my plan
Parts
Intel Avoton server board either the 4 core or 8 core (this board has 12 SATA ports)
650 PSU
16 GB ECC Memory or 32GB ECC Memory (when I upgrade to Higher TB Drives)

10x 1 TB WD RED (RAIDZ3)
1x 128 SSD Cashe
1x 128 SSD FreeNas OS

I was thinking about doing a 16GB 3.0 USB for FreeNAS OS but i heard running off the USB has problems.

The reason why I am going with 1 TB is to fill up all the SATA Ports on the motherboard because I CANNOT add any physical hard drives when the vdev is created. The way I am going to expand my capacity is upgrading the drive to larger drives like 4 TB or 6 TB. I do not want to do option 2 which is erase the vdev pool and making a new one with the addition drives.

What do you guys think of this plan I am doing. Kinda overkill but I will think this is a great plan when I need to add more storage to my nas.

 

[BigDave]

Your way;
$65 current price 1TB red X 10 drives in RAIDz3 = $650 for 7TB (before formatting and overhead space) $92.86 per TB

My way;
$149 current price 4TB X 6 drives in RAIDz2 = $894 for 16TB (before formatting and overhead space) $55.86 per TB (40% savings)

My way you use 6ports and have 6 more for later (assuming a 12 port mobo) AND it will be twice as long until you need to expand
with a second vdev of 6 new drives ;) which by btw would be much cheaper than buying 10-6TB drives ($2,500.00)

I'm aware that you may still want to keep RAIDz3, but for a smaller number of drives RAIDz2 will be ok and will have better performance

What do you guys think of this plan I am doing.

 

[Jailer]

If you know you are going to be upgrading your drives to expand your capacity save your money and buy larger drives to start with.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Starting with fewer, larger drives, whether you choose to add a vdev or replace the drives, you can still expect that by the time the need arises, larger drives will be significantly more affordable. My plan is to double capacity the first time by replacing all my 2TB drives with 4TB drives. I fully expect that the second time I want to double capacity, everything will have changed and any plans I might make today will be moot.

 

[cyberjock]

And that L2ARC is useless (actually, they make things slower) if you don't have enough RAM, and even at 32GB of RAM, you wouldn't have "enough".

As I said in my presentation.. don't buy them. :P

 

[zeeric]

Your way;
$65 current price 1TB red X 10 drives in RAIDz3 = $650 for 7TB (before formatting and overhead space) $92.86 per TB

My way;
$149 current price 4TB X 6 drives in RAIDz2 = $894 for 16TB (before formatting and overhead space) $55.86 per TB (40% savings)

My way you use 6ports and have 6 more for later (assuming a 12 port mobo) AND it will be twice as long until you need to expand
with a second vdev of 6 new drives ;) which by btw would be much cheaper than buying 10-6TB drives ($2,500.00)

I'm aware that you may still want to keep RAIDz3, but for a smaller number of drives RAIDz2 will be ok and will have better performance

That is cost effective. I like that way. Thank you I will go that route. (4tb x 6 drives Raidz2 then if I need more ill just make another vdev of 4tb x 6 drives)

I will not use an SSD as cashe (L2ARC). I just look over the presentation again and it is useless. lol. Thank you cyberjock and great presentation :)

Alright I am going to wait for black Friday or Cyber Monday for some deals on the parts. Thank You again guys. Very Helpful.