Camera raw file storage — X11SSM-F mobo

[mikael]

OK, finally I'm getting somewhere to store my camera raw files and general file storage. No encoding, no video decoding. I lust for ZFS mainly because of the checksumming and repair features.

I plan on running the 2*8TB disks in a mirror. Mostly for the sake of simplicity, but also because I've already got 2 (less than fancy) 8TB drives. Eventually I will add 2*4TB in a mirror too.

Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSM-F
X11SSL-F is cheaper and I don't really know what differs X11SSM-F from that board. X11SSM-F seems popular though.

RAM: Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CRC (1x16GB)
1x16GB wont give me dual channel, but it's cheaper and will allow me to upgrade to 32GB. Will the performance loss mostly be superficial compared to 2*8GB?

CPU: Intel Pentium G4400
I was considering a Kaby Lake gen CPU, but I don't want to go through the of IPMI update hassle. I figure this will suffice for a file server.

Power Supply: Seasonic X-650
Already in my collection. Got it back in 2010, but has been sitting on the shelf for about 5 years. Should still be a good quality PSU if I'm right.

HDD: 2 * Seagate Archive V2 ST8000AS0002
Not exactly server grade or speedy, I know. But I they're already in my possession. One of them might be a ST8000DM004.

Chassi: Fractal Design Define R2 (2010)
Could be one of the first Define models. I got it in 2010.

Router: Asus RT-N66U (Asuswrt-Merlin firmware)
I'm afraid this wont suffice. I'd really like to reach 1 Gbps.

Cable: LogiLink 20m Cat.6 U/UTP

Backup: Two external 8 TB hard drives
I'd like to connect them to the NAS via USB3 and perform backups to them using rsync via SSH.

 

[wblock]

The "archive" drives are SMR, shingled magnetic recording. Fine for reads, can be very slow for writes. Beyond that, I question whether Seagate has perfected that technology yet. Last I looked, there were a lot of failures at the one-year mark of the desktop external versions of those. Maybe not due to SMR, though.

The RAM performance? Possibly interleaved would give ten or fifteen percent improvement. Almost certainly not a problem on a NAS.

 

[mikael]

The "archive" drives are SMR, shingled magnetic recording. Fine for reads, can be very slow for writes.

The 2MB sequential write and read is roughly 190 MB/s for the disks. The network will max out at 125 MB/s at best. I guess the network will often be the bottleneck.

Beyond that, I question whether Seagate has perfected that technology yet. Last I looked, there were a lot of failures at the one-year mark of the desktop external versions of those. Maybe not due to SMR, though.

Let's hope they hold up. I will have to take care of backups. That's why I mention connecting external HDDs to the NAS for backups.

The RAM performance? Possibly interleaved would give ten or fifteen percent improvement. Almost certainly not a problem on a NAS.

Thanks, that's fine. :)

 

[LTCM]

The 2MB sequential write and read is roughly 190 MB/s for the disks. The network will max out at 125 MB/s at best. I guess the network will often be the bottleneck.

But isn't that speed only for the first pass? Once you've overlapped the data, writing over old files is a nightmare. Storing RAW files probably isn't the worst use for them but I'd be wary.

 

[mikael]

But isn't that speed only for the first pass? Once you've overlapped the data, writing over old files is a nightmare. Storing RAW files probably isn't the worst use for them but I'd be wary.

You're probably right.

How about FreeNAS system drives? Is it advisable to go with USB flash drives? I've got a spare 80GB Intel X25-M G2 from many years (7?) back. That, or I could get a dirt cheap Transcend TS32GSSD370S 32GB SSD.

Is it overkill to mirror the system drive (so that you have two)?

 

[Arwen]

The 2MB sequential write and read is roughly 190 MB/s for the disks. The network will max out at 125 MB/s at best. I guess the network will often be the bottleneck.
...

I have an 8TB SMR and while the reads are up to 150MBps, writes canbe as low as 30MBps.

Remember, writes might very well be highly fragmented on the drive, (which ZFS won't know about), which affect reads due to head seeks. Thus reads CAN suck too.

My use case is a single drive ZFS pool for backing up my FreeNAS. Works great since I don't care too much on how long the backups take.

 

[wblock]

How about FreeNAS system drives? Is it advisable to go with USB flash drives? I've got a spare 80GB Intel X25-M G2 from many years (7?) back. That, or I could get a dirt cheap Transcend TS32GSSD370S 32GB SSD.

Many of those Intel drives are still working. Intel might have software to tell how much life it has left. I recommend 60 or 120GB SSDs rather than the small ones, because they are more common and have more space for wear leveling.

SSDs make better boot devices than USB. Faster, fewer problems, longer life.

It's not overkill to mirror USB drives. Flash drives, at least new ones, should be reliable enough to skip that if you regularly back up the FreeNAS configuration.

Edit: I meant to say "SSDs" rather than "Flash drives" in that last sentence.

 

[mikael]

Thank you for all your replies, I went with the above configuration.

If I would replace one of the drives in the 8TB mirror to a faster one, would the mirror performance always be limited by the slower of the two drives?

 

[Ericloewe]

Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSM-F
X11SSL-F is cheaper and I don't really know what differs X11SSM-F from that board. X11SSM-F seems popular though.

Supermicro's lineup is so complicated... Wouldn't it be nice if someone had gone through it and summarized the various options? ;)