Critique my build

[Randymc1908]

So I should have probably posted here first BUT recently did some upgrading:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz
Asrock B250M pro4-IB motherboard
4x16GB G. Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-2400
3x 14 GB shucked easystore hdd
2x 12 GB shucked easystore hdd
2 USB flash drives running Truenas (?) Bought the original from someone else but I think that's right.

Sense the "upgrade" system has been crashing once every 2 or 3 days, and haven't been able to figure out why. Read somewhere where to check logs and found nothing. Please help trouble shoot the hardwarw and any suggestions on where to go from here.

 

[sretalla]

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz

Doesn't support ECC memory, otherwise, it's a CPU, so will run.

Asrock B250M pro4-IB motherboard

Doesn't support ECC memory (well, it does, but it won't run as ECC)
Has an Intel NIC.... good. But it's an i219 (which I have seen issues reported around driver support... maybe OK).

4x16GB G. Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-2400

Not ECC... fine to match the other parts, but not ideal if you care about data integrity (and therefore using ZFS)

3x 14 GB shucked easystore hdd
2x 12 GB shucked easystore hdd

Fine, although would question what pool you will make with that... RAIDZ1 not great for 14TB disks.

2 USB flash drives running Truenas (?)

Not recommended (will work for a little while and then the sticks will fail... fair warning).

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

Fine, although would question what pool you will make with that... RAIDZ1 not great for 14TB disks.

Because of long rebuilt times in case of crash?
What is currently the best balance between data integrity and costs?
3xHDD with RAIDZ1 would have been my guess…

 

[sretalla]

It has been long documented on this forum that disks over 2TB present high risk in RAIDZ1 configuration since the resilver load for RAIDZ is high on the remaining disks (and takes a very long time for large disks), you risk stressing one of the remaining drives to failure, losing your pool.

You're also running with no data protection (against corruption... and loss) while missing your N+1th disk.

If your use-case is extremely low-cost (but higher risk) storage where there's also a backup taken at an acceptable frequency to ensure your RPO, then I suppose it's fine.

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

It has been long documented on this forum that disks over 2TB present high risk in RAIDZ1 configuration since the resilver load for RAIDZ is high on the remaining disks (and takes a very long time for large disks), you risk stressing one of the remaining drives to failure, losing your pool.

You're also running with no data protection (against corruption... and loss) while missing your N+1th disk.

If your use-case is extremely low-cost (but higher risk) storage where there's also a backup taken at an acceptable frequency to ensure your RPO, then I suppose it's fine.

Thanks

When using HDDs > 14TB, what would be a good balance? RAIDZ2 with 4xHDDs?

 

[sretalla]

When using HDDs > 14TB, what would be a good balance? RAIDZ2 with 4xHDDs?

RAIDZ2 is the appropriate option, but costs the same in redundancy as mirrors, so it's a question of use-case to select between them.

With mirrors, you may want to consider a hot-spare, so it may not be 100% the same in that sense.

 

[Etorix]

All five drives in raidz2 would give 3*12=36 TB of raw storage space (use only 70-80% of it!), compared with 12+14=28 TB for a pair of mirrors with a hot spare, and still likely better security in the event of a drive failure, so we have a clear scenario for bulk storage here.