BUILD Custom build assesment

[Lee Davies]

Hi all,

Whilst I'm no stranger to computer hardware, I am new to FreeNAS and server-specific hardware. I'm still reading forum threads and the Manual, so please bear with me as I learn.

I have already learned from reading that ECC RAM and Supermicro boards are highly recommended; which saved me from ordering a build with neither of those. So I'm already grateful for that!

I've been asked to create a NAS server for our small business (10-15 users, around 3-5 active users who'd be using it more than the rest of us) and, based on my early research, I'm wondering if the below hardware is decent enough.

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1620v2
Motherboard: Supermicro X9SRH-7F
RAM: Hynix Server Memory 16GB DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Red 3TB SATA
PSU: Silverstone Strider Essential (gold rated)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Titanium
Cooler: Supermicro SNK-P0050AP4

I was going to get Hybrid SATA drives, but a previous thread told me fast-mechanical drives aren't really designed for servers/NAS. So I've gone for WD Red drives. We definitely can't afford full SSD drives for our needs (5TB and growing) especially as we're implementing RAID1 (I'd prefer to go for RAID6 but costs won't stretch that far, at least initially).

My only worry is that the motherboard would require an extra SATA card when we expand. Nice as SAS drives are, we can't really justify their expense in the short-medium term.

I would very much appreciate an extra set of eyes of this hardware list, to make sure it's (more than) adequate. Thank you!

 

[cyberjock]

I like it. I'm not a fan of Silverstone PSUs, but that's strictly a personal preference. You didn't say how many disks you plan to buy. To be honest, if you can only get 4 I'd probably still recommend a RAIDZ2 of 4 disks over mirrors because of how the redundancy works out (any 2 disks can fail with RAIDZ2 while 2 disks in the same vdev in mirrors means game over).

 

[Lee Davies]

Apologies. Initially there would indeed be four drives.

To start, we need around 4TB of usable space which, if using RAID6/RAIDZ2 would bump the price up quite significantly; and in turn, make my Boss consider a cheaper Synology option (which most of us are trying to sway him from!)

 

[cyberjock]

With 4 disks there's no difference in available disk space between mirrors and a RAIDZ2. :p

Also if you need 4TB of disk space, you should look at more disks or bigger ones. 6TB of capacity is all you are going to get with mirrors or RAIDZ2. You also lose capacity because a TB of hard drive space isn't a TB of actual usable disk space. So you are already heading towards that 80% full mark, which is where you should be adding more disks. So I'd go to 6 disk RAIDZ2....

 

[Lee Davies]

Hmm, I see.

I had it in my head that because we were resigned to RAID1 that space would be impacted if we changed RAID. I can see I'll have to go back and re-think the RAID config. Thanks for the suggestion!

(Also I'm very glad the hardware passes scrutiny!)

 

[cyberjock]

I had it in my head that because we were resigned to RAID1 that space would be impacted if we changed RAID. I can see I'll have to go back and re-think the RAID config. Thanks for the suggestion!

Actually, your words make me think you are even more confused than you think.

You can't "change RAID". If you build it with mirrors it mirrors forever. There is no "changing" to something else later without destroying the pool and restoring from backup.

 

[Lee Davies]

Apologies, just my poor choice of words!

I meant changing before implementing the build -- I'm 100% aware RAID can't be changed once active (at least, not without great difficulty!)

 

[cyberjock]

Okie dokie! Too many people think you can change it later. Just wanted to make sure you didn't actually think that. ;)