Design question on re heavily sequential server

[Julianh]

I've been looking around, but can't seem to find any hardware guides on this.

I use a fog imaging server, an excellent product, https://fogproject.org/
I need to build a Freenas NFS server for it. The Freenas server is being built solely for this purpose. It won't be conected to anything else, in fact I'm thinking of using a direct 1GB link between them.

I'm looking at an Intel CPU,G3220, 3.0Ghz LGA 1150I've not decided on a Motherboard, but It'll probably be supermicro e X10SLL+-F. Probably 4 x 4tb WD red SATA disks. Booting from a USB drive.

The data will come from 12 servers at a time, sending their images to the NAS server. Once uploaded, the servers will pull the data down, again 12 at a time.

I think the data isn't quite sequetal, as there will be 12 servers sending their data at a time, but it's not as random as an office/ multiple users environment. It will always be the same servers pulling the same "sets" (or images) of data.

I'm looking at 12-20TB of data, the limit or bottleneck will probably be the 1GB link to the fog server.

How much RAM, and what other advice would you recommend?

Thanks in advance

Julian

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Probably 4 x 4tb WD red SATA disks.

I'm looking at 12-20TB of data

You'll need bigger drives, or more drives.

 

[Julianh]

Your quite right, I should have been clearer, I'm initially looking at 12tb, raid 5 with 4 drives

 

[hugovsky]

I think you need to put in more details. And take a look at ZFS for noobs in my sigh. ZFS doesn't have a raid 5 or raid 6 mode. You need to get your terminology right. You can't do 12 TB with 4 drives of 4TB.

 

[jgreco]

If you want to store 12TB of data that's being frequently rewritten, you probably want about 20-24TB of pool space, so six 6TB drives in RAIDZ2 is probably an optimal starting point. Note that ZFS slows down the fuller the pool gets, so speed is tied very directly to the amount of free space. If you get a 12 bay chassis, this gives you a perfect trajectory to add a second vdev of six 6TB drives. You should start out at no less than 16GB of RAM, but 32GB is a good goal.