BUILD Fine tunning my build [PSU], [HDDs] and [RAID] setup

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Johev

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Dear all,

I've already built my first FreeNAS with a Dell T20 and now I'm building 2 new machines :).

Components already purchased:
2x X10SL7F
2x E3-1265L (found it cheaper than any other E3 Xeon)
16GB of Corsair ECC RAM 1.35v for each (not maxing the RAM yet) - 2 modules of 8GB

Components on the list:
2x Define R5

1) My main issue is the power supply.

Everywhere I look people recommend Seasonic G-series (so I thought I would buy 2 Seasonic G550). However I see that they only have 6 SATA cables and one of my builds is going to use 7 HDDs and 1 SSD for VM's/Jails.

2) Choice of HDD's for a home build:

Option 1 are of course the almost all preferred around here WD RED, however I would like to ask your opinion on the €/$/value.

WD RED 3TB - 117 EUR (about 127USD)
Seagate NAS 3TB - 107 EUR (about 116 USD)
Seagate Surveillance 3TB - 100 EUR (about 109USD)

Because I'm buying 5 to 7 of them the price difference noticeable.

The system is going to be used to store data for a home user and not store feeds of surveillance cameras, however I have 3x 4TB Seagate surveillance drives in my home NAS and they are working very well. There is no backup strategy yet in place as the current situation is to have information on several HDD's, USBs and microsd's in one outdated tower.

3) RAID setup:

I know that most people recommend RAIDZ2, however I was wondering what would the risk be of using RAIDZ1 with 5x 3TB drives NAS drives. I've read somewhere that RAIDZ1 is OK for up to 12TB of usable data, am I wrong?

Many thanks in advance for all your input.
 

danb35

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I know that most people recommend RAIDZ2, however I was wondering what would the risk be of using RAIDZ1 with 5x 3TB drives NAS drives.
The risk is that you'll have a drive failure, and while resilvering the replacement drive, encounter an unrecoverable read error on one of the remaining drives. Since you won't have any redundancy left at that point, consequences could be anything from a damaged file to complete loss of the pool, depending on where the read error is. The statistics apparently say this is pretty likely, but I'm not sure how well practice bears that out.
 

Johev

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The risk is that you'll have a drive failure, and while resilvering the replacement drive, encounter an unrecoverable read error on one of the remaining drives. Since you won't have any redundancy left at that point, consequences could be anything from a damaged file to complete loss of the pool, depending on where the read error is. The statistics apparently say this is pretty likely, but I'm not sure how well practice bears that out.

Thanks for your input. I just have one question, when 1 drive of a RAIDZ1 fails, is the data still accessible? Would I then be able to copy it to somewhere else before changing the drive and starting the resilvering of the pool?
 

adrianwi

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danb35

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I just have one question, when 1 drive of a RAIDZ1 fails, is the data still accessible?
Of course it is, but the risk is the same whether you're copying data from the degraded pool or resilvering a replacement drive--in either case you're trying to read all the data, and parity to reconstruct the missing data, from the good drives. If there's a read error, there's no redundancy to fix it, and the results could be anywhere from mild to catastrophic.
 

Johev

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Thank you all for the replies about the RAIDZ setup, however I would also like to know what the opinions are about the first 2 questions: PSU with more SATA and HDDs.
 

Bidule0hm

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There's a very good sticky on PSU sizing, see the link in my signature ;)

If you need more SATA connectors you can use a molex to SATA adapter. Do not use a SATA to 2 SATA splitter, unless you want fire in your server...
 

Johev

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@Bidule0hm thank you for your input, however I'm not asking about the size of the PSU, I'm just asking how do people do with a Seasonic G series when they have a motherboard that takes up to 14 drives (without any expansion). As I'm buying all things from scratch I wanted to know if there were no good alternatives.

I know about the molex to SATA adapters, but I was hoping that a good recommended PSU would already have lets say 10 SATA power cables out of the box. Thank anyway.
 

Bidule0hm

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The higher wattage PSUs do have more SATA connectors. The usual system isn't a NAS but more a desktop PC so the manufacturer doesn't put dozens of SATA connectors with every PSU.

If the PSU is modular then usually you can buy cables with SATA connectors to replace the ones with molex connectors :)

If you know what you're doing you can add SATA connectors directly on the cable yourself.

But 14 drives on a 550 W PSU isn't a good idea anyway...
 
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Johev

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Thank you for the input on the PSU. Could anyone give their opinion on the HDD choices?

WD RED 3TB - 117 EUR (about 127USD)
Seagate NAS 3TB - 107 EUR (about 116 USD)
Seagate Surveillance 3TB - 100 EUR (about 109USD)

I saw that the 3TB might not be the best choice, however the 4TB would make the builds too expensive. Therefore I'll need to work with that.

Many thanks in advance.
 

Ericloewe

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WD Red or Seagate NAS. Definitely not the surveillance drives.
 
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