BUILD First build from mostly hardware i already own.

[Antivanity]

Motherboard, CPUs and RAM i acquired for free from a business going under. PSU, UPS and case I already owned.

The Build

• Motherboard: Tyan S7016
• CPU 1: Xeon X5670 Hex Core 3GHz
• CPU 2: Xeon X5670 Hex Core 3GHz
• RAM: 18 x Hynix 4GB 1066MHz ECC Reg
• HDD: 6 x WD 3TB Red ($99 a drive on amazon)
• SSD: 1 x Kingston 128GB ($49 on newegg)
• Drive Controller: IBM M1015 in IT Mode ($98 on ebay)
• Thumb Drive: 16GB Corsair Voyage ($10 on amazon)
• PSU: Corsair HX750
• UPS: APC Back-UPS 750
• Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro (no window)

Spent so far: $751

The Install

• Install FreeNAS to the Thumb Drive
• Run in RAIDZ2

The Goal With This Build

• Stream up to 4 video at a time with plex.
• Run several jails, DNS Server, Mail Server, Web Server

Am i missing anything, thoughts or concerns ?

 

[danb35]

Can't beat the price on the motherboard, CPUs, and RAM. They're older generation, of course, so you aren't going to see the performance/watt of current stuff. I don't think there's much tribal knowledge about Tyan boards here, but the feature set looks good. What do you intend to do with the SSD? I'm also not sure I see the need for the M1015, though room for expansion is always a good thing.

 

[Antivanity]

Can't beat the price on the motherboard, CPUs, and RAM. They're older generation, of course, so you aren't going to see the performance/watt of current stuff. I don't think there's much tribal knowledge about Tyan boards here, but the feature set looks good. What do you intend to do with the SSD? I'm also not sure I see the need for the M1015, though room for expansion is always a good thing.

Figured because a lot of us streaming the same things to different devices, a cache drive would help ?
The motherboard does have 3 SAS ports, however the controller for it is a LSI SAS1068E, which has the 2tb limit.

 

[danb35]

he controller for it is a LSI SAS1068E, which has the 2tb limit.

Got it. Yes, that would make the M1015 pretty much necessary.

As to the L2ARC device, it's unlikely to hurt, and you have enough RAM that you might actually make use of it. I'm not sure how helpful it would be, but if you've already bought it, go ahead and use it.

 

[Antivanity]

Got it. Yes, that would make the M1015 pretty much necessary.

As to the L2ARC device, it's unlikely to hurt, and you have enough RAM that you might actually make use of it. I'm not sure how helpful it would be, but if you've already bought it, go ahead and use it.

Yeah didnt think about that. RAM us pretty damn high on this machine. Will FREENAS auto use the ram as a cache or can i setup L2ARC to use a part of it ? Guess i could RTFM.. lol

 

[danb35]

Yeah, you could RTFM, which would be a good idea, since ZFS does a lot of things that are different from most other filesystems. In short, ZFS automatically has a read cache (the ARC), which will use whatever RAM it has available. If you need more read cache, you can add an L2ARC device. The point that a lot of users don't get is that adding the L2ARC reduces the RAM available for ARC, because the L2ARC has to be indexed in RAM. The number I've seen around here is that you shouldn't really consider an L2ARC unless you have at least 64 GB of RAM--which you do.

 

[Antivanity]

Yeah, you could RTFM, which would be a good idea, since ZFS does a lot of things that are different from most other filesystems. In short, ZFS automatically has a read cache (the ARC), which will use whatever RAM it has available. If you need more read cache, you can add an L2ARC device. The point that a lot of users don't get is that adding the L2ARC reduces the RAM available for ARC, because the L2ARC has to be indexed in RAM. The number I've seen around here is that you shouldn't really consider an L2ARC unless you have at least 64 GB of RAM--which you do.

10-4 thank you for taking the time to spell that out for me. I have gone over that slide show thing stickied on the hardware forum and do have a basic understanding of ZFS. Not sure what ill use the ssd for now. I've been reading different views on how to install. Some say thumb drive some say mirrored SSD. What's your take on it ?

 

[danb35]

Mirrored SSDs for the boot pool is overkill. I'm using mirrored SATA DOMs, which is also overkill. DOMs are neat and save space, but they can be expensive--I bought 2 x 16 GB units off eBay for about $30 each a year ago, which I thought was an acceptable price, but I'm sure it's more than I'd have paid for a normal SSD. My 12-bay server is full of 3.5" drives, with no real place to put an SSD (though I could always just velcro it to the inside of the chassis somewhere).

Mirroring is good for USB sticks because they're crap, and they're cheap enough that a second one in a mirror doesn't really cost anything. SSDs and SATA DOMs are much more reliable, to the point where mirroring them really isn't necessary. Besides, if you have an up-to-date copy of your config file (which you should), doing a fresh installing and uploading it won't take more than about 10 minutes, so even if your boot pool dies, you're not in much trouble.

 

[Antivanity]

Perfect, thank you! You have been very kind, even though i'm sure you have answered these types a questions a million times.