First Timer - Comments and Feedback please....

[m1k3y1985]

Hello All,

Just a quick introduction to say Hi and get some feedback and advise. I have been around NAS and external storage a little in my job role and have tinkered in that side a little but usually bought NAS specific devices and now its my turn to spice things up a little.

My FreeNAS is being built to store a lot of data at home, Videos, Applications, Data Backups, Images etc. I do not need to use it other than to sit there and receive or feed data a quickly as possible.

My plan is to use the following for a FreeNAS (This is what I have to hand but I do have access to other parts and can buy).

1x HP Microserver G7 N54L 2.2Ghz AMD x64 CPU (Modified to take 6 HDD's and 1 SSD, Don't ask).
16 GB Kingston PC3-10600E unbuffered ECC RAM.
1x LSI 9240-8i 8-port SAS / SATA Controller.

Question 1: OS USB or SSD? I have a 16GB USB Drive I can put the OS on and I also have a good brand 256GB SSD I can put this on - Which should I do and what sort of difference will it make.

Question 2: Hard Drives - I have 4x SAS 4TB HDD's and 2x 4TB SATA HDD's

SAS 4TB are: Seagate Constellation ES.3
SATA 4TB are: Hitachi HDS724040ALE640

I want to get as much space as possible but with data redundancy. Recommendations please? Traditionally I would do either RAID 10 or 0 or 1 with older NAS devices depending on purpose and amount of disks. Thoughts on RAID 6 in this situation?

Question 3: (Also based partly on 2). How much would I suffer trying to use the SAS and SATA devices on a combined RAID? Or should I Create 2 different volumes?

Questi

 

[Yorick]

Question 1: OS USB or SSD? I have a 16GB USB Drive I can put the OS on and I also have a good brand 256GB SSD I can put this on - Which should I do and what sort of difference will it make.

I want to get as much space as possible but with data redundancy. Recommendations please? Traditionally I would do either RAID 10 or 0 or 1 with older NAS devices depending on purpose and amount of disks. Thoughts on RAID 6 in this situation?

For the boot device its longevity. USB 2 sticks can work, they won't last as long as an SSD, by their nature. Keep a configuration backup and if you are doing USB, consider a mirrored boot device.

Data redundancy: raidz2, with two parity drives. You'll have the IOPS of a single drive. Since all you're doing is backup that will be just fine, and using all your drives for a 6-drive raidz2 sounds the right way to go to me.

 

[m1k3y1985]

Would USB over SSD make any difference in overall performance of the Storage? Or as this is just running the OS does it make very little difference?

 

[Yorick]

It's just the OS and makes no performance difference to storage, jails, etc.

 

[Pitfrr]

Hello,

I don't have experience with the N54L so I can't say anything about it.

1) for a home usage, I'd go for a USB drive. It would be a waste to use a 256GB SSD for that (and only 8GB will be used).
You could also have mirrored USB drives for more reliability but as long as you back-up your configuration, it's just a matter of setting it back up and restoring the configuration.

2) with 6 drives I'd go for a RAIDz2 volume.

3) for a home usage I don't think you will notice any difference in performance between using SATA and SAS drives

 

[Yorick]

One more thing: You'll want that LSI in IT Mode. Check the forums, lots of instructions on how to make that happen

 

[HoneyBadger]

(Modified to take 6 HDD's and 1 SSD, Don't ask).

Well, now you know I'm going to.

You've got six 7200rpm drives in a tiny little chassis - have you accounted for some airflow/cooling?

Flashing IT firmware onto the LSI HBA is also mandatory here; do not use anything resembling a "RAID" or "RAID mode"

 

[m1k3y1985]

OK. I shall find a quick guide on that somewhere or a Google later. Unless you happen to have a LINK?

 

[Yorick]

https://www.ixsystems.com/community...shing-lsi-9211-9300-9311-hba-and-variants.54/