Greetings

[Jokumuu]

Hello.

I've been reading around the forum somewhat in the past few weeks as I'm planning to build my own storage server.

The build I had in mind is as follows:
ASRock C2550D4I

Not as many cores as the 2750, but since I don't have that many users or processes running at the same time I'm hopping 4 cores will be enough​

Fractal Design Node 304

I think this is the recommended mini-ITX case​

2 x Kingston 8GB KVR16LE11/8

I know Kingston has had problems but finding other makes of memory that are at least mentioned as supported has been pretty hard​

Seasonic 360W G-360

Ah Seasonic, my desktop has been running on a 550 W power by them for nearly 10 years now with out fail. Great powers and silent.​

Hard Drives:
2x Western Digital 4TB WD40EFRX and 2x Western Digital 3TB WD30EFRX
or
4x Western Digital 3TB WD30EFRX

The thing here is that I already have 2 3TB WD reds and I was planning to run them mirrored, however I don't know if I should go for an addition two 3TB reds or two 4TB reds. The extra space would be nice and the price isn't really the issue. But considering the RAID setup, I was wondering if there was a benefit to 4 identical drives stripped+mirrored in a single vdev or two mirrored vdevs in one same zpool?​

 

[Ericloewe]

The chassis is just a suggestion. Feel free to choose whatever you like, as long as it's from a reputable brand.

Regarding RAM, have you tried www.crucial.com ? It's worked very well for me twice now (for my server and for my desktop) and prices are reasonable to better than average.

Can't go wrong with Seasonic. :D

As for the pool layout, a few comments:

• RAIDZ2 is quite a bit safer than striped mirrors, for the same storage (with four drives only, obviously). If you do RAIDZ2, you can later replace the 3TB drives with 4TB drives and the pool will expand to the "missing" 4 * 1TB
  
• If you do striped mirrors, just match the drives within each vdev and everything will work fine. ZFS will automagically balance things out.
• You can't do stripes inside vdevs. It's the vdevs themselves that are striped. In a broader sense, RAIDZ vdevs are similar to this scenario.

 

[Jokumuu]

Thank you for the Crucial tip, I just ordered their CT5008102 2x8gb kit. Even including VAT and shipping it was the same price as the Kingstons I was looking at.