KevinM
Contributor
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2013
- Messages
- 106
I'm looking to build a couple of 36-bay supermicro FreeNAS boxes. I'm interested in stability first, obviously, followed by performance, followed by capacity. Price cap will be about 50k for both the production and backup boxes.
Questions:
From my research it seems like SAS3 is still problematic on FreeBSD 9. Is this still the case? If I use SAS2 HBAs and expanders, would it be ok to use SAS3 drives? At this point they're more plentiful in larger sizes.
Has anyone built a larger system using direct-attach SAS? I am assuming this will help performance but I have no experience with it. I am going to call Supermicro when they open to see what they have available.
I did not use compression on the first two boxes, but from what I've learned it generally does not impact performance. If so, I'd like to enable it from the beginning this time.
What would be the best balance between price and performance with 36 drives? For example, how sane would it be to create a pool with 18 ZFS 2-way mirrors? Would this be faster than 6 6-drive RAIDZ2 vdevs? If not these, what layout would be best if we're favoring performance over capacity?
I am seeing more memory use on the backup box, but I still plan on 256 GB memory for both boxes. Supported memory is not very expensive right now. That said, would the two 400GB L2ARC SSDs still be worthwhile?
200 GB is pretty ridiculous for a ZIL but that's the smallest Intel s3710 available. These drives are going to be inside the case so I want something that has a good track record for reliability.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
- Supermicro SSG-6047R-E1R36L Barebone 4U SuperStorage for E5-2600v2 $2198.87 $2198.87
- 2 x Intel 2.6GHz E5-2630 v2 CPU $613.55 $1227.10
- 16 x Samsung M393B2G70QH0-CMA $110.51 $1768.16
- 2 x Chelsio T520-CR dual port 10 GbE $564.95 $1129.90
- 4 x SIIG 3M Twinax cable $64.24 $256.96
- 2 x Intel S3710 200GB (ZIL mirror) $261.29 $522.58
- 2 x Intel S3710 400GB (L2ARC) $514.18 $1028.36
- 2 x Supermicro internal drive bay $19.45 $38.90
- 4 x Samdisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive $8.19 $32.76
- 36 x HGST Hard Drive 6TB SAS-600 7200 RPM 3.5" $398.16 $14333.76
- Total: $22537.35
- 36 x HGST Hard Drive 8TB SAS 12Gb/s 7200RPM 3.5in $430.56 $15500.16
- Total: $23703.75
Questions:
From my research it seems like SAS3 is still problematic on FreeBSD 9. Is this still the case? If I use SAS2 HBAs and expanders, would it be ok to use SAS3 drives? At this point they're more plentiful in larger sizes.
Has anyone built a larger system using direct-attach SAS? I am assuming this will help performance but I have no experience with it. I am going to call Supermicro when they open to see what they have available.
I did not use compression on the first two boxes, but from what I've learned it generally does not impact performance. If so, I'd like to enable it from the beginning this time.
What would be the best balance between price and performance with 36 drives? For example, how sane would it be to create a pool with 18 ZFS 2-way mirrors? Would this be faster than 6 6-drive RAIDZ2 vdevs? If not these, what layout would be best if we're favoring performance over capacity?
I am seeing more memory use on the backup box, but I still plan on 256 GB memory for both boxes. Supported memory is not very expensive right now. That said, would the two 400GB L2ARC SSDs still be worthwhile?
200 GB is pretty ridiculous for a ZIL but that's the smallest Intel s3710 available. These drives are going to be inside the case so I want something that has a good track record for reliability.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Any suggestions would be most welcome.