Hardware Recommendation for Backup Server

[bent98]

Awesome. Best of luck with the assembly! During winter in particular, be hyper-aware re: static electricity potential.

So here is the final build. The only purchase i havent made is the HD. I want to verify the config before I purchase them.

 

[Constantin]

So here is the final build. The only purchase i havent made is the HD. I want to verify the config before I purchase them.

View attachment 73991

FWIW, I bought the somewhat more expensive Prime from Seasonic for the warranty as well as the better efficiency at low loads. But nothing wrong with Super Flower. Not familiar with Dynatron re: coolers. Good to see you went for CMR HDDs too!

 

[bent98]

Super flower has 10 year warranty and they make 90% of all the powersupplies out and then they get rebranded . What’s CMR hard drives ?

 

[chuck32]

What’s CMR hard drives ?

Conventional magnetic recording. See this article, SMR (shingled magnetic recording) are incompatible with ZFS.

 

[Constantin]

Conventional magnetic recording (CMR) vs. shingled magnetic recording (SMR). CMR drives are what ZFS expects - SMR drives are trouble. Basically, a SMR drive achieves a 20% greater areal density by overlapping recordings slightly. This works by writing all the usual writes to a CMR cache on the HDD and then flushing the contents to the SMR sectors once the CMR cache is full.

Within the SMR universe there are three drive types, of which only device-managed SMR (DM-SMR) drives are sold into the home user market. DMSMR drives basically pretend to be regular CMR drives, giving the host computer zero insight into what they're doing. Trouble is, the DM-SMR drives sold into the consumer space have no way of communicating that CMR cache 'flush' to the operating system, which in turn makes for all sorts of potential fireworks as ZFS or whatever wonders whether the drive has failed due to it being unresponsive.

DM-SMR drives have been around for a long time, especially among 2.5" HDDs but what really ticked people off was WD quietly switching WD Red "NAS" series from CMR to SMR without telling users. See this youtube from STH, for example. STH also published one of the most damning article on this sordid affair - including links to a 2015 youtube video with HGST subsidiary personnel openly admitting that device-managed SMR drives were unsuitable for NAS applications and ZFS in particular.

 

[Davvo]

WD itself clearly says that their SMR is not compativle with ZFS.

 

[bent98]

WD itself clearly says that their SMR is not compativle with ZFS.

Ah ok. Won’t have that issue . Thanks for clarifying!

 

[Constantin]

WD itself clearly says that their SMR is not compativle with ZFS.

That article is filled with so many half-truths that I almost fell out of my seat laughing. Claiming that the performance is on par with extant CMR drives while also stating that SMR drives are suitable for NAS does not explain why WD made the change from CMR to SMR in its entry-level Red line without disclosing the change. They only did so after being shamed by STH, ArsTechnica, among other outlets into admitting that their allegedly-higher-tier "NAS" line was now polluted with SMR drives. @Yorick has shared a list of SMR drives by SKU.

The main reason for WD to continue to maintain this charade of "Red" drives being NAS-compatible via "editorials" like the one that @Davvoo linked to is likely advice from counsel re: how to avoid a class-action lawsuit. Pretend that you didn't mean to hornswoggle your customers by shipping them a less-performant drive and claim instead it was market segmentation. Compare and contrast that with reports of WD taking back SMR drives and replacing them with CMR version when customers demanded it, a level of customer service these OEMs usually fight tooth and nail.

 

[bent98]

I just realized if I wanted to upgrade to 2nd gen processor in the future , my memory needs to be faster variant

 

[Constantin]

Good catch. You can always go faster and the memory should slow down to meet your slower CPU.

 

[bent98]

Good catch. You can always go faster and the memory should slow down to meet your slower CPU.

Thats not always the case . Sometimes you can have inconsistencies with memory to cpu ratio that could cause instability . Maybe that’s not an issue in the server world but it can cause issues on desktop pcs

 

[Constantin]

How annoying. The online coverage at crucial, Tom’s hardware, etc suggested that faster RAM would simply run at a slower clockspeed, ie like using 93 gas in a 87-octane-optimized car engine.

 

[bent98]

It not that simple , there are many factors like chipset , bios and memory timing that come into play. It took a year for amd to get my AM5 memory controller stable as it would crash intermittently . Xmp profiles do help simplify memory latency / voltage bios settings etc . If someone can reliably say the faster speed will run without any hiccups on this board with this cpu , i would get the faster ones.

 

[Constantin]

Sorry, won’t be a help there. Good luck!

 

[afrosheen]

I feel bad for everyone that missed the boat on the 18tb shucks that Best Buy only had for a day. $200 each. I got 5. The black friday/christmas deal season was trash for big hard drives, so apparently spinning rust is still popular. They did their annual 14TB discount...for the exact same price. Wow tough decision.

 

[bent98]

I feel bad for everyone that missed the boat on the 18tb shucks that Best Buy only had for a day. $200 each. I got 5. The black friday/christmas deal season was trash for big hard drives, so apparently spinning rust is still popular. They did their annual 14TB discount...for the exact same price. Wow tough decision.

Don’t start tell me that. :)

 

[Etorix]

Thats not always the case . Sometimes you can have inconsistencies with memory to cpu ratio that could cause instability . Maybe that’s not an issue in the server world but it can cause issues on desktop pcs

Hint: Servers don't deal in overclocking… which does help A LOT with stability.

Note that one reason to go for a 2nd gen. Xeon Scalable could be to use Optane DCPMM, and this would limit you to 2666 MHz anyway.

 

[afrosheen]

Another vote for Xeon here, because mine happens to handle transcoding in the chip, so Plex wheezes at about 2-3 percent extra when asked to do so. Eliminates the need for a full blown graphics card, and Plex is rarely used anyway.

For this build, I went with an Asus desktop "workstation" or server-ish board. Micro-ATX form factor, Xeon support, Fractal Node 804 case. I can't remember the Asus model but I can dig it up. Asus doesn't make a bunch of these so it's probably not hard to search for.

 

[on1ski]

That article is filled with so many half-truths that I almost fell out of my seat laughing. Claiming that the performance is on par with extant CMR drives while also stating that SMR drives are suitable for NAS does not explain why WD made the change from CMR to SMR in its entry-level Red line without disclosing the change. They only did so after being shamed by STH, ArsTechnica, among other outlets into admitting that their allegedly-higher-tier "NAS" line was now polluted with SMR drives. @Yorick has shared a list of SMR drives by SKU.

The main reason for WD to continue to maintain this charade of "Red" drives being NAS-compatible via "editorials" like the one that @Davvoo linked to is likely advice from counsel re: how to avoid a class-action lawsuit. Pretend that you didn't mean to hornswoggle your customers by shipping them a less-performant drive and claim instead it was market segmentation. Compare and contrast that with reports of WD taking back SMR drives and replacing them with CMR version when customers demanded it, a level of customer service these OEMs usually fight tooth and nail.

I built my system back in Jan 2020 (specs below), just before the big bruhaha on the WD situation. As a self-taught home hobbyist, I didn't see all the noise regarding the SMR drives until much later. Frankly, the system has been fine during it's four years. No errors or problems at all even though I have six of the SMR WD drives.

I'm not really interested in continuing to press my luck. I'll take the issue up with WD, but I suspect too much time has passed. Fine - my fault for not paying attention. I'll buy new CMR drives and replace the existing SMR drives.

I'm trying to understand the best way to to replace the drives. My Node 804 is using six of it's 10 bays with the existing WD Red drives. My question is (as the self-taught home hobbyist), do I simply connect a new CMR drive and 'replace' each drive one at a time until all six SMR drives have been replaced? Is there a better/smarter way?

I'm running TrueNAS SCALE 22.12.3.2. Topology is a single Data VDEV RAIDZ2 6 wide.

Any other thoughts are appreciated, including opinions on which 6TB CMR drives to move too.

Thanks!

1 Intel Xeon E3-1230 V6 Kaby Lake 3.5 GHz
2 Samsung 16GB/1Gx8 DDR4-2400 ECC CL17 Samsung Chip Server Memory Model M391A2K43BB1-CRC
2 PNY CS900 120GB
1 Supermicro X11SSM-F
6 WD Red 6TB x 6 - WD60EFAX
1 SeaSonic PRIME Ultra Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
1 Fractal Design Node 804
1 Noctua NF-F12 (industrialPPC-3000 PWM)

 

[Etorix]

I'm trying to understand the best way to to replace the drives. My Node 804 is using six of it's 10 bays with the existing WD Red drives. My question is (as the self-taught home hobbyist), do I simply connect a new CMR drive and 'replace' each drive one at a time until all six SMR drives have been replaced?

Yes. Attach new drives and replace with the old drives in place whenever possible. You can require several replacements in one go (which may help with filling the drive cage), tough ZFS may treat them one after the other.

Any other thoughts are appreciated, including opinions on which 6TB CMR drives to move too.

Shop around for WD Red Plus/Pro/WG Gold/HGST Ultrastar, Seagate Ironwolf/Exos, Toshiba N300 (Pro)/MG and buy the best price per TB. If it happens that you can actually larger drives, all the better…