SOLVED Hardware Selection for Home NAS

[Vortigern]

Dear Etorix and poldi,
thanks again for your kind and fast replies. I think I'm in position to draw my conclusions.

CLOSED > Motherboard: Supermicro X12STL-IF is probably the best choice here: although not having the ability for hardware transcoding on iGPU it still has 6 SATA ports + 1NVMe. Moreover it also has the full ATX PSU connector (that's a huge benefit: ability of multi-rail PSU to protect each circuit individually while combining all cable will make it act like a single rail, less DC-DC converter needed on board, etc.). ITX form factor is anyway given by the boundary conditions, namely space, so I will not change my mind on that! I might get the Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F (thanks again @Etorix for the tips on the Noctua fan!) at € 750 but has no NVMe slot unless using oculink as PCIe: as an option I might use a regular SATA drive as boot but still I need the OCuLink cable which is expensive like hell (~€ 55 for the OCuLink to 4 SATA cable). Moreover it has the small non standard ATX power connector and the base price of the Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TLN2F is roughly 80 euros more (+20 for the Noctua NF-A6x25) than the Supermicro X12STL-IF + Intel Xeon E-2334 which is twice as powerful (based on PassMark scores).

CLOSED > CPU: Intel Xeon E-2334 should last for a very very long time: @poldi you're right, in the worst case I might just get a Chromecast and probably I will not need to transcode. And even in the event of transcoding a 4k SDR video the CPU should still suffice.

CLOSED > Case: No better solution has been identified, so I will stick to the Node 304.

CLOSED > NIC: I will be using the 2x1 Gb/s ports on the motherboard with the option to install a 10 Gb/s card at a later stage.

CLOSED > Pool: I will be starting with 4x4 TB WD Red Plus. Thanks for the suggestions to start with 6 drives since the beginning but I'd like to keep the price, power consumption and noise down at the moment and see how the RAID-Z Expansion Feature will come along. In the worst case I might still destroy/rebuild the pool.

CLOSED > RAM quantity/type: I will start with 1x32 GB ECC UDIMM to keep the option to expand to 64 GB at a later stage, given also the fact that 1x32 GB is actually cheaper than 2x16 GB and the RAM speed is not relevant.

In the end there hardly is an overall best solution: it's mostly just a tradeoff between different characteristics. I would like to thank you all for your time and support! I will start some other threads for the software support!

Cheers,
Vortigern

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

I live in Switzerland so also availability of parts plays a role and price might be different with respect to EU or USA.

Scout for cheap (used) hardware on ricardo.ch & tutti.ch
I got my stuff veeery cheap...

ITX: consider the Jonsbo N1 - can't be more compact, but SFX PSU
mATX: Inter-Tech IM-1 Pocket can hold up to 5x HDD and ATX PSU

I'm testing vDev configurations now and 1GBE is basically in any scenario a bottleneck - even a single HDD is faster than the max 125MB/S... Either you choose a mainboard with onboard 10GBE NIC or you plan for a 10GBE PCIe, which means you need a free PCIe slot (min x4).

 

[Etorix]

Good to know you've come to a decision. By definition, if it's your informed choice, it's the good choice.

Without willing to throw a spanner at it, if if you're going the most expensive route to X12 AND you're confident that four drives is enough, you may have a side look at HP MicroServer Gen 10, the smallest possible system which could still hold four 3.5" HDDs.

 

[poldi]

Good to know you've come to a decision. By definition, if it's your informed choice, it's the good choice.

Without willing to throw a spanner at it, if if you're going the most expensive route to X12 AND you're confident that four drives is enough, you may have a side look at HP MicroServer Gen 10, the smallest possible system which could still hold four 3.5" HDDs.

Yes indeed very good point. The latest Microserver from HPE is definitely worth a look. It will not tick all your boxes but the proprietary hardware makes it extremely compact for a 4-bay NAS (how could I forget when I have a Gen 8 rocking in the basement that serves as my replication target).
Btw. for giggles Wendell also got TrueNAS to boot on a QNAP H686 you can watch it here. It is a difficult value prop though.
However it makes me kind of sad that ITX is the smallest you can build and smaller form factors are only available to OEMs (with their stupid consumer NAS OSes).

 

[poldi]

CLOSED > Pool: I will be starting with 4x4 TB WD Red Plus. Thanks for the suggestions to start with 6 drives since the beginning but I'd like to keep the price, power consumption and noise down at the moment and see how the RAID-Z Expansion Feature will come along. In the worst case I might still destroy/rebuild the pool.

Here maybe one more point to consider.

Let’s assume you are going with RaidZ2:
- 4x4TB, gives you 8TB usable space with a 50% redundancy tax
- 6x2TB, also gives you 8TB usable space, but the redundancy tax just went down to 33%

Arguably 4TB is currently the sweet spot in price with around €100 per disk whereas the 2TB goes for €76 per disk. Hence my 6x2TB option will land you at €456 which is obviously slightly higher than €400 (4x4TB).
However with 6 spindels you can expect a better performing array. Jim Salter wrote a nice article on this in Arstechnica. The performance more than doubles going from n=2 (4-2) to n=4 (6-2) in a RaidZ2 vdev. For €56 more you get double the performance that is not too shabby.

Well then, that is albeit, all theoretical as you cannot get the data in and out fast enough with you 1GB/s interfaces (zing that hurts).
In summary if you are expanding in the future, 6 disk wide is probably where you want to go.

 

[Vortigern]

Dear All,
thanks a lot for the additional info. Here below my comments:
@DigitalMinimalist: Inter-Tech IM-1 Pocket is very interesting also because it's opening up uATX motherboard. Unfortunately it's only 5 HDD so I still prefer the Fractal Design Node 304 especially for the air flow design and the HDD positions. Do you know any other case brand that might have a 6 bay case fitting the size with uATX?
@Etorix: funny enough the HPE Microserver Proliant Gen10 was my starting point! I've then quickly realised that it was not something I wasn't going to buy for the following reasons:

• it's very expensive:
  • HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus with 16 GB RAM and Intel Xeon E-2224, PassMark 7k = € 1080
  • "Build 2" with 32 GB of RAM and Intel Xeon E-2334, PassMark 13k, is € 680
• it has only 4 HDD bays
• it's not really silent and there's nearly anything you can change
• it hasn't got a NVMe port

@poldi: the "redundancy tax" still hurts but it's still OK, while from a performance point of view I came to the same conclusions by reading ZFS Raidz Performance, Capacity and Integrity were there's a nice comparison between different raid type (RAIDz1, RAIDz2, RAIDz3, stripe and mirror) with different drive count but in any case:

• No compression
  • 3x 4TB, raidz1 (raid5), 7.5 TB, w=225MB/s , rw=56MB/s , r=619MB/s
  • 4x 4TB, raidz2 (raid6), 7.5 TB, w=204MB/s , rw=54MB/s , r=183MB/s
  • 6x 4TB, raidz2 (raid6), 15.0 TB, w=429MB/s , rw=71MB/s , r=488MB/s
• Compression comparison
  • off 3x 2TB raid5, raidz1 3.6 terabytes ( w=279MB/s , rw=131MB/s , r= 281MB/s )
  • lzjb 3x 2TB raid5, raidz1 3.6 terabytes ( w=479MB/s , rw=366MB/s , r=1243MB/s )
  • lz4 3x 2TB raid5, raidz1 3.6 terabytes ( w=517MB/s , rw=453MB/s , r=1587MB/s )

So my expectation is that as long as I have 1 Gb/s ethernet I can still saturate the link with just a plain 4x 4TB, raidz2 without compression and when compression is enabled the speed should nearly double in writing and should be nearly five times higher in reading: pretty close to the theoretical 10 Gb/s link with just 4 disks. Interesting enough in the article I linked the speed doesn't go up at all with the pool size when compression is enabled: so an array of 4 disks should perform nearly the same as a 6 disks one.

Thank you very much again for your support!

Cheers,
Alessio

 

[Vortigern]

Dear All,
unfortunately, by the time I've decided to buy the Supermicro X12STL-IF it went out of stock and it's been like this for a week already: digitec.ch is reporting that there are no current offer and there's no date for new boards to come, no luck also on Google shopping or Amazon. I've then had a look at other solutions and stumbled over this: Asus P12R-I. It's pretty similar to the Supermicro X12STL-IF: same form factor, same chipset, 24 pin ATX connector, M.2 2280, 6XSATA3 with the only downside being the mini-SAS connector. At least it's € 320 so €20 cheaper than the Supermicro X12STL-IF (old price before it went out of stock). Would you recommend this board? I've not seen any comment on Asus server motherboard and I would like to know:

• are they reliable?
• compatible?

Any feedback, direct experience report, etc. on Asus server motherboard is really appreciated.

I've also checked the ASRock Rack E3C256D2I which has the Intel C256 but it's € 40 more expensive than the Asus P12R-I and, more important, not available in Switzerland: I will have to pay for additional import services. While the ASRock Rack E3C256D4I-2T would be great, apart from the 2xOCuLink and the small power connector but it's impossible to find.

Thanks in advance,
Vortigern

 

[Etorix]

I do not see any obvious "show stopper" with the Asus board.

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

https://www.ricardo.ch/de/a/2x-intel-xeon-e5-2620v3-und-supermicro-x10dri-1216284930/

Not really energy efficient but cheap

 

[Vortigern]

Dear @Etorix and @DigitalMinimalist,
thanks for your replies. I will give the Asus a try, unless someone else is reporting any related issue.
@DigitalMinimalist: that offer is actually super good! The issue is that I can only use mini-ITX motherboards and they're not easy to find on riccardo.ch. Thanks anyway for the link.

Regards,
Vortigern