Hardware selection SuperMicro and Haswell CPU

[Imslow]

After having successful experience with freenas 9.2 64 bit using consumer-grade hardware and realizing that data security were my first, second and third priorities; I am now ready to invest into a more decent system.

The sever will be used for basic home applications: torrent, DLNA, sharing files between all portable appliances and central backup… freenas 9.2.x will be configured in ZFS pool, compression and encryption enabled. Will use 2x3Tb HDD from WD Green in RAID1.

I have some open questions regarding hardware selection though as follows:

Motherboard: X10SLH-F vs. X10SLM-F.
It is basically very difficult for me to make a choice. Both board are very similar and retail price is same here in Korea.
Is there a better choice out there?

CPU: Pentium G3220 vs. i3 4130.
I already own the G3220 and is working very nice even with encryption and compression enabled. What performance bump can I expect from the i3?

Memory: 16 or 24 Gb ECC?
Can I save this 100 bucks or not? Will 24 Gb make such a tremendous difference over 16Gb?

Does this build makes sense? Overkill or underkill?
Thank you for your comment.
Best regards

 

[bigphil]

mobo: X10SLH-F has a newer chipset...I'd go with that one for the same price.
cpu: for your setup, I'd just stick with the G3220 for now since you already own it and I don't think for your use case you'll see much benefit from the i3 at this point. If you want to start putting a heavier load on the system, the i3 would be better but I don't see any reason for the cost at this point. the g3220 supports ECC memory so you'll be good. The i3 would be excellent for encryption because it supports AES-NI, where the G3220 does not.
memory: again, for what you described the system will be used for, 16gb would be fine...especially for only having two disks. It would be advisable to stay away from dedupe and l2arc with that low of memory (even 24 wouldn't be advisable for those features).

 

[indy]

If data security is your first priority you might want to consider raidz2.

 

[Yatti420]

If data security is your first priority you might want to consider raidz2.

Yep!.. Mirror (even 3-way) just doesn't cut it imo..

 

[Imslow]

Thank you all for giving recommendations.

I will wait a little and look for extra feedback and experiences on the forum about X10SLH-F. If there is no major problem until then, it is very likely I will go with this one.

Regarding the RAIDZ2; your recommendation is well received but I think it is overkill for a home server. From what I read here and there, there is a small safety improvement over RAID1.
Anyway I believe in external backup too and I will make sure to implement it; pressure for RAIDZ2 is then less.
Maybe later I will migrate the pool to RAIDZ2 to gain in flexibility and expend the storage space but this setup should be good enough to learn first steps and build some experience with freenas.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

Just to clarify the chances of failure so you have everything to make a decision:

Rebuilding a full 3TB mirror gives you a 1 in 4 chance of encountering a URE on consumer drives. That's a pretty big risk if you're storing anything of value like family photos. The risk is higher on a 3 drive RaidZ as you're reading from 2 3TB drives to repair the third drive giving you almost 1 in 2 chance. These are based on near full drives.

A consumer drive has a URE of 1E14 which means 1 URE per 12TB read. For anything of value, RaidZ2 is highly recommended unless you up it to enterprise drives... but those make RaidZ2 for consumer drives affordable by comparison.

 

[indy]

Regarding the RAIDZ2; your recommendation is well received but I think it is overkill for a home server. From what I read here and there, there is a small safety improvement over RAID1.

What you read is wrong, double parity offers a huge safety improvement over single parity.
But of course there are use cases where raidz1 will suffice.

 

[Imslow]

Dear All,

I have to admit I was vastly ignorant about the URE issue.
The number crunching makes sense and I have mixed emotions – good to know to anticipate issues but still nerve-racking-.
Coming back to my initial questions:

(i) Assuming that I opt for a (2+2)x3Tb RAIDZ2 configuration, do I need more memory than 16Gb ECC and more CPU power than G3220?

(ii) Eventually I found a retailer that sells X10SLM-F for 45 USD less than X10SLH-F.
Main difference is that X10SLM-F comes with C224 chipset and X10SLH-F with C226.
Does this justify the 45 USD extra for a home server?

As usual, many thanks for your comments.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

As I don't know much about the SM boards I can only answer the first question.

16GB of ram and that CPU will work just fine for raidz2. If you do encryption or plex transcoding you will want to bump up the CPU.