Help on M-ITX setup

[Emiliano.87]

Well, I'm new at this, willing to learn. And I want to learn by trying. I'm building a NAS for my home. Just bought a Lian LI PC-Q08 MINI ITX case. And I'm having trouble deciding wich mobo+processor I should buy. I'll be updating the thread as soon as I'll buying the components, maybe this thread will help someone like me.

The Case:

Lian LI PC-Q08 MINI ITX case

It has room for six 3.5" drives.

The Motherboard:

The thing is I can't decide wich motherboard to buy. I'm between these two:

ASUS P8H77-I

GIGABYTE GA-H77N-WIFI

The thing is, the asus one has 6 sata connectors wich is ideal for the build I want to make. But the gigabyte is much cheaper and it has dual ethernet connectors, WIFI, etc. Are the dual connectors worth it? I'm kind of a noob in the subject. If I connect the two ethernet into a router and set it up right do i get more bandwith for the NAS?? If I go with the gigabyte, I will have to buy a pcie sata card, is it slower than normal connector??

Thanks for the space, and thank you for your time. Looking forward to become a good member of the community

 

[Stephens]

Only you know whether you need the on-board WIFI and cheaper price of the Gigabyte. Dual connections usually aren't a deal breaker. If you're stuck on trying to use dual for more bandwidth, you need to do some reading on this forum. It's been covered quite extensively that you can't just throw together dual connections and get twice the bandwidth. Google "FreeNAS LACP". I'm also not sure I'd start buying pieces before I know how all the pieces fit together.

 

[Emiliano.87]

Thanks for the quick anser. I'll start reading about LACP. I don't think WIFI would be a deal breaker, but the 6 sata ports are a must. If I go with asus i would buy in the future an Intel® PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter (when I get more knowledge about LACP). If I go with gigabyte one, wich is 25% cheaper I will need to buy a pci-e SATA card. I don't know why, but the asus one feels like it will be a better choice, gotta think about it. I'll throw a Intel Core i3-2120 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core and as much RAM as needed. What do you think? The pci-e sata does lower the speed? I mean, if you have pci-e sata ports, and motherboard ports, do they work as same speed or motherboard ones are much faster??

 

[Emiliano.87]

I'll research the LACP thing. In the meantime I'm going toward the asus motherboard, it seems to me that 6 SATA on the board beats the WIFI and dual network of the gigabyte. What would you do in my situation? If i go with asus i can buy an intel dual ethernet pcie card and use it. And if I go with gigabyte I can get a pcie SATA card and get the 6 drives I want to set up. What about those pcie SATA cards, is the connection slower than the motherboard socket ones?

Another thing, is the RAM. I read that the rule of thumb is 1GB per TB, but is it per phisical space or if I have a raid 1 setup ( 2x2TB, for example) I need less RAM.

And the FreeNAS, does it go faster if I use a usb 3.0 flash drive?? Or I can go with a simple cheper 2.0 one?

 

[Stephens]

I was going to tell you to get the Asus, but it was mostly my preference. So I decided to back off and let you evaluate which factors are most important to you.

With 2x2TB, you have a "2TB" pool size. So the RAM suggestion according to the rule of thumb would be 2GB. But I think there may be some minimums , so I wouldn't personally go below 8GB. RAM is cheap.

Unless something has changed recently, I don't believe FreeNAS's USB3.0 support is enabled by default. You can read around here for information on that. But regardless, FreeNAS boots, loads it's config into RAM, then runs from RAM except to write back any configuration changes you make. In most installations, there's no significant benefit to using a USB3 flash drive.

 

[cyberjock]

With 2x2TB, you have a "2TB" pool size. So the RAM suggestion according to the rule of thumb would be 2GB. But I think there may be some minimums , so I wouldn't personally go below 8GB. RAM is cheap.

Unless something has changed recently, I don't believe FreeNAS's USB3.0 support is enabled by default. You can read around here for information on that. But regardless, FreeNAS boots, loads it's config into RAM, then runs from RAM except to write back any configuration changes you make. In most installations, there's no significant benefit to using a USB3 flash drive.

The minimum recommended is 6GB of RAM + 1GB of RAM per TB of zpool space. So roughly 8GB for your server. If you get really really big zpools but are using it at home you can get by with less than the RAM required. My server has 16GB of RAM but has 24TB of storage space. It has given me zero problems and I've not thought about upgrading. My friends' server has 16GB of RAM and 19TB of storage space.

 

[Emiliano.87]

What about the RAM frecuency? Another question, my system will be similar to the one stephens have in the signature. Is it worth it to go with the 1155 build with 16GB ram or I can just stick with Asus E35M1-I (If I can find it in my country) and 8GB? In the web it doesnt state if Asus E35M1-I supports RAID, does it support it?

 

[Stephens]

It's not crystal clear in the documentation, but I've always taken the RAM requirements to say 6GB or 1GB per 1TB of storage, whichever is greater. That, of course, is different from 6GB + 1GB per 1TB of storage. My experience bears it out. I have 2 systems with 8TB pools (6x2TB RAIDZ2) and they run great with 8GB of RAM. My 12TB system (6x3TB RAIDZ2) runs great with 16GB of RAM. If they really needed 6GB + 1GB per 1TB, they'd need 12GB and 18GB respectively.

 

[Stephens]

What about the RAM frecuency? Another question, my system will be similar to the one stephens have in the signature. Is it worth it to go with the 1155 build with 16GB ram or I can just stick with Asus E35M1-I (If I can find it in my country) and 8GB? In the web it doesnt state if Asus E35M1-I supports RAID, does it support it?

Keep in mind the Asus E35M1-I can support 16GB. I'm doing it, and others in the forum are too. I'm not sure what you mean by "supports RAID". It has 6 SATA ports that FreeNAS recognizes, and FreeNAS handles the RAID functions. It's a great setup as long as you don't expect it to be a Quad Core I7.

 

[dbanck]

I've build a storage appliance with nearly the same components.

Here is a series of blog posts I'm writing about the build: http://dbanck.de/2012/11/29/freenas-storage-appliance-1-the-components/
I've already set everything up and the server is working well so far. I just need to write the last two posts of the series.

 

[cyberjock]

RAM speeds really don't matter much... so don't sweat it.

As for the RAM requirement, I think you could go just about either way with RAM. If you have less than 6GB of RAM with ZFS I will /point and /laugh at you since its mentioned everywhere that you NEED 6GB for good performance. Sure, if you are a ZFS master you can probably tweak it down to get good speeds with 4GB. But most people don't have that kind of knowledge or skill. I know I don't :P

I think once you get to 8GB you are most likely set for most home servers regardless of size. I doubt many people have 30TB+ servers at home so 8GB might get you by anyway. I'd expect that for any home server for the forseeable future once you hit 16GB of RAM you'll have plenty until long after your CPU is worth more to recycle the gold out of it than to ebay it.

 

[Emiliano.87]

Thanks all of you, I'll start checking out dbanck build :). And finding out if I can get a Asus E35M1-I somehow delivered to Argentina and considering wich way to go. I'm new in the forum and in the NAS world and I really apreciate all your quick answers, maybe someday I'll be the one answering questions.

 

[Emiliano.87]

What do you think about this motherboard??
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-dq77kb.html
It has dual intel ethernet. The downside is that it has only 4 sata and the power supply is external. I don´t know if I can plug in a sata pcie card so easily because of the power... What do you think???