Help on topology

[Vegard Kolbeinsen]

So the hardware is in place and I now have proper NAS server.

Chassis: Supermicro CSE846TQ-R900 (24 bay hotswap)
Mainboard: Supermicro X8DTE
CPU: 2x Xeon x5560
RAM :48GB ECC Registered DDR3
HD Controller: 3 x Dell H310 flashed to IT mode
Nettwork: 2 x Intel® 82574L Gigabit Ethernet Controllers

I have at hand 8 x 3 TB disks. 1 x 2 TB. 2 x 500 GB. 2 x 320 GB.

The initial idea was to take 4 x 3 TB and make a Vdev then move over some files and make another Vdev of the remaining 4 x 3 TB. Both running Raid5 / z1.

But since I now have 24 hot swap ports I have much more place to play with. So now I am wondering if i should run 2 and 2 disks in mirror instead, I will lose some space, but also have much better reliability. And it will be much easier to extend into the future by either adding or replacing 2 and 2 disks. In theory having 24 x 3 TB in mirror will give me 36 TB of data which is 3 times what I had and much more than I will ever need in my mind. And taking the future into account with both 4, 6, 8 and even bigger disks in future this will also increase

But what I have not been able to understand from the documents are if there is any problems with this setup when combining a Vdev of 2 x 3 TB with another Vdev of 2 x 320 GB. Will there be any performance issue here? Or will this be all ok?

A second maybe of-topic question is if there is a need or even possibility to run 2 Nics in FreeNAS?


What do you recommend here?

 

[depasseg]

ZFS will stripe across all vdevs and do it's best to use the best performing vdev(s). It depends on your workloads, but I would be comfortable with using mirrors of different sizes.

Yes, you can run 2 NICs, but it's complicated. They can't be configured in the same subnet, and if you plan to use a LAG, then you should have at least more than 5 clients that are accessing it in order to see any benefit.

 

[Vegard Kolbeinsen]

Would a Vdev with 2 older disks that has 300mb/s limit slow down the whole pool when the rest is 600mb/s or would it just be slow on some parts? In general several vdevs with mirror will that speed up the pool compared to raidz etc?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

A pool with two mirrors with variable performance will still perform better than a pool with a single mirror.

In general, the more vdevs you have, the better the IOPS, but streaming performance is less straightforward - my understanding is that reads like more disks, writes like simpler structure.

Chances are, whatever you build will be fast enough for home use, unless you do something pathological.

 

[Vegard Kolbeinsen]

Ok great, cause i have space for 24 disks and I will be adding two and two disks in mirror. That way I have redundancy. And it I will also only have to buy 2 disks when needing more space. In theory it will give me more space than I will need the next 10 years...

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[Mr_N]

If you going to do mirrored vdev's forget using anything but the 3TB drives, and when you need more space the best price point will be 4tb or higher drives :)

 

[Vegard Kolbeinsen]

Why should I forgot that? So using 2x2TB in one vdev and 2x320gb on another is that so bad?

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