Is this a good start for my first FreeNAS home server?

[jbrown7815]

Gonna purchase this deal on the ThinkServer TS440 for $375, add 16GB more RAM and start with (4x) 3TB WD Reds (also considering Toshibas, thoughts?) in Raidz1 with option to add more VDevs down the road.


Server in question http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L07HQTU/?tag=ozlp-20

Yes the 4gb ram that comes with it is ECC.


Stuff I'd buy to go with it. (also considering Toshiba drives since cheaper)

 

[DifferentStrokes]

Looks pretty good to me. Appears you have been doing your homework. You may want to consider adding one more drive now and configure as a RAIDZ2. You can't just add a drive later to that vdev, only a vdev to the zpool. They aren't the same thing, but you may know this. There are some articles out there on why RAIDZ1 is died and shouldn't be used. Might what to consider 2 USB sticks in mirror for the boot device. It is real cheap insurance.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

 

[jbrown7815]

Looks pretty good to me. Appears you have been doing your homework. You may want to consider adding one more drive now and configure as a RAIDZ2. You can't just add a drive later to that vdev, only a vdev to the zpool. They aren't the same thing, but you may know this. There are some articles out there on why RAIDZ1 is died and shouldn't be used. Might what to consider 2 USB sticks in mirror for the boot device. It is real cheap insurance.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

Thanks!


And yeah a friend is offering me (x5) 2tb red's that were used for a year for $50 each. May start with those and upgrade them when the need arises to save money upfront since I don't have an immediate storage need.

 

[marbus90]

Since raidz1 would only use one disk for redundancy, your data might get corrupted if there is another error during the resilver process of a failed drive. In the best case, only specific files are affected, worst case your whole zpool consisting of multiple ZFS arrays is unrecoverable. Hence we recommend using at least raidz2.

If you want to upgrade your TS440 to 8 HDD bays, you would need another 4bay cage like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131479753769 plus an IBM M1015/LSI 9211-8i/9207-8i controller with 2x SFF-8087 to 8087 cables, totaling at close to $1k for 8 HDD bays.

In case you can start with a bigger system, I'd recommend the following combination: LianLi PC-Q26, Seasonic G360, ASRock E3C224D4I-14S, E3-1220 v3 or 1241 v3, Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B which would provide you with 10 HDD bays from the start, allowing for 5disk raidz2 vdevs. If you wish, you can add hotswap support via buying BP2SATA backplanes, one of which provides connections for 2 HDDs.

HDD wise I'd pick WD Red and Seagate NAS for home storage. Didn't get around crawling trough Toshibas offerings, but they offer some good drives as well. HGST NAS drives are for the performance-oriented market since they're 7200rpm ones - the Toshibas might be as well.

You can certainly start with older, smaller drives. Target the final disk count per vdev with those and just replace them one by one with new drives since you can't add more drives to a vdev later on.

 

[jbrown7815]

Since raidz1 would only use one disk for redundancy, your data might get corrupted if there is another error during the resilver process of a failed drive. In the best case, only specific files are affected, worst case your whole zpool consisting of multiple ZFS arrays is unrecoverable. Hence we recommend using at least raidz2.

If you want to upgrade your TS440 to 8 HDD bays, you would need another 4bay cage like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/131479753769 plus an IBM M1015/LSI 9211-8i/9207-8i controller with 2x SFF-8087 to 8087 cables, totaling at close to $1k for 8 HDD bays.

In case you can start with a bigger system, I'd recommend the following combination: LianLi PC-Q26, Seasonic G360, ASRock E3C224D4I-14S, E3-1220 v3 or 1241 v3, Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B which would provide you with 10 HDD bays from the start, allowing for 5disk raidz2 vdevs. If you wish, you can add hotswap support via buying BP2SATA backplanes, one of which provides connections for 2 HDDs.

HDD wise I'd pick WD Red and Seagate NAS for home storage. Didn't get around crawling trough Toshibas offerings, but they offer some good drives as well. HGST NAS drives are for the performance-oriented market since they're 7200rpm ones - the Toshibas might be as well.

Thanks, good info on Z2, was about to ask about why it was needed.


This server can hold 8 drives from the go all I have to have are the Caddies for each drive (15-20 each) The hardware raid card supports 8 drives thru the included backplane, then you can add additional drives thru the SATA ports

Maybe I'm mistaken on that...

 

[marbus90]

If that's the case, you have to swap out the included 9240-8i card for an M1015 and flash it to P16 IT mode anyway.

 

[jbrown7815]

If that's the case, you have to swap out the included 9240-8i card for an M1015 and flash it to P16 IT mode anyway.

From my research you can in fact flash the card it comes with to IT mode.


Assuming that's the case there should be no major difference right? I'm new to hardware raid. Just like this deal for the CPU/motherboard you get for the money

 

[marbus90]

There's no IT mode firmware listed for the 9240-8i MegaRAID controller, so I doubt that. Crossflashing mostly concerns the 9211-8i and 9220-8i controllers, these are basically HBAs with raid 1/0/10 capabilities (doesn't use much processing power) in the custom IBM firmware. You don't want anything hardware raid but plain HBAs since ZFS manages the RAID by itself.

 

[jbrown7815]

There's no IT mode firmware listed for the 9240-8i MegaRAID controller, so I doubt that. Crossflashing mostly concerns the 9211-8i and 9220-8i controllers, these are basically HBAs with raid 1/0/10 capabilities (doesn't use much processing power) in the custom IBM firmware. You don't want anything hardware raid but plain HBAs since ZFS manages the RAID by itself.

People have reported these instructions working for this card.

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/


From what I'm reading the LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i is the same as the IBM m1015

 

[jbrown7815]

What is my best option if I start with

(x5) 2TB red
(x1) 3TB red


Can I treat it as having (x6) 2TB reds with the option of upgrading the 5 2tb's to 3tb's down the road and the existing 3tb becoming 3? (hope this rambling makes sense)

 

[SweetAndLow]

What is my best option if I start with

(x5) 2TB red
(x1) 3TB red


Can I treat it as having (x6) 2TB reds with the option of upgrading the 5 2tb's to 3tb's down the road and the existing 3tb becoming 3? (hope this rambling makes sense)

Yes that's correct

 

[jbrown7815]

Server ordered, so excited to have something to mess with and brush up my UNIX skills slightly

 

[Ericloewe]

If that's the case, you have to swap out the included 9240-8i card for an M1015 and flash it to P16 IT mode anyway.

The LSI SAS 9240 is an M1015.

 

[marbus90]

I read 9220-8i everywhere. also fits since the M1015 only can do 1/0/10 in hardware, the 9240 can do raid5/50 as well. http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/ begs to differ as well.