Looking for low cost server config advices

[lkodl]

Hello everybody !

I'm setting up a low cost config for a NAS and I wish your advices with it :

MoBo : ASUS P8H77-I
CPU : Intel Pentium G2130 (3.2 GHz)
RAM : Kingston 8Go (2x4Go) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 HyperX
PSU : Advance 480W ATX-5012
HDD : 4x Seagate Green 2To 64Mo 3.5'' SATA 6Gb/s
Case : BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX white

I want to use FreeNAS (8.3 or 9.1 ? ? ?) with ZFS in a RAIDZ1.

The NAS will be used for :

- Store data (obviously...)
- Multimedia server (multiple device simultaneously without any slow down)

Thank you ! :)

 

[jgreco]

There's a lovely sticky in the hardware forum that will help you pick better hardware than that; the ASUS board is hobbled by a Realtek ethernet (mitigation: extra $35 for an Intel card) and limited to two slots for memory (no mitigation available). By the time you have spent $110 on that board and $35 more to fix the network, you might as well just spend the extra $5 to get a real server-quality board that handles ECC properly, etc.

 

[lkodl]

There's a lovely sticky in the hardware forum that will help you pick better hardware than that; the ASUS board is hobbled by a Realtek ethernet (mitigation: extra $35 for an Intel card) and limited to two slots for memory (no mitigation available). By the time you have spent $110 on that board and $35 more to fix the network, you might as well just spend the extra $5 to get a real server-quality board that handles ECC properly, etc.

Thank you for the promptly answer ! :)

I saw the sticky but it speaks about some robust hardware and it cost too much for me. A config with the half of the price (disk included) is less efficient than the sticky one but sufficiant for many people (like me :p) and it could be interesting to others to know if this kind of hardware do the job (at its level of hardware of course ! )

I follow your advice and made some updates on my config :

MoBo : Intel DH67CFB3 (with Intel 82579V :))
CPU : Intel Pentium G2120 (3.1 GHz)
RAM : 2x4096MB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 1333MHz CL9 Series
PSU : 400 watts XilencePower Rev.3 ventilateur de 120mm
HDD : 4x 2To SATA Toshiba PA4292E-Retail 1HL0 (DT01ABA200)
Case : BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX white

Is it better ? :)

Thank you !

 

[jgreco]

Well, here's the thing.

You've managed to "fix" the Realtek ethernet problem by switching to a board with Intel. This is a great way to address one of the three big problems I see with your proposal, because you would be more likely to end up unhappy with Realtek. It is also probably the most visible of the problems.

That board costs ~$110. But a decent board that will do ECC runs $150 and also offers better expansion options.

The question you need to consider is this: is your data valuable to you? Because if you want to use ZFS, then the answer seems more like yes than no to me. ZFS does its best to love your data, taking the data and checksumming it before storing it on disk, verifying the checksums on the way back in, etc. However, it does nothing to protect data in-core, and if there's a problem with the memory flipping bits, you can easily corrupt your files or even filesystem without even noticing. ZFS trusts the server to provide that part of the data protection puzzle.

Your CPU supports ECC. You just need a board that supports ECC, and ECC memory. That's why I keep pointing people at that cheap Supermicro board. Do you absolutely need ECC? Well, noooo... just like you don't really need RAIDZ1...

But if you can wait a few weeks, you might have another option. It appears that the HP Microserver Gen8 is due out any day now, and it is wicked hard to match the older Microservers on price (since we don't actually know the ask price for the Gen8).