Moving from Mini-ITX to ATX...

[Booyaah]

So I currently have:
Case: Silverstone DS380
CPU: ASRock Intel Core i3-4160 LGA 1150
Mobo: ASRock E3C224D2I Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224
HDDs: 8x WD Red 4 TB

And I am finally building out a rack and am planning on dropping most of everything into a Super Micro 846 rackmount case with 24 bays (only $130 on Ebay). Since the Mini ITX board only has a single PCI slot, I can't really utilize more than 8 drives with only a single M1015 HBA card in IT mode, which has made me come to the decision that I need a bigger form factor motherboard with more PCI slots for future drive expansion (plus there are not many Mini ITX rackmount cases OOTB).

I was thinking of switching to: ASRock E3C224 ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224

My question is, should I theoretically be able to just pull my CPU/RAM/HBA/HDDs out of the MiniITX tower and with this new mobo (and rackmount PSU), just drop everything into the SuperMicro 846 case and fire it up and my existing FreeNAS array should theoretically still work? Or will I have to re-create the zpool from scratch or do some kind of re-configuration?

Also does the manner in which the drives are connected to the back plane matter? i.e. top 4 drives in my current tower are connected to HBA0 plug and bottom 4 to HBA1 plug, or does FreeNAS know which drives belong to the array based upon physical drive id/serial#?

 

[tvsjr]

First, you can absolutely run more drives than 8, via an expander. Whether your case can fit them, adequately cool them, and your PSU can power them, is left as an exercise for you.

Regarding the mobo, the holes *should* line up with the ATX standard mounting holes. It might look a little funny having a tiny MB in that big case, but it should work. Be very careful and ensure you don't have any of the standoffs contacting the MB in places that they shouldn't... you may need to remove some.

Make sure that the 846 chassis you pick has the SAS2 expander backplanes (BPN-SAS2-846EL1 being the usual option). The SAS1 backplanes won't let you see more than ~2.2Tb of your drives, and a non-expander backplane will require direct connections to every port and HBAs capable of supporting 24 channels. Many of the 846/847 chassis on eBay have the older SAS1 backplanes.

The drives are labeled. Back up your config from the GUI, build your new system, install FreeNAS, restore your config, and you should be golden.

 

[Booyaah]

First, you can absolutely run more drives than 8, via an expander. Whether your case can fit them, adequately cool them, and your PSU can power them, is left as an exercise for you.

Regarding the mobo, the holes *should* line up with the ATX standard mounting holes. It might look a little funny having a tiny MB in that big case, but it should work. Be very careful and ensure you don't have any of the standoffs contacting the MB in places that they shouldn't... you may need to remove some.

Make sure that the 846 chassis you pick has the SAS2 expander backplanes (BPN-SAS2-846EL1 being the usual option). The SAS1 backplanes won't let you see more than ~2.2Tb of your drives, and a non-expander backplane will require direct connections to every port and HBAs capable of supporting 24 channels. Many of the 846/847 chassis on eBay have the older SAS1 backplanes.

The drives are labeled. Back up your config from the GUI, build your new system, install FreeNAS, restore your config, and you should be golden.

- I assume you mean chaining expanders in a tree like fashion?
- As far as power goes, hypothetically speaking, each of these drives looks to consume 5.3W under load. So 24x of them would be 130w then, does that sound right?
- So you are saying I should try and just drop my Mini-ITX board in as is first? I know on my current case, I only have 3 of the 4 standoffs connected to the Mini-ITX board (1 hole doesn't line up).
- Good tip on the SAS expander, I will check into that.
- As far as installing FreeNAS, I currently boot off a USB stick plugged directly into the motherboard...would I still need to re-install it in either case (re-using the Mini-ITX or using a new ATX board)?

 

[tvsjr]

You may be confusing expanders with fanout cables. Here's an expander (I don't know if this card is recommended, just an example): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...361&cm_re=sas_expander-_-16-117-207-_-Product
One 4-lane input gives you 6 4-lane outputs. Two of these combined with a single 9211/M1015 would let you run 48 drives.

There is a sticky in the hardware forum that covers PSU sizing in far greater detail... revview it.

There's nothing wrong with moving the mini-ITX board over, if it fits your purpose and will fit in the case. Your call if you want to drop the money for something new... if you do upgrade, the Supermicro stuff is preferred.

If you don't change the hardware, you should be OK using the existing USB stick. If you do, a reinstall is preferred. Make sure you back up your configuration in all cases. If you do go to a bigger case, you might consider moving to a pair of mirrored SSDs for the boot drive... building a fancy $2K+ NAS and relying on a $10 USB stick seems like a poor allocation of funds.

 

[Fuganater]

$130 on ebay??? I have seen that chassis and it has nothing in it. No PSU, No backplane and I think no HDD caddies.

 

[Booyaah]

You may be confusing expanders with fanout cables. Here's an expander (I don't know if this card is recommended, just an example): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...361&cm_re=sas_expander-_-16-117-207-_-Product
One 4-lane input gives you 6 4-lane outputs. Two of these combined with a single 9211/M1015 would let you run 48 drives.

There is a sticky in the hardware forum that covers PSU sizing in far greater detail... revview it.

There's nothing wrong with moving the mini-ITX board over, if it fits your purpose and will fit in the case. Your call if you want to drop the money for something new... if you do upgrade, the Supermicro stuff is preferred.

If you don't change the hardware, you should be OK using the existing USB stick. If you do, a reinstall is preferred. Make sure you back up your configuration in all cases. If you do go to a bigger case, you might consider moving to a pair of mirrored SSDs for the boot drive... building a fancy $2K+ NAS and relying on a $10 USB stick seems like a poor allocation of funds.

I remember when I built the system a year ago, I specifically remember having issues trying to boot from a USB stick and load the image on the empty 32 GB SSD I bought just for that purpose...I can't remember the exact problem, it might have been because I didn't have a dvd-rw in either of my machines maybe...

@Fugnater - yeah I realized that after I checked for the presence of a SAS2 backplane and realized how much more that would cost. I am now actually considering an 826 fully loaded instead:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-...ackplane-BPN-SAS2-826EL1-2x-PSU-/252182453681

It has SAS2 backplane, 2x 500w PSU, and rails included...what do you think? I don't think I really need an 846 when I really think about it...if I ever actually need more than 24 TB of usable space, well by that time it will probably be far enough in the future to where I would want to scrap all the hardware anyways :p

 

[Fuganater]

That looks better and it is a good seller. (I've bought gear from them before). Technically you can do 72TB with all 6TB drives but 8TB drives are coming out so, you should be set with this.

 

[Booyaah]

That looks better and it is a good seller. (I've bought gear from them before). Technically you can do 72TB with all 6TB drives but 8TB drives are coming out so, you should be set with this.

Sorry I was counting usable space in a main array. 8x 6 TB drives in RAIDZ10 (24 TB usable, 24 TB parity) and 4x 6 TB for 24 TB of backup (but yeah 72 TB of total space)...once again correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Bidule0hm]

As far as power goes, hypothetically speaking, each of these drives looks to consume 5.3W under load. So 24x of them would be 130w then, does that sound right?

Nope, what matters is the spin-up consumption, not the normal load consumption. See the PSU sizing thread for more info: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/ ;)

 

[tvsjr]

Sorry I was counting usable space in a main array. 8x 6 TB drives in RAIDZ10 (24 TB usable, 24 TB parity) and 4x 6 TB for 24 TB of backup (but yeah 72 TB of total space)...once again correct me if I'm wrong.

There's no such thing as RAIDZ10. If there were, it would involve 10 drives worth of parity and massive amounts of overhead. Striped mirrors is the term you're searching for, and there won't be any parity whatsoever... that's kinda the point, you get rid of all that overhead by doing simple mirroring. You also won't have 24TB usable with 8x6TB drives - if you're building this for a VM workload, you shouldn't exceed 50% utilization due to fragmentation. I'd suggest spending some time reading the forums, searching for anything with VM, ESXi, etc. within, and reading all the commentary.

Per the calculator (https://jsfiddle.net/Biduleohm/paq5u7z5/1/embedded/result/), you'll get 17.18TiB of "usable" storage. Once you apply the 50% rule, you're down to 8.59TiB. That's still a lot of space... if you have enough VMs to fill all of that, you may still run into IOPS limitations. And you still need to add two SSDs for a proper SLOG, or your write performance will suck mightily.

If you aren't running a VM workload, fill the box up and do 2 6-drive RAIDZ2 vdevs. That would give you ~34TiB of usable storage.

 

[Bidule0hm]

NB: 17 TiB is after the 80 % rule so in fact you have a bit more than 21 TiB total so about 10.5 TiB usable with the 50 % rule :)

 

[tvsjr]

NB: 17 TiB is after the 80 % rule so in fact you have a bit more than 21 TiB total so about 10.5 TiB usable with the 50 % rule :)

That's what I get for writing posts before I've successfully increased my caffeine to socially-acceptable levels :)

 

[Booyaah]

One last dumb question, am I only going to need a single SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Cable to connect from the M1015 to the BPN-SAS2-826EL1 for8 drives? The backplane on my Silverstone DS380 tower right now has the individual SATA ports for each drive, so I'm using two breakout cables currently.

 

[Fuganater]

One last dumb question, am I only going to need a single SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Cable to connect from the M1015 to the BPN-SAS2-826EL1 for8 drives? The backplane on my Silverstone DS380 tower right now has the individual SATA ports for each drive, so I'm using two breakout cables currently.

Yes you only need one.

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk