New Here About to Embark on Mini-ITX Adventure!

[taney]

Hi! My name is Taney.


I just recently picked up these parts:

Lian Li PC-Q25 Case
Intel S1200KPR motherboard
Intel G1610 CPU (Ivy Bridge Celeron) *temporary with plans to replace with Xeon E3-1265Lv2 (low power)
LSI 9211-8i HBA SATA/SAS Controller
2x Kingston KVR16E11/8I (2x 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 ECC Unbuffered CL11 DIMM w/TS Intel)
Prolimatech PRO-SAM17 Samuel 17 CPU Cooler *quiet cooling
Koutech USB 2.0 Header-Pin to Dual Type-A adapter Model IO-UU220 *internal USB ports for USB flash

Also, adding to the list in the near future: SeaSonic X-460 Fanless PSU

I'm very excited to get started and excited to play with FreeNAS. I've heard many great things about it and I believe in *BSD based systems more than anything else for server-related operations. The next step is getting the drives for it. Initially, I want to start with a RAIDZ2 array with 4 drives and eventually add another RAIDZ2 array with 4 drives to the same pool. Let me know what you guys think.

I know people will say I should stray away from virtualization and maybe I will initially, but my hopes down the road for this box is a box hosting my files and VMs and also running VMs through NFS. Basically, an all-in-one box that handles my NAS and basic simple daemons.

I hope to get acquainted with you all. =)

EDIT: I'll add pictures as soon as I get all my hardware.

EDIT 2: Going on a new approach. Probably going to order the Portwell WADE-8011. The fact that the S1200KPR doesn't support VT-d is really bothering me. I want to be able to utilize the benefits of having a LSI HBA card via FreeNAS. I will probably build another machine with the S1200KPR and let it handle load-balancing ;)

 

[taney]

Decided to go with RAID 1+0 for better speed! =)

I said I would come back with some pictures!



So, I've been running on ESXi 5.1 with my S1200KPR with NAS4Free 9.1 guest on top serving VMs via NFS. It's been working great! With some tuning it works well. I really wanted the latest and greatest so I have ventured off into NAS4Free. FreeNAS has been great though. If anyone has initial virtualization questions, I'm not as well experienced as the gurus in here but I got my set up working exactly the way I want so I'm here to help!

 

[Stephens]

Decided to go with RAID 1+0 for better speed! =)

Better speed doing what? RAID-Z2 would already saturate a gigabit connection? You can't get better than saturated.

 

[cyberjock]

So, I've been running on ESXi 5.1 with my S1200KPR with FreeNAS 9.1 guest on top serving VMs via NFS.

Amazing! You have a future version of FreeNAS installed! Please share the source with the developers so we can go from 8.3.0 to 9.1 without having to work on it!(I'm teasing)

Better speed doing what? RAID-Z2 would already saturate a gigabit connection? You can't get better than saturated.

But you can get better reliability with RAIDZ2 for the same number of hard drives...

 

[taney]

Amazing! You have a future version of FreeNAS installed! Please share the source with the developers so we can go from 8.3.0 to 9.1 without having to work on it!(I'm teasing)


But you can get better reliability with RAIDZ2 for the same number of hard drives...

Sorry, I meant NAS4Free, LOL!
Yeah, with 4 drives, it made some sense to use RAID1+0, but since I'm planning to add a few more drives, RAIDZ2 might work better (5 Drives + 1 Spare).

 

[taney]

6x3TB = 18TB --> 10.7TB USABLE in RAIDZ2 Array!!! =)

 

[ProtoSD]

I thought your case looked suspiciously similar to mine, which is also a Lian Li, pics in my profile here in the forums.

The thing I don't like about their cases is the way they horizontally stack their drives up. I checked the temps on my disks and the top disk is 6 degrees hotter than the bottom disk. I've been meaning to mod things so the drives are vertical, but just haven't gotten around to it. I also have 6 drives, but I'm using a 160w PicoPSU, so I have a TON more space in my case to add more drives and rearrange stuff.

 

[taney]

Nice!! I don't think

I guess I never really noticed it until you mentioned it. My drives are arranged by serial number (ascendending order). I'm about to swap my motherboard with the WADE8011. I'll snap a shot without the PSU when I do that. I really like my heatsink!