BUILD New NAS Build Verification and Critique

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Ellusionist

Dabbler
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Jul 22, 2014
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Hello All,

Just wanted to run a couple of questions by everyone on the forum here, need to bounce some ideas, I'm going crazy at this point..

I'm in my first build for NAS/FileServer and trying to accomplish several things that other pre built NAS system cannot future proof too. The use of this system is to store photos for my photo business, weather data, and VMware systems for use though NFS (Thinking of making UFS storage the VM's), ZFS for everything else. Sad to say I will have to use AFP sharing for Time machine backups also.. Most of the photos are shot in RAW so space gets eaten up pretty quick when we transfer off of our SD cards.

Backups will be a combination of cloud and off box storage, even thought about a single drive within the chassis for rsync and backups, maybe a 6Tb and swap within a fire safe or something. Looking into to different option for the Business Continuity Plan.

I had to stay away from the pre built systems like the supermicro servers because of the lack of configurations in the 12 Bay Chassis with single E5 processors.

Questions

Will a separate HBA (LSI 9207-8i) card increase performance versus using on board SATA/SAS ports?

Would a RAID like a LSI 9266 card in IT Mode with its own cache benefit ZFS at all?

Given the E5 Processors will allow for more memory, would performance be better with an E3 processor given the clock speed being higher?

Will higher cache on the hard drive add to ZFS performance much?

Possible Builds?

Option A

This option gives plenty of expansion, but the concern is around the clock speed of the E5-2620. I went with the dual expander to add redundancy for the HBA if needed in the future. 920 watts seems to be enough in this configuration with out going to a 1280 watt power supply. Also give room for a 10 Gb connector in the future if needed and SSD's in the back of the chassis, one for boot and one for cache.

SC826BE26-R920LPB (12 Bays and dual SAS expander)
Boot Small SSD
X9SRE-F (Any other suggestions?)
E5-2620 (Single Proc)
64 GB RAM
6 x WD4001FYYG or 6 x ST4000NM0023
2 x HBA Adapter LSI 9207-8i for redundancy (Might be over Kill)

Option B

I was looking to go with the X10 series board but since the limit of 32 GB is there, it makes things little more difficult when building out the ZFS side of the storage. This was an alternative configuration I was thinking of but has some limits especially with drive expansion. I think the X10 board is going to burn me in the end because of the lack of slots on the boards.

SC826BE26-R920LPB (12 Bays and dual SAS expander)

Boot Small SSD
X10SLX-F (Any other suggestions?)
E3-1240v3
32 GB RAM
6 x WD4001FYYG or 6 x ST4000NM0023
1 x HBA Adapter LSI 9207-8i

Thanks for the help in advance, always fun building something new!

Cheers!
 

diehard

Contributor
Joined
Mar 21, 2013
Messages
162
Ok super quick rundown:

Seperate HBA won't increase speeds. Don't use a RAID controller in IT mode. Clockspeed is king but so is memory. I don't believe higher cache on HDD's adds a whole lot to ZFS based setups but other should know more.

Why the boot SSD? Boot to USB. Instead of the E3 get an E5-16XX series, you will get your clockspeed and support for more RAM.
 

Yatti420

Wizard
Joined
Aug 12, 2012
Messages
1,437
If you plan on needing more then 6 drives or more then a single z2pool then yes I'd look at the 12bay/sasexpander etc.. If not then you can get away just using a good quality motherboard like I do and replace/expand the pool as needed with bigger drives..
 

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
Moderator
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
20,176
Stick to PCH SATA + LSI 2008/2308 controllers and you'll be fine.

Also, don't waste an SSD as an install disk - use a USB drive instead.
 
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