New system: 1620v4,32gb RDIMM,X10SRA-F

[John Doe]

Hi comunity,
i have tested freenas for now 2 years and i am thinking it is worth to spend a bit more money on a faster system.

currtenly running:
4x 1,7 ghz (j1900)
16gb memory (non ecc)
4x 3tb WD red in raid 5 (actually the zfs pendant)
2x usb drives for booting

very big advantage, running system is about 35watts
read from server @ windows share is ~100mb/s
write to server @ win share is ~60-80mb/s
(gigabit lan)

maybe future system
https://www.mindfactory.de/shopping...221c05b79f220b524973f31c39f61a3270db339c40e03

short brief additional to link:
8x 4gb reg ecc ddr4-2133
xeon 1620v4 3,5ghz x4
2x ssd for jails
6x 3tb wd red
board: supermicro X10SRA-F

my setup thinking:
the 6 HDD in a Raid10 array, the currently running system is to slow with 100mb read and 60mb write

2ssd mirrored for jails, such as plex and a vm for jdownloader and own cloud

full encryption of data

what i (hope) expect:
read write date ~110mb/s
power consuption less than 60watts


any recomendations, ideas or general feedback?

 

[nojohnny101]

can't comment on supermicro boards as I have limited experience but I will say:

- better to go with larger size DIMMs and buy fewer. This will help with upgradability in the future.
- starting using the proper ZFS raid terms, i.e. raidz1 raidz2, raidz3, etc. if you meant by saying "raid10" would be stripped mirrors I would advise against that. 6 HDDs in a vdev is a perfect candidates for raidz2. raidz2 offers best balance between performance and redundancy.
- do you have a backup solution? maybe you should repurpose your "test system" that you have been using and turn that into a cheap replication target for your main FreeNAS system. remember, redundancy (i.e. raidzx) is NOT a substitute for having a backup. unless of course, you don't care about your data.
- what is your PSU going to be? check this thread for PSU sizing guide: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

best of luck!

 

[CraigD]

Any SuperMicro motherboard with IPMI is a good choice and everyone is right, use larger memory blocks, so you can upgrade if needed, especially with boards that surpass 64GB

Depend on your use case, you may not need that much CPU (more is better, if you need it, or money wasted if you don't)

In my opinion for RAM 32GB is great, 64GB is even better, if you need more than this is don't take my advice. So a Haswell or Skylake build maybe just fine.

Modern computers are power efficient and only draw power needed, I wouldn't get to worried about power usage. In saying this, be sure your PSU can safely handle the peek demand at startup.

If you are using a SSD Mirror pool for Jails and VMs, and larger pool for say media storage I to would use RAIDz2, this should be close to maxing out a gigabit connection

Encryption sounds great, but if you don't needed it don't do it (encrypt with other software), I tested encryption, and failed to replace drives within the encrypted pool

Have Fun

 

[Stux]

The big benefit of the x10 socket 2011 systems over a skylake X11 system is being able to break the 64GB barrier. Doesn't make sense to start with any less than 16GB dimms.

And PCIe lanes. Lots of lanes ;)

 

[SFoskett]

That is one heck of a nice CPU and motherboard!

I agree about using ZFS terms but disagree about running RAIDZ on that board. I strongly recommend RAID-10 with ZFS, which means striping across mirrored pairs. It gives very good performance and rebuild times and also adds flexibility to your pool: You can upgrade each stripe set with larger disks and the whole pool will grow. But of course you have 50% overhead...

And definitely do use the old system as a backup - ZFS send incremental - and configure it for capacity with RAIDZ2 if possible.

 

[Spearfoot]

That is one heck of a nice CPU and motherboard!

I agree about using ZFS terms but disagree about running RAIDZ on that board. I strongly recommend RAID-10 with ZFS, which means striping across mirrored pairs. It gives very good performance and rebuild times and also adds flexibility to your pool: You can upgrade each stripe set with larger disks and the whole pool will grow. But of course you have 50% overhead...

And definitely do use the old system as a backup - ZFS send incremental - and configure it for capacity with RAIDZ2 if possible.

I disagree with the notion of running 6 disks in RAID-10. The advantage of RAIDZ2 over RAID-10 is that you can lose any two disks in a RAIDZ2 pool and not lose your data. With RAID-10 the danger of losing both disks in one of the mirrored pairs is very real. If that happens, your data is toast. For this reason, I concur with @nojohnny101 and @CraigD in their recommendation that the OP use a 6-disk RAIDZ2 topology. It's just safer, and more space-efficient as well. And performance is adequate for most users; I use a 7-disk RAIDZ2 pool and don't have any problems saturating my gigabit LAN.

Now, if you really want redundancy, you can use 3-way mirrors, as described in this post... horribly inefficient, but with 2 vdevs of 3-way mirrors you could lose as many as 4 drives before losing your pool.

 

[SweetAndLow]

1. Don't use a xeon e5 if you don't put more than 64GB of memory.

2. Skip the ssds they don't really do anything for your jails.

3. Use your 6 drives in a raidz2 and Skip the mirrors. Your performance problem on writes isn't your freenas server it's something else.

4. Fix your performer problems on current system it should write at ~100mb/s over cifs.

You want a Skylake system with 16GB dimms for your memory. And lastly Skip the encryption it will eventually cause you to lose your pool.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[John Doe]

thanks for your input.
i went for 4x16gb RDIMM, so there are 4 banks left for future purpose...
the other setup remains.


is someone interested in a build setup with pics and everything like this?

 

[ChriZ]

Even better idea, if the cost difference between 4x16 and 2x32 is not big, I would prefer the 32Gb dimms option.
If it is then leave it alone, otherwise with 32GB dimms you can go up to 256GB of Ram (however I doubt you will ever need that much Ram.. - although people tend to say that with ZFS there is no such thing as too much RAM :p)