New to FreeNAS, help for some configurations without bottlenecks

[mirko80]

Hello guys, I'm new to FreeNAS! In the last years I used QNAP units for my customers, now I'd like to switch to FreeNAS with some configurations, all with 8 disks (from 2TB to 8TB Seagate Ironwolfs) in RaidZ2, based on the number of concurrent clients working on it.
All my customers work with photo and video editing with very large files, on MacOS clients.

Possible configurations are:

for 2 clients @ 1Gbit/s:

Asus P10WS + Core i3 6100
RAM 8GB ECC DDR4-2400 (16GB on 36+TB configurations)
2x onboard 1Gbit/s
no SSD


for 4 clients @ 1Gbit/s:

Asus P10WS + Xeon E3 1230v6
RAM 16GB ECC DDR4-2400 (24GB on 36+TB configurations)
2x onboard 1Gbit/s + Intel PRO/1000 dual port
2x SSD 256GB M.2 AHCI (for ZIL/L2ARC)

for 8 clients @ 1Gbit/s

Same MB+CPU
RAM 32GB ECC DDR4-2400
2x onboard 1Gbit/s + 3x Intel PRO/1000 dual port
2x SSD 256GB M.2 NVME (for ZIL/L2ARC)

for 20 clients @ 1Gbit/s or 2 clients @ 10Gbit/s

Same MB+CPU
RAM 64GB ECC DDR4-2400
Dual port 10GBe card (I don't know which one for now)
2x SSD 512GB M.2 NVME (for ZIL/L2ARC)


What do you think about these configurations? Will they FreeNAS? :)

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[Inxsible]

I am assuming that since this is for clients, all components have to be new. But the Asus board you chose (P10 WS) sells for about $200 currently. There are other options from Supermicro that might be better fit for FreeNAS

For eg : Supermicro X10SLM-F
This is a LGA1150 socket instead of LGA1151 so you will have to change the processors a bit too but it still shouldn't change the prices by much.

 

[mirko80]

Ok, but in my country Supermicro boards are not so popular and available, and the only one that costs under 200€ is a micro-atx board with only 4 pci-e slots.

However, my main question was about bottlenecks of cpu/ram/ssd-cache for my target speed...

 

[Ericloewe]

and the only one that costs under 200€ is a micro-atx board with only 4 pci-e slots.

That's because those are the correct boards. You don't need truckloads of PCIe connectivity. If you do need it, the platform doesn't have it anyway and you need Xeon E5/Xeon-W or Xeon Scalable.

Seriously, save yourself the headaches and go with Supermicro.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/so-you’ve-decided-to-buy-a-supermicro-x11-board.13/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/