BUILD pci sata controller 4 ports suggest

[panicos]

Hi everybody,

I am planning to build my own NAS and this will be my configuration:
-motherboard: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-d2500cc.html
-case: http://www.coolermaster.com/product/Detail/case/mini-itx/elite-120-advanced.html
-4 hdd Western Digital Red 2TB, or 3 TB each (not sure yet): http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810

The motherboard has 2xGigabit lan conectivity which will allow me to reach higher lan speeds by making link aggregation.
Also, the MB has only two sata ports so i have to use a PCI SATA RAID controller which will allow me to increase the number of sata ports.
The question now, is what SATA controller to choose in order to fulfill my needs?
It has to be a 3Gb/s data transfer speed controller in order to align the speeds (hdd, lan) and mantain a good transfer rate; it has to be compatible with FREENAS and to support RAID 10 (i want to make a raid 10 with the hdd's).
I saw in a thread by jreco, that the most reccommended SATA controller for RAID on FREENAS is IBM ServeRAID M1015, but that one has only 2 sata ports.
Please suggest a PCI SATA controller capable of RAID, with 4 SATA ports, at least 3GB/s speed and compatible with FREENAS. Of course....an affordable one.

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[gpsguy]

Take jgreco's advice on the M1015. Connecting a SFF-8087 breakout cable to a one port, will provide SATA connections for 4 drives. So, with 2 cables, you can connect 8 drives to this card.

You're not looking for a RAID card, just a HBA. With the M1015, you'll want to flash it to IT mode.

 

[cyberjock]

That's an Intel Atom based system you are considering. 2x Gigabit LAN ports are pointless as your little Atom isn't even capable of hitting 50% utilization of a single Gigabit LAN. Atoms can make great low powered NASes but there is a catch.. performance follows power usage.

Also, with that much disk space, you are going to find that your system won't be able to hold enough RAM to make you happy. The manual recommends 6GB + 1GB per TB of disk space. Most Atoms won't do more than 4GB of RAM, some unofficially can do 8GB of RAM. But none do more than 8GB of RAM, and you'd be very started for RAM. Couple that with your low performing CPU and you are just asking for a very slow system.

PCI is never recommended for file servers because the entire PCI bus is limited to 133MB/sec. If your Gb LAN(s) is also a PCI device electrically you're going to find that your LAN connection and PCI SATA controller will compete for available bandwidth. As such, I don't have a PCI device I could recommend nor can I remember someone that mentioned a PCI device that even worked with FreeNAS in the last 6 months or so.

You should probably rethink your system. You have high expectations but are buying very low performing hardware and probably inadequate in multiple ways.

 

[panicos]

Well...thanks. You are right.I have rethinked my system; i saw on this forum good recommandation for HP N54L Microserver:
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=5336619#!tab=features
What do you think of it?
The onboard RAID controller, supports only raid 0 and 1. My goal is to achieve RAID 10. Besides this i want to increase network speed, as i wanted with previous configuration.
Will i be able to mount a dual gigabit network controller and a SATA Raid controller in order to fulfill my demands regarding speed?

 

[panicos]

Take jgreco's advice on the M1015. Connecting a SFF-8087 breakout cable to a one port, will provide SATA connections for 4 drives. So, with 2 cables, you can connect 8 drives to this card.

You're not looking for a RAID card, just a HBA. With the M1015, you'll want to flash it to IT mode.

Why am i not looking for a RAID card? I am planning to make hardware RAID. Isn't it the most effective type of RAID?
Are you suggesting that i should make software RAID from FREENAS instead of hardware RAID from a SATA controller?

 

[gpsguy]

Yes, if you're doing ZFS, you should do software RAID via FreeNAS. It's the recommended way (for ZFS) and allows you to easily move the storage, should you have a hardware problem.

The RAID controller in the N54L is fake-raid. You don't want to use it anyway.

In my N40L I run a ZFS mirror using the controller in non-RAID mode.

By the way you can put 16gb of ram in these HP Microservers.

Sent from my phone

edit: clarify what I meant to say

 

[cyberjock]

Hold on. You need to stop and read the manual.

If you plan to use ZFS, then a hardware RAID is a BIG no-no.

If you plan to use UFS with a hardware RAID, that is commonly used. But you need a "real" RAID controller. The controller on the N54L is not a "real" RAID controller. As such, it will not work with FreeNAS.

 

[panicos]

Yes, i am planning to use ZFS, so i'm going software RAID.
One more noob question:
Somebody suggested me, that i could choose a Dell Optiplex 755 Mini Tower for building the NAS. It has good performance, ventilated, low energy consumer, can be found second hand, at half of the HP's price.
In your opinion, which is the best choice: HP N54L Microserver or Dell Optiplex 755 MT?
I am planning to use the NAS in a home and small testing enviroment for max 5 users, with services like:
-ftp
-CIFS
-NFS (datastore for VMware)
-maybe torrents

Please explain the reason of your choice.

Thanks