Recommendation

[Jeffrey Mele]

I've read through a lot of threads and I can't seem to fully figure out what kind of hardware I should actually run. Right now I'm talking about building a mediocre size machine but would like something that I can expand on down the line.

I am looking to build a larger storage platform than I currently have at home, I have been back and forth through a bunch of different devices/setups but am currently confined to a 5 bay drobo and honestly the speeds are horrendous. The drobo currently has 3 X 3TB WD reds in it now.

I am looking to build a system that has 8 drives to start, but is expandable. The expandable part is mainly the reason I am looking for advice, as I'm looking to pick components that will allow the expansion to at least 16, but preferably 24 drives.

So, can anyone recommend a decently priced case that'll allow for 16 or 24 drives and a mobo to go along with it? I can see memory being a constraint on LGA 1150 seeing as the max is 32GB of memory... I would be interested in seeing dual LGA-1366 boards (thinking about something like 2 L5639 as procs).

Also, Will I need to run a single M1015 per 8 drive array?

 

[mjws00]

Once you are at 16+ bays there aren't many cheap options. Norco 4224 4U 24Bay, or 3216 3U 16 Bay, cases are about as cheap as they come. You may not like the fans and the backplane isn't awesome. But tons of people have made them work. Newegg has em. Chenbro has a cost effective line as well.

If you are patient and willing to put in some effort, you can snag an old server in a supermicro case off ebay or craigslist. Just gut it, or use it depending on $ spent. You can get into a nicer case that way for the same money.

If you have access, get one of the Supermicro boards they love around here. The X10SL7-F is mighty nice for the E3's if you want vt-d and
Xeon goodness. The AsRock Avoton board they use in the mini, will go supposedly go to 64GB. So depending on your needs that might be ideal. Everything else is a trade off.

Xeon E5 boards that will let you go to high memory levels don't come cheap unfortunately. Frankly by the time you outgrow the E3, you leave it as a backup server, and you'll have a strong use case for the e5 by then. Chances are you'll never get there.

My Intel server board has been flawless. but it isn't necessarily the best value. It was just highly available and I knew it would hit the major HCL lists I wanted.

You buy a SAS expander to jump up the drive count.. Basically lets you daisy chain a TON of drives. But 12 on the board plus 8 is a good start.

They hardware recommendations posted around here are proven solid. Unfortunately not 'cheap', but still a good value.

Good luck,

 

[Jeffrey Mele]

Interesting, I don't know why I didn't take a look at ebay. It look's like I might of found something that could be useful here : View: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-3U-16bays-Storage-Chassis-836EL1-R800B-SAS-836EL1-SAS-SATA-Expander-/141382007453?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item20eb063a9d
- would be interested to hear anyones input on this.

As far as documentation goes it looks like that SAS expander can daisy chain adding to the drive count down the line. Also looks like this backplane would work good with the M1015...

I mentioned this in my first post, but the reason I don't want to go with an E3 is because the ram is limited to 32GB and I will easily outgrow that with 16 X 3TB or 8 X 3TB & 8 x 4TB drives, I don't remember how much is recommended for each TB of memory but I know I'll need more than 32 and I do not wish to rebuild the whole system when it comes time to simply add drives.

I kind of want to stray from the E5's because I don't want to spend a ton of money, I will have to look into my options, but I would love to find a dual LGA 1366 board which is something that I can't seem to find a recommendation on thus far.

 

[mjws00]

Haven't seen much on the 1366 boards. My understanding is that the comparatively slow clock speeds and high power draw makes them a little bit of a downer for everyday use. Lots of the single threaded items in FreeNAS benefit by the faster cpus. So sometimes the folks with the old "mega" servers don't get impressive performance. I'd certainly try one of the faster ones if the right deal came up, especially with a TON of ram.

But there are likely some success stories I missed. 1GB RAM per TB data is pretty dependent on workloads. A media server with lots of mostly static data and streaming needs way less ram than something serving up many IOPS and VMs. Even if they both have similar large pools.

It's always a balancing act.

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, the 1366s perform fine. I have their shittiest "Xeon" for 1366 that exists and it still is smoking fast with FreeNAS (its my test bed when I want to do horribly bad things to FreeNAS "just to see what would happen"). If you have a 1366 system with a bunch of RAM already (or can get one at an amazing price) then it's definitely doable. Even at 24x7 they aren't exactly power hungry either. They need their power but they definitely can perform.

My first FreeNAS system was the 'test bed' and it worked great. Used 20GB of ECC RAM and it was just fine. I didn't have a server-grade motherboard and because I knew about the need for server-grade stuff I chose to buy all new. I was unemployed and all of that, but still made it work because I really do mean it when I say "go server grade or go home". I wasn't about to risk my data on that kind of stupid mistake.

 

[Jeffrey Mele]

Yeah, the 1366s perform fine. I have their shittiest "Xeon" for 1366 that exists and it still is smoking fast with FreeNAS (its my test bed when I want to do horribly bad things to FreeNAS "just to see what would happen"). If you have a 1366 system with a bunch of RAM already (or can get one at an amazing price) then it's definitely doable. Even at 24x7 they aren't exactly power hungry either. They need their power but they definitely can perform.

My first FreeNAS system was the 'test bed' and it worked great. Used 20GB of ECC RAM and it was just fine. I didn't have a server-grade motherboard and because I knew about the need for server-grade stuff I chose to buy all new. I was unemployed and all of that, but still made it work because I really do mean it when I say "go server grade or go home". I wasn't about to risk my data on that kind of stupid mistake.

Interesting, yeah I have servers colo'd with L5639's so I know what they are capable of, while it may not be something like dual E5-2620/2630's I think for storage and transcoding they'll be perfect. I can get a supermicro mobo and 2 L5639's for like $300 which isn't bad. Plus the board will give me more than enough room to expand on memory when needed, which is why I'm learning toward that route. I figure even first gen 2620's will easily cost double or even triple.