Server Project with serveral VMs, Nextcloud, RaidZ, in a small case, efficient

[Krautmaster]

Dear all,
luckily I just found this thread for Freenas noobs like I am.

Currently all my stuff runs on Server 2019 Datacenter with a X10SDV-4C-7TP4F Supermicro Board, 64Gb ECC Memory, 512GB M2 Disc, 2x256 GB Sata SSD, 4x 14TB WDs, 1x8 TB Backup Disk.

That stuff consumes about 80W-90W all the time, but additionally, it get quite noisy and warm in that server case. And worse, Storace Spaces still kinda sucks, especially parity. I know ZFS is so much better. And id like to shift to a better case and OS.

I was wondering if I can get rid of that config and to startover, maybe with the following:

-> same HW
-> 2x40GB SSD as Mirrored Boot drive conected to the internal SATA headers -> Freenas on
-> 4x14TB HDDs connected to the onboard LSI SAS controller -> RAIDZ1 with compression, maybe dedup
-> 512GB SSD M.2 as L2ARC Cache (can be also a 2 TB SATA SSD which I have in stock)
-> 2x256GB SSDs connected to the onboard LSI SAS controller as write cache (ZIL?)
-> 10Gbe Server <-> Workstation, SCSI / SMB

Required Software on my NAS:

-> PLEX Server
-> Nextcoud Server
-> FileServer
-> VM(s) for webhosting (currently in HyperV: -> Internet -> VirtualFirewall -> NGINX reverse proxy -> 3 VMs with different domains)
(in theory could be all done by wordpress instances without virtualization)
-> Automatic Backup of Nextcloud and Fileserver Files (some, max 8Gb in total) to the additional disk

My Goal:

-> working sw parity. Storage spaces sucks as said
-> maybe hopefully sleeping disks to save power. The SSD caches might prevent them from spinning on each access
-> way higher read and write performance
-> better noise level due to shifting to an existing case (non server case)

What do you experts think? Is this handable my freenas or any other suggestions like eg ESX hypervisior + a seperate VM for freenas and so on?

Thanks and best regards

Krautmaster

 

[sretalla]

working sw parity. Storage spaces sucks as said

Check, FreeNAS can do this.

maybe hopefully sleeping disks to save power. The SSD caches might prevent them from spinning on each access

Nope. This doesn't work, you can find a bunch of threads with people pulling out their hair trying to get that to work, but I didn't find a single one that did in modern versions.

way higher read and write performance

You may find this doesn't happen unless you re-think your design... there's no hardware magic performed by FreeNAS, although it does use available RAM to cache, most people make the mistake of thinking that RAIDZ2 performs like RAID6, it doesn't. L2ARC would possibly help, but your amount of RAM is at the bottom of the low end where you would start to use it for any benefit (L2ARC costs you ARC RAM which could have been used as cache instead and would have been much faster).

better noise level due to shifting to an existing case (non server case)

You could stay with the case and look at the options to use a script that looks at your HDD temps and sets the fans to the right speed to keep them cool, but no faster than required so you don't need plane takeoff volume to get there. Possibly with some new fans, depending on your current ones (Noctua seems the consensus on what does the job well and quietly)

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/fan-scripts-for-supermicro-boards-using-pid-logic.51054/

https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/script-hybrid-cpu-hd-fan-zone-controller.46159/

https://github.com/khorton/nas_fan_control

All the best with it. We're here to help if you decide to go ahead with FreeNAS.

 

[Krautmaster]

thanks for that quick response. In terms of performance, even without any kind of caching ZFS outperforms parity storage spaces by a factor of easily 10 and more for sequential writes eg.

The disc temp is fine (40 max) but the current case with 1he room for the passive board is quite challenging for the cpu and sas to stay in range. I have a other case top blowing the cpu and sas area, way easier to handle (thus only room for 6x3.5" hot swap not 12 likethe current case but i can deal with 6)

My current test stage is a 10W Celeron Quadcore Board with a DELOCK 10x SATA controller and 6x4 TB + 8 Gb RAM and FreeNas on. Its fast, read write no problems to max out GBe. And the supermicro server board is way faster.