Supermicro 2014CS-TR - 2U build - any red flags?

PitJack

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I plan on purchasing a Supermicro 2U server with the following specs, and was wondering if there are any red flags or compatiblity issues with the build. I'm not a total newbie (20yr linux sysadmin), but also not a TrueNAS or ZFS expert (yet) I'd just like to make sure I have not overlooked anything. I am new to this site (this is my first post), but have already read the basic required reading - Hardware Recommendations Guide, 10G Primer, ZFS Introduction, and a few others. I'm not totally new to ZFS either, I've been managing basic pools used for backups for about 8 years, but haven't done anything too advanced with ZFS or run a production TrueNAS server yet. I've installed TrueNAS on a lab server and gotten familiar with how to perform basic functions, and also watched my fair share of YT videos on the topic.

If you notice any red flags with this build, or recommend different hardware (eg: NIC, Controller, etc), please let me know. Thank you.

Supermicro 2014CS-TR 2U Rack Server
  • Supermicro A+ Server 2014CS-TR - 2U - 12x SATA/SAS (optional 4x U.2 NVMe) - 2x AIOM - 920W 1+1 Redundant
  • Supermicro AOC-S3616L-L16iT SAS3/SATA 16-Port Host Bus Adapter - PCIe 3.0 x8
  • AMD EPYC 7313P Processor 16-core 3.00GHz 128MB Cache (155W)
  • 8 x 32GB PC4-25600 3200MHz DDR4 ECC RDIMM
  • 960GB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (80mm)
  • 1.92TB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (110mm)
  • Broadcom 3616 [SAS 12, 16 ports] No RAID
  • 12 x 20TB SATA 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM - 3.5" - Ultrastar DC HC560 (512e/4Kn)
  • Broadcom NetXtreme 10-Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter P210P - PCIe 3.0 x8 - 2x SFP+
  • Supermicro AIOM OCP 3.0 - 4x 1GbE RJ45 - Intel i350-AM4 - PCI-E 2.1 x4 - AOC-AG-i4M
 

jgreco

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Broadcom 3616 [SAS 12, 16 ports] No RAID
Supermicro AOC-S3616L-L16iT SAS3/SATA 16-Port Host Bus Adapter - PCIe 3.0 x8

Jury's still out but this is looking to be a RAID controller for meaningful definitions of the term. Advise avoiding it.

 

Arwen

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First question, TrueNAS CORE or TrueNAS SCALE?

They are not the same thing, though similar:

...
  • 960GB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (80mm)
  • 1.92TB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive (110mm)
You don't specify what you plan to use these NVMe drives for.

Nor do you list what you intend for the boot drive. In general, a 16GB SATA SSD is more than enough. Though, I would go for 32GB or possibly 64GB if I plan on the swap space being only on my boot drive(s). TrueNAS does not allow sharing boot drives with data drives, so using one of those NVMe as a boot drive is over-kill.
 

PitJack

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@Arwen I plan to use TrueNAS Core.

As far as the drives I plan to use 2 x 960GB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2 for the boot drives, and the 1.92TB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2 for a SLOG. Although after reading some more I realize both the boot drives and SLOG drive are oversized, so I'm thinking I should change the boot drives to 2 x 480GB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2. For the SLOG I'm thinking I should get dual NVRAM cards, but I'm open to suggestions here.
 

PitJack

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@Arwen I should clarify regarding TrueNAS Core, I would prefer the linux-based TrueNAS Scale, but I read somewhere that TrueNAS Scale isn't stable enough for production yet. If that is not the case and it is prod-ready, then I'd much prefer TrueNAS Scale.
 

PitJack

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Jury's still out but this is looking to be a RAID controller for meaningful definitions of the term. Advise avoiding it.

Good point about the controller. What HBA would you recommend here?
 

ChrisRJ

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@PitJack , it seems you didn't specify the use-case. Can you shed some led onto this, please?
 

PitJack

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@PitJack , it seems you didn't specify the use-case. Can you shed some led onto this, please?
It will be a file server (iSCSI) for an engineering company housing general purpose files as well as AutoCAD drawings, and a repository for large LIDAR and drone video files. So nothing crazy in terms of synchronous writes or performance, but I'd like to see at least 500MB/s on async sequential read/writes.
 

Arwen

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Even "2 x 480GB Micron 7450 PRO Series M.2" is overkill for boot devices.

SLOG have special requirements. When using flash based devices, PLP, Power Loss Protection, is recommended. Further, high write endurance is basically required. SLOG is a write only device unless their is a crash, and only then is data read off of it. The in-memory copy is eventually flushed to pool devices, which then causes another write to the SLOG that the transaction is no longer needed on crash recovery.

Whether TrueNAS SCALE is ready for production is debatable. Some people really want Linux. But the FreeBSD based CORE has more than a decade of development behind it.
 

Etorix

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@Arwen I should clarify regarding TrueNAS Core, I would prefer the linux-based TrueNAS Scale, but I read somewhere that TrueNAS Scale isn't stable enough for production yet. If that is not the case and it is prod-ready, then I'd much prefer TrueNAS Scale.
If this is just for storage and there are no apps/VMs on top of it, there's no reason to go for SCALE over CORE.

For boot any cheap and small SSD will do. 100 GB Intel 600p (or whatever the newer model is) would do.
For SLOG with a PCIe 4.0 platform get an Optane P5800X while supplies last!
  • Supermicro AOC-S3616L-L16iT SAS3/SATA 16-Port Host Bus Adapter - PCIe 3.0 x8
  • Broadcom 3616 [SAS 12, 16 ports] No RAID
  • Broadcom NetXtreme 10-Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter P210P - PCIe 3.0 x8 - 2x SFP+
  • Supermicro AIOM OCP 3.0 - 4x 1GbE RJ45 - Intel i350-AM4 - PCI-E 2.1 x4 - AOC-AG-i4M
You have not explained the reason for the two HBA (one of which may be a RAID controller) and the two NIC (no comment on the Broadcom SFP+ from our experts?).
 

ChrisRJ

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It will be a file server (iSCSI) for an engineering company housing general purpose files as well as AutoCAD drawings, and a repository for large LIDAR and drone video files. So nothing crazy in terms of synchronous writes or performance, but I'd like to see at least 500MB/s on async sequential read/writes.
I seem to remember that iSCSI writes are synchronous, but not sure.

Using iSCSI for file sharing seems weird in a commercial context, since you can access it only from a single machine.
 

PitJack

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I seem to remember that iSCSI writes are synchronous, but not sure.

Using iSCSI for file sharing seems weird in a commercial context, since you can access it only from a single machine.
Currently the file server is an Active Directory member, running as a Hyper-V VM (no my choice) on an HP server with decent CPU/RAM but slow disks. My though was to continue using the same Fileserver but have it share the TrueNAS files, which it connects to via iSCSI. Keeping the same Fileserver makes for an easy transition (at least as a first step transition). Is it preferable to have all domain computers directly access the files from TrueNAS over CIFS? I haven't played with TrueNAS Active Directory integration and user permissions yet, but if that would work and is recommended then I could plan to go that route.
 

PitJack

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I had to abandon that server build, the vendor made a few mistakes (double controllers on quote) which would of been fine to fix, but has become non-responsive, so now I'm looking at a Dell R7515.
 
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