Supermicro box

[tony_m]

Hi all! Been lurking for awhile and finally ready to build my first FreeNas. Huge thanks to all of you who give your help and knowledge to the community. Really great folks here!

Some background: I'm new to ZFS but I'm no stranger to *nix or building hardware. I'm currently running a handful of Raspberry Pis for various jobs and want to consolidate as much as possible into one box: Plex media server (two televisions), home automation (Home Assistant/Z-Wave), music server (Squeeze/LMS), and cloud server (currently have OwnCloud running on my email server @Rackspace but want to migrate that home and maybe move to NextCloud?), plus computer backups, photo storage, etc. I was looking at the Mini XL but then came across these used SuperMicro SuperChassis and think they'll be worlds better than the XL for a substantially lower price. While I'd like the box to be reasonably quiet I don't need it to be silent. It will live in a hallway closet.

Here's what I speced out:

Supermicro SuperServer 6047R-E1R24N 24-Bay LFF 4U Rackmount Server
Processor 1: Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 2.6GHz 8 Core 20MB Cache Processor - $70.00
Processor 2: Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 2.6GHz 8 Core 20MB Cache Processor - $70.00
Memory: 128GB DDR3 ECC Registered Memory (8 x 16GB) - $320.00
Management: IPMI 2.0 with Virtual Media Over LAN & Dedicated SIMLP-3+ - $25.00
Power Supplies: 2x Redundant 920W Power Supplies

Cost with shipping is $1065

From Supermicro's specs the PSs are Platinum level and SQs

The dual E5-2650s should be a more than capable 19,036 benchmark?

I plan to start with 6 10tb WD Reds to play around with and add more later when I figure out how many I'll need.

Anything I'm missing? Is there something superior for around this price point?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you can give me.

Cheers!
Tony_M

 

[KevinM]

I'm surprised you can buy that much server for $525. You can't go wrong with Supermicro gear. We have 6 of the 36-bay variants running FreeNAS at work (see sig) and have never had a problem with them. One thing is that n in e1r24n means it comes with a hardware raid card, which is not optimal for FreeNAS. What you want is a simple inexpensive HBA, such as the LSI 9207 I used in the e1r36n builds in my sig. There are others out there that can be flashed to IT mode, such as the IBM m1015 that I'm using in my home FreeNAS box. You can find them everywhere for cheap.

6 drives is a good starting point as well. You can create one 6 x RAIDZ2 VDEV, then and more 6 x RAIDZ2 VDEVs as required.

 

[tony_m]

Ah! Thanks for the info on the "n" ... there is another SM 4u chassis available which has the X9DRI-F board in it with a "24 port 4U SAS 6Gbps Backplane SAS2-846EL1" and an "LSI 9210-8i" controller for about the same price. I'm waiting to hear back from them about whether the power supplies are the SQs or not.

 

[tony_m]

Okay, well after talking with them again they said the boxes don't have SQs but they had some they would swap in for me and they'll flash the HBA to IT mode before shipping. Thanks!

 

[KevinM]

Honestly I wouldn't let the hardware RAID card put you off. You can get good quality HBAs on ebay for around $50. You should be able to get at least that much for the card that comes with the e1r24n.