Supermicro X11 hardware question

[horuck]

Dear experienced freenas community,

Im just trying to build up a bigger NAS with more HDDs (running already very satisified) a Supermicro X11SSL-CF MB with a E3-1225v6 CPU with 8 SAS HDDs (Raid Z2) HGST 4TB disks on the onboard (flashed to IT mode of course) controller.

I know want to add another LSI 9201-16i SAS2 Controller (IT mode again) to add another 16 of the above Disks.

Configuration would be 3x vdev of 8 disks Raid Z2 to make it as a nice pool to run a few datasets for videoediting stations from there.

Will the CPU be strong enough to handle the 24drives and saturate 1 10G or 20G (aggregate 2x10G)?
I just got a SC846 Housing I want to fill up with HDDs.

looking forward for you inputs.

 

[Inxsible]

Will the CPU be strong enough to handle the 24drives and saturate 1 10G or 20G (aggregate 2x10G)?

The CPU should be sufficient. Although you haven't really mentioned what the use case is. Not everything related to a NAS is CPU intensive. Simple file access doesn't require a high end processor. Even streaming with Plex doesn't, unless you are transcoding multiple streams. Other tasks may or may not require intense CPU too. So bottom line it depends on what you are trying to do with the box.

 

[horuck]

The CPU should be sufficient. Although you haven't really mentioned what the use case is. Not everything related to a NAS is CPU intensive. Simple file access doesn't require a high end processor. Even streaming with Plex doesn't, unless you are transcoding multiple streams. Other tasks may or may not require intense CPU too. So bottom line it depends on what you are trying to do with the box.

Dear Inxsible,
purpose would be NAS-storage for videoediting, so handling BIG files to clients via 10G with jumbo frames, no CPU tasks like transcoding or anything. Just handling I/O of the 3 vdevs of 8 Raid Z2 "shuffling" together with maximum bandwith.
I just want to make things sure and not then need to change the MB or CPU because I won't get enough "juice" out of this tiny fully packed MB.

 

[Chris Moore]

Instead of using the horribly expensive 16 port cards, why don't you use a SAS expander chassis? You can connect 256 drives to one SAS controller by cascading expansion chassis.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Chris Moore]

Will the CPU be strong enough to handle the 24drives and saturate 1 10G or 20G (aggregate 2x10G)?

Might be, but it is more determined by the way you configure the storage than the CPU.

I just got a SC846 Housing I want to fill up with HDDs.

More details here. Exactly what did you get?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Inxsible]

for videoediting, so handling BIG files to clients via 10G with jumbo frames,

Jumbo frames = more data on each packet = less CPU work to send data but takes longer to assemble the payload
Non-Jumbo frames = less data on each packet = CPU works more to send data, but takes less time to assemble the payload.

 

[horuck]

Might be, but it is more determined by the way you configure the storage than the CPU.

More details here. Exactly what did you get?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

Dear Chris,
I got that 16port HBA "dirt cheap" on ebay from China. It was about EUR 100.-

Concerning the (supermicro) SC846, I got one with a SAS 846A Backplane so 8x SFF8087 connectors on the back (not the expander version)

Pls let me know how you would configure the storage. My Idea was instead of 3 vdev of 10drive RaidZ2 as many run with 30drives, having 24 drives (of HGST 4TB 7200min enterprise HDDs) to run them 3 vdevs of 8 Drives (as one uncompressed pool) and then making datasets with qouta as a share.

 

[Chris Moore]

with jumbo frames,

Jumbo frames is all about reducing CPU load but there are many things that can cause it to not work properly and actually end up making everything slower instead of faster. It was created over a decade ago when computers did not perform as well as they do now. In modern systems it is better to use standard frames for maximum compatibility and optimize other things.

Pls let me know how you would configure the storage. My Idea was instead of 3 vdev of 10drive RaidZ2 as many run with 30drives, having 24 drives (of HGST 4TB 7200min enterprise HDDs) to run them 3 vdevs of 8 Drives (as one uncompressed pool) and then making datasets with qouta as a share.

The first problem you have is that there are not enough vdevs to support 10Gb throughput. If you want 10Gb, you need more vdevs, vdev count dictates performance. Putting more drives in the vdev, like you suggest, gives you greater utilization of the storage space, but it makes it slower. It is a trade between capacity and speed. What is more important?