Validation of Hardware

[VariableInc]

Hi all,

I'm just about to take the plunge into FreeNAS. I currently have 2 QNAP 8 bays with 8 3TB WD Reds. Both are about 90% used.

I am looking to build a 10 bay with 10 8TB WD Reds and consolidate everything. This is for home use primarily for Plex viewing. I've tried to read as much as I can on the forums but there are a couple of things that seem to be a little above what I'm capable of understanding.

I think I want RAIDZ2, so 2 redundancies correct?

The hardware I was looking at it:

MOBO/CPU
ASRock C2570D4I
I've been trying to find people who have used this, there are a few that have used this without an HBA card, but I'm not sure if they are using the extra SATA ports. And those that are, are posts from 2+ years ago. Is the board going to be capable or should I use the PCI-E with a LSI 9211-8i?
I found a YouTube clip of someone who built something very similar to me, but I can't find out how it all went:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrUs2QMF1ns
I know a lot of people like the SuperMicro but I really wanted as small case as I can manage. All the SuperMicro cases that fitted 10 bays of 3.5 disk seem to be quite large in comparison.

Memory
2x 16GB Crucial (CT2KIT102472BD160B 2x8GB)
ECC RAM and supported by Motherboard

Case
Lian Li PC-Q26B
Only case I can find that natively fits 10 drives with Mini-ITX standard

PSU
EVAGSuperNOVA P2 650W

HDD
8x WD Red 8TB

Assuming all the above will work, can someone suggest what I should be running the FreeNAS off of? Should I purchase another SSD sata drive? Or can I go with USB drives. I read that USB wasn't working too well on 9.3, but I really don't know enough about what the OS will require and what is a trustworthy starting point. Any suggestions.

Hopefully I've read everything and haven't made too many silly mistakes.

Any suggestions or advice would really be appreciated, I'm used to the QNAP/Thecus etc where it is all done for you, but doesn't scale as well.

Cheers!

 

[danb35]

I'm pretty sure that motherboard is the same one used in the FreeNAS Mini, so it should work fine, at least for the first six drives. There have been reports of problems with the Marvel SATA ports, but I thought I'd heard that they had been improved more recently. Does the board have to be mini ITX?

Your chosen case looks nice, but be sure you have adequate cooling for the drives. Lots of drives in a small space equals temperature concerns--you want to keep the drives under 40 C at all times.

For a boot device, it's up to you. USB is cheap and available, and works adequately. A small SSD is less cheap, but likely to be more reliable. A SATA DOM is less cheap yet, but very convenient in that it doesn't take a drive bay. Loss of a boot device isn't a major event, as long as you have a saved copy of your config file--just install to a new device, upload the saved config file, and you're back up and running. With this build, I'd probably look for a small (30 GB is entirely adequate) SSD, since there's a free 2.5" bay anyway.

 

[VariableInc]

Thanks for that, that's really good advice. I saw the FreeNAS Mini, I think there was a new model that came out recently with 8 drives. So that gives me some confidence.

I'll have a look for a decent quality SATA SSD. Good to know that it is just a basic config file that I need. I was curious about that.

The board doesn't have to be Mini ITX, but i haven't found any decent cases that aren't insane in size that do 10 drives. If you have any suggestions I would love to hear what you think.

Cheers!

 

[Vincent Jansen]

I have about the same setup. Same mobo, less mem.
10x 3TB WD Red (trying to get 5x 3TB more working)
Kingston USB stick for freenas.
Trying to expand my ports by adding Adaptec RAID 5805 atm. (for the new 5 drives) but no luck getting it to work today. Unclear why. Someone advised me to get a HBA card instead of a raid card. Trying to figure out the difference at the moment. I actually just want a card to expand my ports, FreeNAS will handle the raid work.

 

[VariableInc]

Hey Vincent,

Thanks for letting me know that's really helpful! What version of FreeNAS are you running, anything needed to get it up and running smoothly (special drivers)?

Don't quote me on this but as I was reading through all to the doco I could get my hands on I researched some of the HBA cards. From my understanding RAID cards are just HBA cards with the RAID features on them. You can buy HBA only cards off eBay for pretty cheap. There was a really good article I read (old now but seems to still be valid)

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/confused-about-that-lsi-card-join-the-crowd.11901/

It goes through the best recommendations, initially the recommended card is:
IBM ServeRAID M1015

But I don't like the idea of having to muck around with hardware and the price of the predone card is much more reasonable these days. So for further expansion I was looking at:
LSI Internal SAS SATA 9211-8i HBA PCI-E
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-LSI-...936840?hash=item418556ddc8:g:p2cAAOSwQItT6Jyk


As both have SAS connectors I think that a Fanout Cable would be required to connect the SATA drives.

Amphenol Mini SAS SFF-8087 to 4x SATA Fanout Cable 100cm
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_...SAS+SFF-8087+to+4x+SATA+Fanout+Cable&_sacat=0

 

[Vincent Jansen]

Thanks for the great reply :) appreciate it a lot!
If the LSI Internal SAS SATA 9211-8i HBA PCI-E is a 100% compatible with my mobo and freenas I think I'm gonna buy this one. Hope it more plug and play then the card I have now, my god it's giving me a headache :S
Maybe I can re-use the sas fan out cables I already have.

 

[VariableInc]

Pretty sure any Fanout cable will suffice, I did read some cheap brands can fail spectacularly so just make sure it is a decent quality one.

Let me know how it goes though as I might be able to get away with 6TB drives if I know that it can be expanded in the future.

Cheers!

 

[Vincent Jansen]

Haha I was hoping you already got that one and got it to work :p.

 

[Marcet]

ASRock C2570D4I has Intel an Marvell controllers. Intel's is working well as expected (ports marked 27-32 on card manual).
Marvell SE9172 is also working well, it runs two ports on the right (8 and 9).

The buggy one is Marvell SE9230 which runs 4 sata ports (11 to 15).
Out of the box, it can handle no more than two drives. But there is a patch available at AsRock Rack WebSite : http://www.asrockrack.com/support/faq.asp
Just follow the procedure under : "Marvell 9230 FW update Procedure".

You should be fine with 4 drives connected after the update.

 

[Vincent Jansen]

I'll try to contact asrock support to confirm this card will work well. Just to be sure :)

 

[Marcet]

I'll try to contact asrock support to confirm this card will work well. Just to be sure :)

Look at my Backup Server configuration in my signature ;)

 

[Vincent Jansen]

@VariableInc I finally did get the raid card to see my drives and configured it as JBOD. Unfortunately freenas does not see the drives.
I made a plee for help on the forum hoping I can get it fixed. I am still looking into the HBA option though.