Will it TrueNAS (First Build, Low Power, Supermicro)

[thomas-hn]

Hello,

for my new TrueNAS system the first draft of the list of parts was created. The system shall run TrueNAS CORE (or later maybe SCALE).
Beside being a pure NAS, the system shall also run a single VM with Proxmox Backup Server.

Very important to me is the power consumption and, therefore, I decided to go with an Atom board and its onboard SATA ports as well as it onboard 1 Gb/s Ethernet ports.

Here comes the parts list with my request to you to check it, please:

Chassis:

• Supermicro SuperChassis 743
  • At the moment I have to use it as a tower because of space issues at my home, but in the future it is planned to put it into a rack.
  • Hint: I want to have the 743 version with a regularly sized power supply.
  • It is planned to go with the "SQ" (Super Quiet) version of the chassis which comes with 2 "green" 80mm Mid-Fans and 1 92mm Rear-Fan.
  • In the parts list of the chassis I can only find 8 drive trays MCP-220-00193-0N, but no drive bay in which the trays are inserted. Are the bays part of the chassis itself or do I need them as separate parts?
• I also had a look on the Chenbro SR107 Plus, but want to go with Supermicro because of the availability of spare parts.

Motherboard & CPU:

• Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F
  • Do you think the big chassis with its Mid-Fans will be able to adequately cool the passively cooled CPU on the board or should I go with the "+" version (Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F) of the board that includes an active cooler?
  • Hint: Motherboards like to be kept in free-range (regarding the slightly oversized chassis).
  • Hint: The board is Mini-ITX and Supermicro only officially supports ATX and E-ATX for the CSE-743, but as Mini-ITX is a subset of ATX, it should fit. If not, I have to get a bit creative.

RAM:

• I want to put 128 GB ECC into the system, meaning 4x 32 GB.
• From Supermicro the supported RAM modules are MEM-DR432L-SL02-ER24 (ECC Registered, 2400MHz, 32 GB).
• However, these modules are hard to get in Germany. I found shops like CompuRAM.de or Speicher.de which provide alternative RAM modules which have been tested by them in combination with the motherboard. Do you think I could go with them?
• Could you recommend other RAM modules compatible with the board?

Backplane:

• I want to use SATA hard drives, no SAS drives.
• The motherboard has two MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) ports providing 6 Gb/s SATA.
• My plan is to use the BPN-SAS3-743A backplane that has two MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) ports, supporting up to 12 Gb/s SAS/SATA.
• Hint: I am trying to get a 743AC version of the chassis that already is equipped with the BPN-SAS3-743A backplane.
• The plan is to connect the backplane to the motherboard by 2 "MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) to MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643)" cables.

SSD Drive Bay:

• I would like to put an Supermicro CSE-M35TQB into the system, providing 5 SSD slots.
• Hint: The 8 hard drive trays and the 5 SSD trays would result in 13 drives, but the motherboard only has a maximum of 12 SATA ports.
• The 4 trays I will connect to the motherboard will be connected by 4 SATA cables.

Fans:

• My plan is to use the 80mm Supermicro "Green" fans at the beginning and putting 3 of them on the fan shroud in the mid of the chassis and one 92mm fan on the rear.
• Depending on the noise level, I will - maybe - try to replace the fans shroud in the mid of the chassis by some own construction with larger fans.

Harddrives:

• My plan is to use 6x 14 TB in RAIDZ2.
• Speed is not my highest priority, but more the power consumption and safety of the data.
• At the moment I have WD Red Pro drives in my system, mixed with some HGST drives.
• Which drives do you recommend for my new system?
  
  • WD Re Pro?
  • WD Gold?
  • Seagate Exos?
  • Seagate IronWolf Pro?
• Could I mix the brands into the same pool or should I stay with the same brand/type of drives? (thinking about what happens if a specific model has a bug and all drives fail simultaneously? When mixing the drives could their vibration countermeasures mess-up with each other? etc.)

Boot Drive:

• For the boot drive I want to go with an SSD mirror.
• Are simple Samsung SSD 870 Evo 500 GB fine for this?
• What filesystem is used by TrueNAS for the boot drive? Is it also ZFS? Is this a problem in combination with consumer SSDs?
• I think consumer SSDs are fine if the system dataset is ensured to be located on the HDD pool, right?

Power Supply:

• What I got so far is that Seasonic Power Supplies are highly recommended here.
• After getting some information about power supply sizing, a 450 W model should be sufficient for my setup.
• My assumption is that the system will idle at around 90-100 W, meaning, that a power supply with more than 500 W will have a load below 20% and therefore a decreased efficieny. But it is really hard to get high quality PSUs with only around 450 W.
• Should it be a power supply with a fan or is a completely passively cooled PSU also fine (e.g. a fanless Seasonic model)?
• Which power supply models do you recommend?
  
  • Seasonic PRIME Fanless PX Netzteil 450 W
  • Seasonic Prime Fanless PX 500
  • Seasonic Focus PX 550W
  • Seasonic Prime PX 650W
  • Any other model?
• Hint: I am aware of that a standard ATX power supply will not directly fit into the SuperChassis 743, but I want to have a mostly quiet server and a power supply I could simply exchange if it fails. Therefore, I will try to build some adapter to put the ATX power supply into the chassis.

Further Accessories:

• Above I already mentioned my thoughts about the passively cooled Atom board. Do you think it could be an advantage when putting a Supermicro Air Shroud on top of the board to concentrate the air flow a bit better?
  • If 'yes', do you have an idea which of the Supermicro Air Shrouds (MCP-310-49002-0N, MCP-310-48002-0N, MCP-310-74301-0N) would fit best on the A2SDi-8C-HLN4F motherboard?
• For the future use in a rack, I plan to get some rails. The Supermicro CSE-PT26L-B should be the right ones for my understanding.
• I also like the idea of a clean cable management in the rack. Therefore, planning to also purchase a "Cable Management Arm" (Supermicro MCP-290-00073-0N).

NIC:

• As mentioned above my plan is to go with the onboard 1 GBit/s Ethernet ports and - maybe - "link aggregate" them.
• However, do you have an idea about a 2.5 Gb/s NIC which is easy to get, compatible to TrueNAS CORE and SCALE and a low power consumption?
• Is there a NIC with SFP+ available that has also a low power consumption when only used at 1 GBit/s or 2.5 GBit/s?

HBA:

• Could you recommend an HBA with at least 8i (MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) connectors)? Just to be prepared if it is needed for accessing my data in case of troubles (it is not planned to have it in the system all the time).

• Have I forgotten some parts?
• What do you think about the setup?

Thanks a lot for your hints and recommendations,

Thomas

 

[thomas-hn]

I am wondering that there are no comments. Is there any information missing?
I would really appreciate your comments on my planned hardware.

 

[thomas-hn]

Really noone with comments here?

 

[Davvo]

• Supermicro SuperChassis 743
  • At the moment I have to use it as a tower because of space issues at my home, but in the future it is planned to put it into a rack.
  • Hint: I want to have the 743 version with a regularly sized power supply.
  • It is planned to go with the "SQ" (Super Quiet) version of the chassis which comes with 2 "green" 80mm Mid-Fans and 1 92mm Rear-Fan.
  • In the parts list of the chassis I can only find 8 drive trays MCP-220-00193-0N, but no drive bay in which the trays are inserted. Are the bays part of the chassis itself or do I need them as separate parts?

Are we talkining about this?

SC743AC-1K26B-SQ | 4U | Chassis | Products | Supermicro

743AC-1K26B-SQ

www.supermicro.com

If so, I think the bay is part of the chassis and requires the BPN-SAS3-743A Backplane.

Motherboard & CPU:

• Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F
  • Do you think the big chassis with its Mid-Fans will be able to adequately cool the passively cooled CPU on the board or should I go with the "+" version (Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F) of the board that includes an active cooler?
  • Hint: Motherboards like to be kept in free-range (regarding the slightly oversized chassis).
  • Hint: The board is Mini-ITX and Supermicro only officially supports ATX and E-ATX for the CSE-743, but as Mini-ITX is a subset of ATX, it should fit. If not, I have to get a bit creative.

Depending on the price difference yes, the alternative is to just stick a fan yourself with zip ties; I don't think that 3 fans will be able to generate enough airflow to cool the heatsink. Relative to the system, 20 to 30 usd for an additional fan are a sensible choice imho.
You shouldn't have too much of a problem with the Mini-ITX ff.

RAM:

• I want to put 128 GB ECC into the system, meaning 4x 32 GB.
• From Supermicro the supported RAM modules are MEM-DR432L-SL02-ER24 (ECC Registered, 2400MHz, 32 GB).
• However, these modules are hard to get in Germany. I found shops like CompuRAM.de or Speicher.de which provide alternative RAM modules which have been tested by them in combination with the motherboard. Do you think I could go with them?

If they have been tested I would try it. But I would go 2x 64GB instead in order to leave room for another two sticks (the motherboard can go up to 256GB).

• I want to use SATA hard drives, no SAS drives.
• The motherboard has two MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) ports providing 6 Gb/s SATA.
• My plan is to use the BPN-SAS3-743A backplane that has two MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) ports, supporting up to 12 Gb/s SAS/SATA.
• Hint: I am trying to get a 743AC version of the chassis that already is equipped with the BPN-SAS3-743A backplane.
• The plan is to connect the backplane to the motherboard by 2 "MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) to MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643)" cables.

Looks good to me.

SSD Drive Bay:

• I would like to put an Supermicro CSE-M35TQB into the system, providing 5 SSD slots.
• Hint: The 8 hard drive trays and the 5 SSD trays would result in 13 drives, but the motherboard only has a maximum of 12 SATA ports.
• The 4 trays I will connect to the motherboard will be connected by 4 SATA cables.

Unusual. You could go for something like this, much more pratical albeit not hot-swappable.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0967ZJ8KR

Fans:

• My plan is to use the 80mm Supermicro "Green" fans at the beginning and putting 3 of them on the fan shroud in the mid of the chassis and one 92mm fan on the rear.
• Depending on the noise level, I will - maybe - try to replace the fans shroud in the mid of the chassis by some own construction with larger fans.

I would go for max fan number in the middle of the chassis (right after the HDDs), but it's you choice.

Harddrives:

• My plan is to use 6x 14 TB in RAIDZ2.
• Speed is not my highest priority, but more the power consumption and safety of the data.
• At the moment I have WD Red Pro drives in my system, mixed with some HGST drives.
• Which drives do you recommend for my new system?
  
  • WD Re Pro?
  • WD Gold?
  • Seagate Exos?
  • Seagate IronWolf Pro?
• Could I mix the brands into the same pool or should I stay with the same brand/type of drives? (thinking about what happens if a specific model has a bug and all drives fail simultaneously? When mixing the drives could their vibration countermeasures mess-up with each other? etc.)

All the above models are good, you can mix different drives but have to choose them with similar specs. I'd say that among those, the WD Gold are the best. HGST have some firmware issues, look in the forum.

Boot Drive:

• For the boot drive I want to go with an SSD mirror.
• Are simple Samsung SSD 870 Evo 500 GB fine for this?
• What filesystem is used by TrueNAS for the boot drive? Is it also ZFS? Is this a problem in combination with consumer SSDs?
• I think consumer SSDs are fine if the system dataset is ensured to be located on the HDD pool, right?

From me you should either fo single-drive or go full redundancy (read following resource).

Highly Available Boot Pool Strategy

I've pounded a few versions of this out over the years, but I hate explaining over and over. TrueNAS allows a ZFS boot mirror pool to be created to increase the reliability of the NAS. This sounds great in theory, but there's a flaw. Due to...

www.truenas.com

TrueNAS exclusively uses ZFS, a consumer drive is ok if the dataset is not in on it (but on SCALE you should be careful not to use it for swap space).

Power Supply:

• What I got so far is that Seasonic Power Supplies are highly recommended here.
• After getting some information about power supply sizing, a 450 W model should be sufficient for my setup.
• My assumption is that the system will idle at around 90-100 W, meaning, that a power supply with more than 500 W will have a load below 20% and therefore a decreased efficieny. But it is really hard to get high quality PSUs with only around 450 W.
• Should it be a power supply with a fan or is a completely passively cooled PSU also fine (e.g. a fanless Seasonic model)?
• Which power supply models do you recommend?
  
  • Seasonic PRIME Fanless PX Netzteil 450 W
  • Seasonic Prime Fanless PX 500
  • Seasonic Focus PX 550W
  • Seasonic Prime PX 650W
  • Any other model?
• Hint: I am aware of that a standard ATX power supply will not directly fit into the SuperChassis 743, but I want to have a mostly quiet server and a power supply I could simply exchange if it fails. Therefore, I will try to build some adapter to put the ATX power supply into the chassis.

Go with a fan, your PSU won't be the noise issue in the system. It's also usually cheaper. I don't really reccomend using a PSU size that doesn't fit... it could be bad for the airflow.
I assume you read the following resource.

Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance

I've seen about 1,000 threads like this one where people decide that they can power a dozen hard drives off a 360 watt supply. DO NOT DO THIS. I've seen another 1,000 threads where people decide to buy the cheapest power supply that they can...

www.truenas.com

Further Accessories:

• Above I already mentioned my thoughts about the passively cooled Atom board. Do you think it could be an advantage when putting a Supermicro Air Shroud on top of the board to concentrate the air flow a bit better?
  • If 'yes', do you have an idea which of the Supermicro Air Shrouds (MCP-310-49002-0N, MCP-310-48002-0N, MCP-310-74301-0N) would fit best on the A2SDi-8C-HLN4F motherboard?
• For the future use in a rack, I plan to get some rails. The Supermicro CSE-PT26L-B should be the right ones for my understanding.
• I also like the idea of a clean cable management in the rack. Therefore, planning to also purchase a "Cable Management Arm" (Supermicro MCP-290-00073-0N).

If it's not listed in the case's sheet, I don't think any will fit.

NIC:

• As mentioned above my plan is to go with the onboard 1 GBit/s Ethernet ports and - maybe - "link aggregate" them.
• However, do you have an idea about a 2.5 Gb/s NIC which is easy to get, compatible to TrueNAS CORE and SCALE and a low power consumption?
• Is there a NIC with SFP+ available that has also a low power consumption when only used at 1 GBit/s or 2.5 GBit/s?

Skip 2.5Gbps NICs, they are a pain. SFP+ are as low power as you can get; I don't have a particular reccomendetion beyond going Chelsio or Intel.

HBA:

• Could you recommend an HBA with at least 8i (MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) connectors)? Just to be prepared if it is needed for accessing my data in case of troubles (it is not planned to have it in the system all the time).

• Have I forgotten some parts?
• What do you think about the setup?

Thanks a lot for your hints and recommendations,

Thomas

A tad too original in my opinion. Any LSI 9300-8i would likely be a solid choice.

 

[Pitfrr]

Hello,


Some remarks from my perspective.

I want to put 128 GB ECC into the system, meaning 4x 32 GB.

I'd eventually consider going with 2x 64GB since the motherboard has four slots and can go up to 256GB you might want to keep the possibility to upgrade the RAM (depending on your usage).
But of course that will also depend on how easy it is to find the memory...

Which drives do you recommend for my new system?

Anything but SMR drives! :-D

Could I mix the brands

Sure...

For the boot drive I want to go with an SSD mirror.

Any reason you want to mirror the boot drive? Wouldn't a single drive be enough (this again depends on your usage, for home usage for example mirroring boot drives might be overkill...)?

Are simple Samsung SSD 870 Evo 500 GB fine for this?

Definitely... And if you find 256GB or 128GB drives, even better!

What filesystem is used by TrueNAS for the boot drive?

Yep, ZFS. Works fine with consumer SSD.

Which power supply models do you recommend?

Have you seen this resource?

Should it be a power supply with a fan or is a completely passively cooled PSU also fine?

I think this depends on the usage and your preference... Other than that I don't have enough experience with power supply to say more...

- maybe - "link aggregate" them

Depending on your usage this might not bring any benefit if you're single (or almost) user (i.e. home usage).

 

[Ericloewe]

Hint: I want to have the 743 version with a regularly sized power supply.

You mean an ATX PSU? That's unusual.

Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F

• Do you think the big chassis with its Mid-Fans will be able to adequately cool the passively cooled CPU on the board or should I go with the "+" version (Supermicro A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F) of the board that includes an active cooler?
• Hint: Motherboards like to be kept in free-range (regarding the slightly oversized chassis).
• Hint: The board is Mini-ITX and Supermicro only officially supports ATX and E-ATX for the CSE-743, but as Mini-ITX is a subset of ATX, it should fit. If not, I have to get a bit creative.

Yeah, it's best to either get the + version or improvise one yourself, since there is no OEM airflow guide for this combination of chassis and board.

I would like to put an Supermicro CSE-M35TQB into the system, providing 5 SSD slots.

Does it fit? Those things need a chassis without guide rails on each bay. Also, why a 3.5" thing for SSDs? Also also, SATA is a weird choice for SSDs in 2023.

Could I mix the brands into the same pool

Yes.

Are simple Samsung SSD 870 Evo 500 GB fine for this?

Yes, though even the 250 GB model would be plenty.

What filesystem is used by TrueNAS for the boot drive? Is it also ZFS?

Yes it is ZFS.

I think consumer SSDs are fine if the system dataset is ensured to be located on the HDD pool, right?

They're fine either way, though the system dataset must be reliable (i.e. not a single disk).

My assumption is that the system will idle at around 90-100 W

Much lower I'd hope, with 8 disks and an A2SDi.

However, do you have an idea about a 2.5 Gb/s NIC which is easy to get, compatible to TrueNAS CORE and SCALE and a low power consumption?

No, 2.5 GbE is a world of junk. There are only degreees of crap.

Should it be a power supply with a fan or is a completely passively cooled PSU also fine (e.g. a fanless Seasonic model)?

Yes on the fan, definitely. Most mid-high-end PSUs can stop the fan at low load anyway.

Could you recommend an HBA with at least 8i (MiniSAS HD (SFF-8643) connectors)? Just to be prepared if it is needed for accessing my data in case of troubles (it is not planned to have it in the system all the time).

I don't the follow the reasoning, why would the HBA be useful?

 

[NugentS]

Same motherboard as I have used for a NAS. I put it in a FractDesign case with a couple of hot swap bays. Most of the drives are non hotswap though. I had seven HDD's plus some SSD's. The default fans in the FD case were not enough to cool the HDDs properly - so I put some high static pressure fans in, on a fan controller so I could tune things.

The MiniSAS connecters are SATA not SAS. Not sure what will happen if you try to plug them into a SAS backplane

For cooling I added a fan to the CPU. A Noctua NF-A6x25. No idea how the cooling would work in the SMC chassis.

My kit list - excluding drives and before I realised that the HDD temps were not acceptable
1x Fractal Design R5
1x A2SDi-H-TF
1x 750W EVGA SuperNova P5
2x MiniSAS HD to 4x SATA
1x Fractal GP-14 140mm Fan
1x Noctua NF-A6x25
2x Hot-swap 3.5" bay
1x SFT-OOB-LIC

 

[Ericloewe]

The MiniSAS connecters are SATA not SAS. Not sure what will happen if you try to plug them into a SAS backplane

It's a -A backplane, so it's - conceptually - not much more than a bunch of wires running to the right places. It does whatever the controller supports.

 

[NugentS]

Fair enough

 

[Etorix]

• Have I forgotten some parts?
• What do you think about the setup?

You're overtinking it. Your case comes with a 1200 W Platinum PSU (sized for the Xeon Scalable which would typically come in there…) and everything to attach drives. You only need a pair of SFF-8643-to-SFF-8643 to plug into the backplane.
A tray for 3.5" drives is overkill for SSDs. Use one of your 5.25" bays with something like this (Icy Dock).
The small heatsink on the Atom board is designed for 1U servers, and the airflow that is then naturally directed to it. In this big case, put a fan or get a 8C+ board.
Drives can be anything CMR which comes at the best price per terabyte.
And my exprerience is that pretty much any RDIMM module from Micron/Samsung/SK Hynix will work. Second-hand is great.

If you want more than 1 GbE, get the A2SDi-H-TF. A NIC would take your only PCIe slot.
With the number of bays you're considering, and still keeping with the low-power theme, maybe a Flex-ATX X10SDV board would be the best fit, either a -7TP4F/7TP8F board or just any model and a -8i HBA.

If the motherboard dies, and you have to replace it by something else, any -8i HBA with right cables will do. Or any motherboard with 8 SATA ports and two reverse breakout cables to your backplane.

 

[thomas-hn]

All of you answered that mixing harddrives is possible. But just to make absolutely sure:
Can we be sure that the internal protection mechanisms of the drives do not interfere with each other?

For example, the WD Red Pro can detect vibrations and take countermeasures to reduce them. If drives from different brands are combined, could the countermeasures interfere with each other and the vibrations could get into resonance between the drives?
Maybe, I'm worrying too much, but better asking than havin troubles later.

Are we talkining about this?

SC743AC-1K26B-SQ | 4U | Chassis | Products | Supermicro

743AC-1K26B-SQ

www.supermicro.com

Yes, that's the chassis. However, it is also available with smaller power supplies (e.g. 660 W).

If it's not listed in the case's sheet, I don't think any will fit.

For the SuperChassis 743 there are 3 compatible Air Shrouds mentioned:
MCP-310-49002-0N - SC743 Intel DP X9, X8 PC air shroud 12x13MB
MCP-310-48002-0N - Intel DP X8, X7 motherboard air shroud for passive CPU heatsink
MCP-310-74301-0N - Air Shroud for SC743-SQ
The last two Air shrouds sound interesting, the one "for passive CPU heatsink" and the other for the SC743-SQ.
Do you think they could also fit in the Mini-ITX board?

Any reason you want to mirror the boot drive? Wouldn't a single drive be enough (this again depends on your usage, for home usage for example mirroring boot drives might be overkill...)?

Even that the system is for home use I want to avoid the failure of the system because of a boot drive issue. For example in the case you are not at home and your system becomes unavailable. As the prices for consumer SSDs are really low, I would simply go with two mirrored drives, but I have to check the https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/highly-available-boot-pool-strategy.184/ as mentioned by Davvo above.

You mean an ATX PSU? That's unusual.

Yes, the SuperChassis 743 has an PS/2 (I think that's the correct name) power supply form factor. That's almost the same as the ATX power supplies, except the mounting holes are at different places. The reason I prefer this is, that in case of troubles I can simply take another standard ATX power supply lying around as spare part (after adapting the mounting holes).

I don't the follow the reasoning, why would the HBA be useful?

It is just for the case that the motherboard with its onboard SATA ports breaks and I have to take another motherboard which has not enough ports.
Just to be prepared.

Same motherboard as I have used for a NAS. I put it in a FractDesign case with a couple of hot swap bays. Most of the drives are non hotswap though. I had seven HDD's plus some SSD's. The default fans in the FD case were not enough to cool the HDDs properly - so I put some high static pressure fans in, on a fan controller so I could tune things.

May I ask for your power consumption if all drives are spinning?

1 x SFT-OOB-LIC

Good point, I would have missed the license.

A tray for 3.5" drives is overkill for SSDs. Use one of your 5.25" bays with something like this (Icy Dock).

This looks interesting, thanks.

The small heatsink on the Atom board is designed for 1U servers, and the airflow that is then naturally directed to it. In this big case, put a fan or get a 8C+ board.

What do you think about adding an Air Shroud into the chassis to redirect the air flow better to the Mini-ITX board? Even that the Air Shrouds are not made for the Mini-ITX board, could they help?

With the number of bays you're considering, and still keeping with the low-power theme, maybe a Flex-ATX X10SDV board would be the best fit, either a -7TP4F/7TP8F board or just any model and a -8i HBA.

In your "signature" I see that you have similar setups running. Do you have some information about your power consumptions of the systems if the harddrives are spinning (maybe also data in case the CPU idles and is under higher load)?

 

[Davvo]

Can we be sure that the internal protection mechanisms of the drives do not interfere with each other?

If you pick drives with similar RPM, yes.

Do you think they could also fit in the Mini-ITX board?

The issue is to check whether the shrouds are made for Mini-ITX boards or are designed with ATX boards in mind. I'd say taking the + version of the motherboard and going without the shroud is the safer solution.

A tray for 3.5" drives is overkill for SSDs. Use one of your 5.25" bays with something like this (Icy Dock).

Wow! :o Love that space efficency.

 

[thomas-hn]

Even that the system is for home use I want to avoid the failure of the system because of a boot drive issue. For example in the case you are not at home and your system becomes unavailable. As the prices for consumer SSDs are really low, I would simply go with two mirrored drives, but I have to check the https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/highly-available-boot-pool-strategy.184/ as mentioned by Davvo above.

After reading the article I got the point that with a simple Boot Drive Mirror it could happen that in case of a drive failure the system will not be able to start-up if it tries to boot from the partially failed drive.
Nevertheless, I will stay with this simple approach as it still gives me the advantage that in this failure case I only have to pull out the partially failed drive and the system will be able to boot up again.

 

[Etorix]

For the SuperChassis 743 there are 3 compatible Air Shrouds mentioned:
MCP-310-49002-0N - SC743 Intel DP X9, X8 PC air shroud 12x13MB
MCP-310-48002-0N - Intel DP X8, X7 motherboard air shroud for passive CPU heatsink
MCP-310-74301-0N - Air Shroud for SC743-SQ
The last two Air shrouds sound interesting, the one "for passive CPU heatsink" and the other for the SC743-SQ.
Do you think they could also fit in the Mini-ITX board?

The question is whether these shrouds would interfere with some component on the mini-ITX. They are designed for much larger Xeon heatsinks, so will go over the tiny Atom heatsink… and whatever is around it.
Just put a 60mm fan on the Atom: It needs a little (directed) airflow, but not more than that.

In your "signature" I see that you have similar setups running. Do you have some information about your power consumptions of the systems if the harddrives are spinning (maybe also data in case the CPU idles and is under higher load)?

Unfortunately for you, I never tried to measure the systems "at the wall". Atom C3000 and Xeon D-1500 are known to sip just a few watts at idle; max load is pretty much their TDP, plus whatever RAM and drives require. ServeTheHome has some interesting graphs showing power consumption by (Broadwell-D) Xeon D-1500, Atom C3000 and (Skylake-D) Xeon D-2100. These figures are for their whole test system, which is of course not a NAS, but they give a rather good idea of what we can expect: Power to spin drives should totally dominate over 20-30 W idle for the rest of the system, and even over 40-60 W at full load.