Folks, I am upgrading an old FreeNAS system based on an i7-920 based system to a new E5-2409 based build using the http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9DR7-TF_.cfm motherboard, which I got a great deal on, and a http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/846/SC846E26-R1200.cfm case with built in SAS expander.
My question is really about how to optimize the storage configuration on the motherboard. I have M1015 SAS controllers from the old build that can easily be transferred into the new system, but the motherboard has a built in LSI 2208 controller with 1GB of cache, and I happen to have the BBU that goes with the motherboard.
I would normally just plug the two SAS links to the exapnder into the onboard 2208, but I saw this discussion (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-for-vmware-view-desktops.15199/) that indicated the ideal use of the 2208 is for a very high performance slog device.
In the thread, a conventional hard drive was connected to the device, but today wouldn't make more sense to use a higher performance SSD, or is the raw capacity of the slog device what is being optimized for? What is the right way to think about what should be connected to the 2208 in this configuration in terms of tradeoffs?
The other way is to use the onboard 2208 to talk to the case expander. In this case, is there any benefit to overall performance using the 2208 instead of the M1015? If I connect the BBU in this configuration, how do I tell FreeNAS the writes are protected by the BBU?
BTW, I am also curious if there is any advantage to using two different controllers to connect to the backplane instead of being hung one just one of them, and if there would be any additional complexity with FreeNAS in that redundant configuration?
My workload is mostly media recording and playback (it's the backend of a large DVR system), video and music storage, as well as the nightly backup target for a set of home machines. No vmdk files, and I run FreeNAS native on the hardware. Everything is connected via 1 Gbps Ethernet in the home, except for a ESX server that runs a number of guest VM's (including the backup server and LTO tape library) which is a point to point 10 Gbps link to the FreeNAS server with a separate address block and hostnames.
Thanks in advance for the advice guys. FreeNAS is an incredible product, and I feel fortunate using it as the core of my home network. It's never lost a single byte of data for me, and it's the only NAS implementation I have built that I can say that about!
Thank you!
Mike
My question is really about how to optimize the storage configuration on the motherboard. I have M1015 SAS controllers from the old build that can easily be transferred into the new system, but the motherboard has a built in LSI 2208 controller with 1GB of cache, and I happen to have the BBU that goes with the motherboard.
I would normally just plug the two SAS links to the exapnder into the onboard 2208, but I saw this discussion (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/freenas-for-vmware-view-desktops.15199/) that indicated the ideal use of the 2208 is for a very high performance slog device.
In the thread, a conventional hard drive was connected to the device, but today wouldn't make more sense to use a higher performance SSD, or is the raw capacity of the slog device what is being optimized for? What is the right way to think about what should be connected to the 2208 in this configuration in terms of tradeoffs?
The other way is to use the onboard 2208 to talk to the case expander. In this case, is there any benefit to overall performance using the 2208 instead of the M1015? If I connect the BBU in this configuration, how do I tell FreeNAS the writes are protected by the BBU?
BTW, I am also curious if there is any advantage to using two different controllers to connect to the backplane instead of being hung one just one of them, and if there would be any additional complexity with FreeNAS in that redundant configuration?
My workload is mostly media recording and playback (it's the backend of a large DVR system), video and music storage, as well as the nightly backup target for a set of home machines. No vmdk files, and I run FreeNAS native on the hardware. Everything is connected via 1 Gbps Ethernet in the home, except for a ESX server that runs a number of guest VM's (including the backup server and LTO tape library) which is a point to point 10 Gbps link to the FreeNAS server with a separate address block and hostnames.
Thanks in advance for the advice guys. FreeNAS is an incredible product, and I feel fortunate using it as the core of my home network. It's never lost a single byte of data for me, and it's the only NAS implementation I have built that I can say that about!
Thank you!
Mike
