mikemccand
Dabbler
- Joined
- May 3, 2019
- Messages
- 13
Hi All,
First post!
I've got a ~7 year old FreeBSD ZFS 4U rack-mount home filer, 5 4 TB drives in Raid Z1, 32 GB RAM, that I'm looking to replace with a new build.
It has served me well, despite non-ECC RAM, and despite only RAIDZ1, but is getting too close to full, and has been showing more data errors recently. I have backups to another ZFS box via "zfs send/receive".
It's holding media, data sets, a growing MySQL DB. It doesn't need to be super high performance. I don't think I need separate ZIL or L2ARC cache devices.
I'd like the new box to have 64 GB ECC RAM, hoping to get ~4 X the storage, maybe with 8 12 TB NAS/DC drives in RAIDZ2.
Tentative parts:
- Case: either one of the Supermicro 4U rack mount cases, or the cheaper non redundant power supplied Rosewill cases: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811147164
- Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCH-LN4F (it's modernish, supports 8X SATA native, recommended in the FreeNAS hardware guide)
- Boot drives: 2X mirror'd boot SSDs: maybe Samsung EVO
- HBA: https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6G...0-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162862201664
- 2X Mini-SAS to 4X Sata cables: https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8087-Female-Controller-Backplane/dp/B07CKX62L6
- Hard drives: 8X 12 TB WD Gold, or WD Ultrastar DC HC520 12 TB HDD
- CPU: ?
- RAM: 2X 32 GB ECC UDIMM
Questions:
- This motherboard has 2 M.2 connectors -- could I use those for my 2X mirrored SSD boot drives?
- If I wanted to use 10 (instead of 8) drives, I think I would need a SAS expander; does anyone know which SAS expander works well with the above card?
- How to know which HBA card to pick? The Art of Server sells so many on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/str/theartofserver/HBA-IT-mode-controllers/_i.html?_storecat=23844485012
- Which CPU? I'm overwhelmed by all the Xeons out there ... I'd like something beefy enough to transcode maybe up to 4 4K video streams from Plex, but fast single core clock speed too.
- Which specific RAM? Too many choices... and the "Tested Memory List" on Supermicro's site only lists 8 and 16 GB UDIMMs. Hmm are there even 32 GB ECC UDIMMs?
- Is it too soon to trust the 12 TB NAS/DC drives?
- Is it better to put the drives all on the HBA? Or on the 8X native SATA ports?
Thank you for any help! This will be my first FreeNAS build.
Mike
First post!
I've got a ~7 year old FreeBSD ZFS 4U rack-mount home filer, 5 4 TB drives in Raid Z1, 32 GB RAM, that I'm looking to replace with a new build.
It has served me well, despite non-ECC RAM, and despite only RAIDZ1, but is getting too close to full, and has been showing more data errors recently. I have backups to another ZFS box via "zfs send/receive".
It's holding media, data sets, a growing MySQL DB. It doesn't need to be super high performance. I don't think I need separate ZIL or L2ARC cache devices.
I'd like the new box to have 64 GB ECC RAM, hoping to get ~4 X the storage, maybe with 8 12 TB NAS/DC drives in RAIDZ2.
Tentative parts:
- Case: either one of the Supermicro 4U rack mount cases, or the cheaper non redundant power supplied Rosewill cases: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811147164
- Motherboard: Supermicro X11SCH-LN4F (it's modernish, supports 8X SATA native, recommended in the FreeNAS hardware guide)
- Boot drives: 2X mirror'd boot SSDs: maybe Samsung EVO
- HBA: https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6G...0-IT-Mode-for-ZFS-FreeNAS-unRAID/162862201664
- 2X Mini-SAS to 4X Sata cables: https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8087-Female-Controller-Backplane/dp/B07CKX62L6
- Hard drives: 8X 12 TB WD Gold, or WD Ultrastar DC HC520 12 TB HDD
- CPU: ?
- RAM: 2X 32 GB ECC UDIMM
Questions:
- This motherboard has 2 M.2 connectors -- could I use those for my 2X mirrored SSD boot drives?
- If I wanted to use 10 (instead of 8) drives, I think I would need a SAS expander; does anyone know which SAS expander works well with the above card?
- How to know which HBA card to pick? The Art of Server sells so many on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/str/theartofserver/HBA-IT-mode-controllers/_i.html?_storecat=23844485012
- Which CPU? I'm overwhelmed by all the Xeons out there ... I'd like something beefy enough to transcode maybe up to 4 4K video streams from Plex, but fast single core clock speed too.
- Which specific RAM? Too many choices... and the "Tested Memory List" on Supermicro's site only lists 8 and 16 GB UDIMMs. Hmm are there even 32 GB ECC UDIMMs?
- Is it too soon to trust the 12 TB NAS/DC drives?
- Is it better to put the drives all on the HBA? Or on the 8X native SATA ports?
Thank you for any help! This will be my first FreeNAS build.
Mike