10TB RAIDZ2 fileserver - Are these components okay?

[Abnovitas]

Hello everyone!

I'm about to replace our current backup server (Linux+HW RAID-5) and I now finished gathering the components I'm planning to use.
I'd be really grateful if somebody could take a quick look at it and tell me if there's anything wrong with this build or if I forgot anything. This will be the first FreeNAS/ZFS server I build and set up, so I'm not 100% sure yet, if I got everything right.
The server will be backup server for now, but I plan to replace our fileserver with it later on. The workload won't be that high. It will mostly serve CAD files via CIFS and a little NFS over gigabit ethernet. I might create one or two iSCSI volumes later on, but that's optional.

Out of 8 disks with 2TB each I'm planning to use 7 disks for RAIDZ2 and one spare drive, so ~10TB usable space + 2x parity + 1x spare. Or should I go with RAIDZ3 without spare?

Case	1x	Supermicro CSE-835TQ-R920B	3U, 8x 3.5" hot-swap trays, redundant 920W PSU
Mainboard	1x	Supermicro X9SCA-F	needs BIOS update for IB CPUs - is USB boot possible?
CPU	1x	Intel Xeon E3-1275V2	is it fast enough to max out 1Gbps via CIFS from ZFS?
RAM	2x	16 GB Kingston ValueRAM DIMM ECC DDR3-1333 (2x 8 GB per kit, 32 GB total)
HBA	1x	LSI SAS 9207-8i	anything I should know regarding firmware, JBOD, 3TB+ and SMART capabilities? I'd like to have the possibility to upgrade the drives in the future
HDD	8x	2TB Seagate Constellation ES.2 SAS (ST32000645SS)	any bad experiences with this drives?
Cables	2x	SFF-8087 to 4x SATA/SAS cable	I still have two of those from another controller
Boot drive	1x	Intel 520series 2,5" SSD 60 GB	I'd prefer do a full installation for now
L2ARC	1x	Intel 520series 2,5" SSD 240 GB
L2ARC	1x	Intel 520series 2,5" SSD 240 GB
ZIL	2x	Intel 313Series 2,5" 20 GB

Thank you very much in advance!

 

[bollar]

You might want to look at this thread: SuperMicro Rack Mount Config Opinions Please There's some overlap between your configuration and mine -- my general feeling is that the system will work fine.

You will want to look at your SFF-8087 cables to make sure that they include the fifth crossover cable. The SuperMicro backplane requires it.

 

[Abnovitas]

Thanks for your reply!
I actually used your post as a rough guide in the beginning, especially regarding the HBA :)
I since added two Intel 313series 20 GB to the build for a mirrored ZIL and I guess I will order the parts tomorrow. As soon as the build is up and (hopefully) running I will report back with the results.

Again, thank you very much for taking your time to look over the parts!


Edit: Wow, somehow my original post got deleted after I edited it...
This was the original post:


Hello everyone!

I'm about to replace our current backup server (Linux+HW RAID-5) and I now finished gathering the components I'm planning to use.
I'd be really grateful if somebody could take a quick look at it and tell me if there's anything wrong with this build or if I forgot anything. This will be the first FreeNAS/ZFS server I build and set up, so I'm not 100% sure yet, if I got everything right.
The server will be backup server for now, but I plan to replace our fileserver with it later on. The workload won't be that high. It will mostly serve CAD files via CIFS and a little NFS over gigabit ethernet. I might create one or two iSCSI volumes later on, but that's optional.

Out of 8 disks with 2TB each I'm planning to use 7 disks for RAIDZ2 and one spare drive, so ~10TB usable space + 2x parity + 1x spare. Or should I go with RAIDZ3 without spare?

Case	1x	Supermicro CSE-835TQ-R920B	3U, 8x 3.5" hot-swap trays, redundant 920W PSU
Mainboard	1x	Supermicro X9SCA-F	needs BIOS update for IB CPUs - is USB boot possible?
CPU	1x	Intel Xeon E3-1275V2	is it fast enough to max out 1Gbps via CIFS from ZFS?
RAM	2x	16 GB Kingston ValueRAM DIMM ECC DDR3-1333 (2x 8 GB per kit, 32 GB total)
HBA	1x	LSI SAS 9207-8i	anything I should know regarding firmware, JBOD, 3TB+ and SMART capabilities? I'd like to have the possibility to upgrade the drives in the future
HDD	8x	2TB Seagate Constellation ES.2 SAS (ST32000645SS)	any bad experiences with this drives?
Cables	2x	SFF-8087 to 4x SATA/SAS cable	I still have two of those from another controller
Boot drive	1x	Intel 520series 2,5" SSD 60 GB	I'd prefer do a full installation for now
L2ARC	1x	Intel 520series 2,5" SSD 240 GB
ZIL	2x	Intel 313series 2,5" SSD 20 GB
DVD	1x	Samsung SN-208BB Slim

Thank you very much in advance!

 

[survive]

Hi Abnovitas,

A couple of thoughts.....

Why are you going with the X9SCA? Do you need the PCI slots? If not you might want to consider something like the X9SCM-F so you have 2 8x & 2 4x PCI-e slots. Check with Supermicro's site but either board should drop right into the case you selected.

The Supermicro boards will certainly boot from USB, in fact the X9SCl\M boards have an internal USB header so you can plug the flash drive directly onto the board. Take a look at these images:

http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/1299231588.jpeg

http://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Supermicro-X9SCM-F-Overview.jpg

In the first image, right above the SATA ports, you can see silkscreened onto the board where the USB header should be and in the second one you can see the USB port.

The proc you have selected will certainly allow you to run CIFS full-bore on gig-e....that's a boatload of processing power. The LSI controller you picked out is also an absolute beast. Personally I wouldn't waste an SSD as a boot drive for FreeNAS, but it's really your call there.

One thing I would be concerned about is the write speed of your chosen zil drives.....the ark specs them out at ~100MB/s which is pretty close to gig-e running full-bore....it might be a bottleneck or it could be a perfect fit.

-Will

 

[Abnovitas]

Thanks a lot for that information!

I might go with the X9SCM-F actually. Somehow the shop I was browsing for components filtered out the micro ATX boards, so I didn't even see it :) That onboard USB port is a nice feature and might convince me to skip the boot drive.
Could you recommend any alternative to the 313 drives? It shouldn't be that expensive, but pretty much every SLC SSD I could find was that slow.

On another topic:
It seems that you as a mod can see my original post and my answer to bollar's post, but for me they vanished after I tried to edit them. I got an error after I edited them about missing permissions and that particular post was gone.
So for me there are only two post in this thread. The first one by bollar and yours.

 

[c4rp3d13m]

For the OS full install, dont you think 60GB is over kill? I am using this SATA DOM for just $21.00 as my boot device, so far so good.

 

[Abnovitas]

So, here are my experiences with that hardware configuration, as promised :)
This is now semi-offtopic because I went with a straight FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE install instead of FreeNAS, but I don't know why it would differ much from FreeNAS.

There isn't much to say actually. I ordered the parts as listed above (minus the ZIL drives) and pretty much everything worked out perfectly fine. The only exception was the CPU:
Supermicro ships their mainboards with an old BIOS version, so the X9SCA-F doesn't support an Ivy Bridge processor out of the box. Luckily I remembered to order a cheap Celeron G440 (<40€) so I'd be able to upgrade the BIOS. The rest was a cakewalk and worked out exactly as I hoped :)
(btw: the case came with a slim DVD-RW drive already, so no need to buy an extra one)

Thanks again for your help guys!

 

[bollar]

Thanks for the update and glad it worked.

BTW, I couldn't find a great alternative to that Intel 313 SSD and decided to order a 20GB version.

 

[Nomad]

For the OS full install, dont you think 60GB is over kill? I am using this SATA DOM for just $21.00 as my boot device, so far so good.

ASUS E35M1-M PRO Fusion AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066
MASSCOOL PCI Card, 4 internal SATA Model XWT-RC040 (2 units)
Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM (12 units)
Kingspec 8GB SATA DOM MLC Flash SSD Disk On Module (Boot Disk from eBay)

Diem, can you talk about your build at all? Write/Speeds, dd, iperf, etc. I'm very interested in this because I've heard rumors this board could support 16GB and currently have two builds in my Newegg box for my 3rd NAS.