About to pluge in after 5 months of study

[Nishant]

Hello all,
I've been coming down to this forum, the guides and the links posted here, freenas wiki and all sorts of documentation floating around the net from mid Dec 2013..

I'm Nishant from Singapore and I'm building a FreeNAS box. (Feeling proud already)...
Unfortunately, we dont have a vibrant online server component stores or something (and hence a bit of delay), but finally, i've reached the kickoff stage.

I've got a couple of folks coming down from USA to SG in coming weeks, and need to settle down on Mobo and Ram.
I've the following option shortlisted for Mobo:
Supermicro X10SLM-F Motherboard - LGA1150 C224 DDR3 PCIE3.0 SATA3 uATX
Supermicro X10SLM+-F-O uATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224 DDR3 1600
Supermicro X10SLL-F Motherboard - LGA1150 C222 DDR3 PCIE3.0 SATA3 uATX
all between 170-180 USD.
HDD (for ZFS Z2): WD Red 3TB x 4
Processor : I3 4330 or 4130 (yet to zero down on this, depending on the total build cost and TDP)
But most of all,
I need help selecting the RAM (require 16gb ram in 2 slots).
There have been posts about how Kingston 8gb are no longer supported.
I've dug around a bit but have (almost) no constructive/concrete information on other options. Any inputs on this would be well appreciated.
THanks all!

 

[DrKK]

For the amount of hard drive space you are proposing, 3TBx4, you will be fine with 8GB total. 100% certain. 4GB ECC sticks for this board are easy to find.

Also, the X10SLL or X10SLM are excellent boards, ones we highly recommend here. They also support the very inexpensive G3220 (and its faster cousins) CPU, if you want to use that. An Intel G3220 will be more than sufficient for a FreeNAS for personal use if you are not using encryption, or doing very intensive transcoding tasks (for example, certain uses of Plexmedia).

 

[solarisguy]

What are you going to do if one of the complements flown in from the USA fails?

Will you wait until somebody brings you a replacement from the USA some months or weeks later?

 

[Nishant]

For the amount of hard drive space you are proposing, 3TBx4, you will be fine with 8GB total. 100% certain. 4GB ECC sticks for this board are easy to find.

Also, the X10SLL or X10SLM are excellent boards, ones we highly recommend here. They also support the very inexpensive G3220 (and its faster cousins) CPU, if you want to use that. An Intel G3220 will be more than sufficient for a FreeNAS for personal use if you are not using encryption, or doing very intensive transcoding tasks (for example, certain uses of Plexmedia).

Hi DrKK, thanks for showing support on the motherboard, as a matter of fact, yes the forum posts and user blogs are the sources that helped me narrow down my MoBo choices.

As for ram, my primary concern, I know for now 8gb is enough, but I'd like to keep room for expansion, even if I build this setup with 8gb,i would prefer a single 8gb ram stick. So, I still need some suggestions.

As for CPU, yes, I plan to use transcoding and maybe stream HD to (max) 4 devices. I would also tinker around with other plugins and may use the same setup for all the fancy stuff it can provide.

 

[Nishant]

What are you going to do if one of the complements flown in from the USA fails?

Will you wait until somebody brings you a replacement from the USA some months or weeks later?

Hi solarisguy,
This is a question that took a lot of thinking and weighing pros and cons.
I've decided to sources most of the stuff from USA, except power supply and casing.
HDD (WD RED 3tb) from Amazon, they're nice to provide free International shipping to Singapore (on this product).
The same stuff here in Singapore would cost me 60 USD more, per hdd.

As for RAM and MoBo, sadly Amazon doesn't have free shipping, so my friend is going to bring it over in person. 16gb RAM from USA saves me another 100 USD. MoBo, about 75ish USD.

Even if anyone of the show components fail and I would have to ship it back to USA, I would still be in +ve side of the equation, and since this is a home usage device that I'm building, as opposed to production server, I can handle a couple of weeks downtime. Also, if necessary, I could always approach and avail (paid) services/repairs from Supermicro and Western Digital here in SG.
Also, I keep on moving around countries, so having (or missing) country specific warranty is not on top of the list.

But do let me know of any other downsides that you may have in mind, I'm a first timer for such a custom build, but have purchased and used off-the-shelf products purchased from overseas merchants.

 

[solarisguy]

These are not necessarily downsides, just comments.

If you can, try to have someone assemble and test motherboard+CPU+RAM in the USA, before they get flown to you. So do not wait until the last minute, in case anything turns out to be DOA (Dead On Arrival).

Please read terms of warranty very carefully. For example, Western Digital has divided the world into the regions. In any region, their services, paid for or not, are only available to items sold in that particular region (corporate sales have different rules).

Consider RAID-Z3, so you can keep running on effective RAID-Z2, while waiting for a replacement hard drive.

 

[DrKK]

Better yet, buy an extra hard drive, to have a cold spare always on hand.

 

[solarisguy]

RAID-Z3 and a cold spare? ;)

 

[Nishant]

Cold spare is a fair suggestion and i'd look into it. (Z3 would require 5 spinning disks, hence more power consumption; a recurring cost)

Meanwhile, a pressing matter is single stick 8gig ram.
Do we have some suggestions for it ? Except hynix and samsung as listed on their website (here); they're selling on ebay and amazon at double the rates of Crucial and Kingston ECC unbuffered?

 

[DrKK]

I don't know why an 8GB stick is necessary right now. These boards have 4 slots on them. That means, he can do 2x4GB right now and have plenty for his current pool, and THEN, if he's doing to expand in the future, those other two slots can be filled with 8GB modules.

In other words, it makes sense to push the problem down the road. Buy two 4GB sticks now. In the future, as needed, you can buy two more (for a total of 16GB, which should be plenty for what...25TB? of space), or you can buy two 8GB DIMMS, and you'll be up to 24GB, which is good for at least 35TB of space.

I say buy the cheap, easy 2x4GB DIMMS right now, and worry about the 8GB DIMMS later, since you'll still have two slots open, and the OP seems unlikely (based on the starting pool) to ever actually require 32GB total of RAM.

 

[Nishant]

Hi DrKK, it makes sense to put in 2x4 right now and 2x8 later on,
but a part of the question still stays, do we have a compatible RAM except hynix and Samsung ?

Also, this brings me to ask another query i've had all along,
does the "1gb ram per 1tb hdd" convention apply on

- 3tb x 4 = 12tb​

- net available storage space (5.5 TB) when i make a z2 file system with 3tb hdd?​

 

[DrKK]

Hi DrKK, it makes sense to put in 2x4 right now and 2x8 later on,
but a part of the question still stays, do we have a compatible RAM except hynix and Samsung ?

Also, this brings me to ask another query i've had all along,
does the "1gb ram per 1tb hdd" convention apply on

- 3tb x 4 = 12tb​

- net available storage space (5.5 TB) when i make a z2 file system with 3tb hdd?​

Right. This is actually a question we talk about all the time. What is the "real" rule, is it 1GB per 1TB UNALLOCATED or USABLE SPACE, or whatever. Truth is, no one knows. The rule, if I'm telling the truth, is probably a little bit too stringent.

The truth is, it's not a hard rule. 8GB is plenty for most people with pools of 10-12TB *usable* space or more. 16GB is plenty for most people with pools of 20-30+ TB of usable space. This assumes no dedup, and no special situations with the FreeBSD running underneath it (i.e., you're not running other, memory intensive services).

And in any case, once you have at least 8GB, you're not likely to *HURT* anything, in any case. If you don't have enough memory, you'll only have PERFORMANCE issues. So personally:

If you are running with your original 4x3TB plan, then I recommend you run it in RaidZ1 (with 4 disks, this is little risk, if you take care of your maintenance), keep 1 cold spare, and I recommend you run it with 8GB of RAM. If you set that up correctly, run your proper scrubs, and monitor your system, you should have a nearly 0% chance of data loss barring physical damage from external sources (electrical disruption, house fire...).

 

[Nishant]

So DrKK,
you say you'd prefer me to build a 3 disk Z1 with a hot spare
as opposed to 4 disk Z2 system (without a hot spare)?

 

[solarisguy]

You mentioned that the cost associated with running a disk at less than 3W is an issue for you.

So it is you who has to perform cost-benefit analysis of RAID-Z2 versus RAID-Z1 that comes with a higher chance of loosing your data. There is no golden rule.

Lot's of people learned hard way that the time (hours, days, sometimes weeks) spent on reestablishing the original data does have a non-zero value. Let's say one has 9TB of data and the effective average transfer rate is 50MB/s. Then one needs 50 hours just to transfer. And if DVDs and CDs need to be re-riped, that would add substantial handling time.

 

[Nishant]

Alright, I think i'd prefer ZFS-Z2 with a 4 disk setup now, and buy one locally the very next day if even is 1 of them was to crash suddenly.

Meanwhile,
i'm thinking of buying this RAM:
(8gb samsung ram, as listed compatible on supermicro website)
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=D38GE1600S