I wanted to share my new build, mainly to help others compare different working hardware with what they may be deciding on. Your mileage may vary.
Hardware:
Motherboard: Asus P9D WS
CPU: Intel i3-4130T
RAM: 16gb Kingston ECC RAM (KVR16LE11/8I)
Power: Corsair HX650 Power Supply - Mainly because of the modular plugs
This power supply is also silent with this low power load, the fan doesn't spin (it spins on startup so it works)
SATA: 2 x Syba SD-SA2PEX-2IR SATA II controller cards (~$20 each)
I chose these cards because i'm cheap and knew that this SATA II chip is supported by FreeNAS
Check out some of the reviews on egg for this card, seems to be a very reliable card
Harddrive: 8 x Seagate ST3000DM001 HD's - all in a single RAIDZ3 pool
Boot USB: 2 x Kingston DTSE9H/8GBZ
Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite Black Steel
Usage:
I can easily saturate the gige link. Local tests show from 300-600mb/sec on the server itself. This is being used mainly for a few iSCSI mounts from windows workstations and an ESX host. It also has samba sharing for photos and movies.
I verified via dmidecode that ECC is working in single-bit correction mode.
6 of the Seagate drives are connected to the motherboard, and the other two are individually connected to different Syba SATA II cards.
Hurdles:
Motherboard: The P9D WS doesn't like anything but a video card being put into the first PCI-E x16 slot (Yellow). When I had a network card plugged into that slot the server would randomly not boot and randomly panic'd with SATA or HD errors. Don't plug anything into that slot. The CPU I am using has built in video, and the motherboard has 3 video outs on it, so just pretend that slot isn't there.
SATA Controller: I flashed the Syba cards with the SIS 7.7.0.3 Non-Raid firmware (The b**** firmware), from a DOS or Windows PC. The default firmware is for software RAID, which you don't want for ZFS.
I went against the warnings on the SIS webpage and flashed it to the add-in card anyway. I have been running my old FreeNAS AMD system with 2 Syba cards flashed in this manner without issue for over a year. Once you flash the 7.7.0.3 firmware to it you will no longer be able to use it in windows as the PCI hardware ID's no longer match the drivers, but that isn't an issue for FreeNAS, it see's the cards and attached HD's just fine.
Don't put a SSD's on these cards as they are only SATA II, but they are working fine for me with spinning rust attached.
Thoughts:
To all those who are leaning toward Intel Avatons, stick with the Core-i3/Xeon series. Alot more flexibility, and I think from initial tests that the lowest 4th gen Core-i3 out-performs the top Avaton cpu.
Hardware:
Motherboard: Asus P9D WS
CPU: Intel i3-4130T
RAM: 16gb Kingston ECC RAM (KVR16LE11/8I)
Power: Corsair HX650 Power Supply - Mainly because of the modular plugs
This power supply is also silent with this low power load, the fan doesn't spin (it spins on startup so it works)
SATA: 2 x Syba SD-SA2PEX-2IR SATA II controller cards (~$20 each)
I chose these cards because i'm cheap and knew that this SATA II chip is supported by FreeNAS
Check out some of the reviews on egg for this card, seems to be a very reliable card
Harddrive: 8 x Seagate ST3000DM001 HD's - all in a single RAIDZ3 pool
Boot USB: 2 x Kingston DTSE9H/8GBZ
Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite Black Steel
Usage:
I can easily saturate the gige link. Local tests show from 300-600mb/sec on the server itself. This is being used mainly for a few iSCSI mounts from windows workstations and an ESX host. It also has samba sharing for photos and movies.
I verified via dmidecode that ECC is working in single-bit correction mode.
6 of the Seagate drives are connected to the motherboard, and the other two are individually connected to different Syba SATA II cards.
Hurdles:
Motherboard: The P9D WS doesn't like anything but a video card being put into the first PCI-E x16 slot (Yellow). When I had a network card plugged into that slot the server would randomly not boot and randomly panic'd with SATA or HD errors. Don't plug anything into that slot. The CPU I am using has built in video, and the motherboard has 3 video outs on it, so just pretend that slot isn't there.
SATA Controller: I flashed the Syba cards with the SIS 7.7.0.3 Non-Raid firmware (The b**** firmware), from a DOS or Windows PC. The default firmware is for software RAID, which you don't want for ZFS.
I went against the warnings on the SIS webpage and flashed it to the add-in card anyway. I have been running my old FreeNAS AMD system with 2 Syba cards flashed in this manner without issue for over a year. Once you flash the 7.7.0.3 firmware to it you will no longer be able to use it in windows as the PCI hardware ID's no longer match the drivers, but that isn't an issue for FreeNAS, it see's the cards and attached HD's just fine.
Don't put a SSD's on these cards as they are only SATA II, but they are working fine for me with spinning rust attached.
Thoughts:
To all those who are leaning toward Intel Avatons, stick with the Core-i3/Xeon series. Alot more flexibility, and I think from initial tests that the lowest 4th gen Core-i3 out-performs the top Avaton cpu.