Confirm Good build before I hit that BUY Button

[Dreded]

so my build is below... guess im making sure I didn't miss anything don't want to spend $1000 and realize I made a huge mistake so as with anything in this world I figured a second(and third etc) set of eyes would help

Skip the next paragraph if you don't like stories...

This is for a small business that for the last 7yrs has been running the same FreeNAS server I setup on some junk PC that I never touched at all that whole time(besides adding users etc), uptime until last week was 4yrs and something... all it did was had two 500gb UFS partitioned drives and synced from one to the other using local rsync and I also setup an rsync "Time Machine" but that 2 person office has now grown to 8 people that are doing constant work on the server(CIFS) and the server has decided to turn off every so often(once a day or so) so its time to do a real server appropriate for the growth and can sustain them for a few years to come as they grow more. I am sure the current server would be fixable its probably that the USB drive has hit EOL or something but we decided it wasn't worth the effort to even bother to try anything as the hardware is now 10+yrs old.

So the sites data usage is minimal currently all the systems are backed up to the server and all daily work is done on the server and its using 350gb of space the 30 day "Time Machine" is typically only 30gb larger than that. I figure the system below would be good for an initial RaidZ1 that if ever needed can be expanded to a 6disk system.(still need to determine if this is right choice as im not to familiar with ZFS but thats why i'll RTFM)

Currently there is also two remote servers that the data gets synced to for redundancy and the plan is to keep it that way. Also plan to keep a spare 3tb drive on site for quick replacement. Really humming and hawing about using 2tb or even 1tb instead as I don't see their needs growing to much from where they are now

Supermicro X9SCL-F-O LGA1155/ Intel C202 PCH/ DDR3/ V&2GbE/ MicroATX Server Motherboard, Retail MB-X9SCLF $149.99
Intel Xeon Quad-Core Processor E3-1230V2 3.3GHz 5.0GT/s 8MB LGA 1155 CPU, Retail XE1230V2BX $219.99
Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G DDR3-1333 16GB(2x 8GB) 1Gx72 ECC CL9 Server Memory Kit W16GE1333K $176.99
Supermicro SuperChassis CSE-732D2-400B 400W Mid-Tower Server Chassis (Black) CA-732D24B $121.99
3x Western Digital Red WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 64MB Hard Drive (3.5 inch) HD-W30EFRX $132.99 x3=$398.97


Only thing im not a huge fan of is the case because I couldn't find a good mATX with 6 3.5" bays however im sure the above is very practical and it just going to sit in a dark room anyhow.

I like this case http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-v650/ but doesn't seem to exist for sale anywhere.

 

[enemy85]

My suggestion is that for a small business and not so many user u could save money with an intel G2020 cpu

 

[Dreded]

Xeon e3-1230v2 is $219
G2020 is $55.99

So that is a significant difference in price and for the site I see no reason why the G2020 wouldn't work right now, my concern is it doesn't have AES like the Xeon and they may decide they want AES ability in the future(to protect data from theft) however we could always upgrade in that case IF the CPU is still availiable(would probably be a hard find in 3yrs+ when it would be wanted)

and with ZFS is the difference in the Quad vs Dual going to make much difference? I know samba could care less as its not multi threaded.

As I said the whole unknown to me is ZFS as with a Socket 478 Celeron 1.8Ghz P4 with 512mb DDR Ram with UFS formatted drives on freenas .7 and a intel Gigabit NIC I was getting 70mb/s transfers which was the speed of a single HardDrive

The site is a small business but they have money so future proofing now isnt a huge concern other than I have a $1200 budget as thats what I had said I could do it in.. If I had said $2000 they would have been fine with that too.

 

[Dreded]

Just for acomparison... here are passmark CPU Benchmark results for each CPU talked above, for multi core ones I divided the result by # of cores to get a per core result

Celeron 430 775 1.8ghz - 477 (cpu that most people think is the same as below so included for clarifications sake)

Celeron 1.8ghz 478 - 141 (cpu in current FreeNAS system)
G2020 - 2787/2=1394
Xeon E3-1230v2 - 8901/4=2225

There is also the Xeon E3-1220v2 but for $30 less than the 1230v2 I dont think it makes any sense.

so from that we can see the Xeon is 60% faster than the G2020 even on single core applications, how well does ZFS handle multi threading? is it only dual threaded?

60% on a single core is a lot so is there a nice happy medium? and does ZFS even use that much cpu?

also we are getting a bit off topic here.. is everything else in the system good? or mainly did I miss anything?

 

[Dreded]

Seriously 70+ views and not a single person can say "Yep you didn't miss anything" or tell me that the motherboard I chose has an issue with enumerating the Ethernet ports in the wrong order?

I decided to go with the Supermicro X9SCL+-F same price but has Dual Intel 82574L so no enumeration issues like the X9SCL-F(no plus)

 

[cyberjock]

I would have gone with X9SCM-F(1 more PCIe slot) for like $5 more. The only reason I stopped posting is because I've put my exact build in my noobie presentation. Which is an excellent choice of quality components, price, and performance. I don't think you can beat my config anywhere. Additionally, if you read the stickies in the hardware section you'll find plenty of advice that can help you avoid doing any of the stupid mistakes that quite a few noobies do.

It's kind of one of those situations where the information is readily available. So unless you didn't do your homework you shouldn't get it wrong.

 

[DrKK]

I have a very similar setup, with the X10SLM+-F board (this has LGA 1150 socket though, and IPMI)..and a lower powered CPU (Intel G3220), similar to what the one guy suggested, and have been running flawlessly now for about 15 days since the build.

 

[Dreded]

Cyberjock, I appreciate that and I did watch your entire presentation last night it helped me understand zfs a lot more I plan to read through it again

If I miss something or screw up it puts me behind by atleast a week so wanted to make sure

Drkk, what's your deployment environment like? And hd configuration?

 

[cyberjock]

Just for the record, I don't see anything that will make your configuration not work. I would have gone X9SCM-F because its better for ESXi(if you ever want to use the hardware for that someday), has the extra PCIe slot(never a negative) and is just $5 more. So more future-proofing than yours, but not a bad choice at all for FreeNAS.

Generally I consider the X9SCM-F to be the ultimate board for people that aren't used to buying server-grade parts or clearly want/need more than 32GB of RAM. There's other reasons where it might not be ideal(you need PCI or a PCIe 16x slot, etc.) but for most noobies that don't know what their future needs are yet that board is an excellent place to start.

 

[Dreded]

Ahh, I didn't go for the X9SCM-F because I thought it had the same Ethernet enumeration issue as the X9SCL-F(was basing the purely on same model # nics) I seriously doubt that the X9SCL-F issue would ever effect me but it is a known issue in some environments so why risk it :p As one of the reasons im going with this sort of hardware over getting a QNAS or something is future proofing a bit. If the client decides they absolutely need to run a windows server because of some fancy new app they want to run it would be possible :p

I wont be hitting the BUY button until friday morning so I still have time to do some research my current issue is deciding on 2x 4tb Drives in a mirror or using 2tb drives in a raidz1/2

In a different tangent for home use(not this hardware) I am trying to find out for sure if creating a new RaidZ1 with 2x2tb and 1x3tb(so 4tb usable space) then upgrading just the 2x2tb one at a time is possible... I know the manual states that its possible to go this rout as an upgrade path but doesnt state if the vdev is created with mismatched drives from the get go if its possible(I dont see why its not but need to find out for sure)

 

[cyberjock]

The X9SCM-F has 2 dissimilar Intel NICs(one works with ESXi, one doesn't). But both work with pretty much every other OS you'd want... FreeNAS/FreeBSD/Linux/Windows/Whatever.

Your upgrade path will be fine. read my presentation.. I give an examples of how to do size increases so I don't have to explain it every time. I strongly recommend against RAIDZ1 though. Link in my sig if you want to read why. I put it there so I wouldn't have to explain that either. ;)

 

[Dreded]

I know why RaidZ1 is a bad idea.. I dont care for home use(movies etc) and for the Server im still torn as there is tons of offsite redundancy so file loss isnt an issue.. but I might consider it because I am planning on haveing an offline spare for the RaidZ1 anyhow so why not just make a RaidZ2 to begin with :p

 

[cyberjock]

Please remove that link. I don't like having old versions around as I keep mine updated. I prefer to keep a single location to get it that will always be up-to-date.

Your conversion isn't that readable either. ;) That's why I didn't do a google slides presentation.

 

[Dreded]

Link removed, appreciate the help.. I was 98% sure that starting from scratch with different sized drives and then upgrading the remaining two would work just wasnt positive as any literature on the subject only describes starting with a matched set and upgrading all 3.. I dont see what the difference would be but you just never know.

Anyhow I am going to stop having a "conversation" here appreciate all the insight and the board suggestion.. I am going to get the X9SCM-F now as it gives better adaptability thanx.

 

[cyberjock]

Cool. Enjoy your server. :)