First FreeNAS build along with a couple of questions.

[SigmundPiper]

I'm the intern for a small business, and we're upgrading from a DVD library to HDDs.

I've been tasked with putting together a freakin' huge NAS with redundancy (RAID1). I've also got a budget of, let's say, around £1500-£2000.

Unfortunately we're a mac office, and they want a MacMini to host the library software to pull data off the NAS.

Here's what I got so far:

1x Fractal Design R3 Case £70.95
8x 3TB WD HDD £1176.96
1x i3 2100 £91.36
1x ASUS P8H61-V £72.48
1x Generic Quiet CPU Cooler £9.99
1x RocketRAID 2720 £149.99
2x SAS to SATA £39.99
1x Corsair Enthusiast TX V2 850W PWR SPLY £95.82
1x Molex to SATA £1.99
2x 4GB DDR3 Ram £34.99
2x 120mm Fans £9.99

I'm a little nervous about the RocketRAID (choosen for it's compatibility with 3TB), as it apparently requires a little fiddling to get it to work (would the LSI SAS 9211-8i HBA better?).

Although, if I'm avoiding a hardware RAID configuration (replacing bad drives is easier so I'm told), should I just get a mobo with a bunch of SATA ports?

I still haven't addressed where I'm installing FreeNAS, any suggestions?

Let me know if you spot any networking/general pitfalls.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Kimba]

What I use on both of my FreeNas Box is Compact Flash Memory and an IDE to CF interface

See: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001JTO782/?tag=ozlp-20

Just make sure the CF is at least 2 GB (mine are 4GB and 8GB).

 

[SigmundPiper]

Thanks for the elegent solution, leaves those precious 5.25" bays for future expansion.

 

[SigmundPiper]

Casual bump.

 

[survive]

Hi Nickel,

Here's my thoughts:

The case is a great choice for an 8 drive system. Be sure to buy an extra 120mm fan. The case can take a ton of fans but I just moved the back fan to the second spot in front and added a third in the back spot (it will make sense when you look at it). I also picked up a couple of these "molex-to-4-SATA-power" converters from Monoprice:

http://www.monoprice.com/products/p...d=1022604&p_id=8794&seq=1&format=1#largeimage

Made for a very clean drive install.

Personally I would avoid the RocketRaid at all costs. If you are feeling adventurous you can buy an IBM M1015 controller off ebay or the used \surplus market & flash it into a 9211-8i (ask me if you want more details).

The PSU is fine, Corsair makes good stuff....but it's bigger than you need. There are certainly worse problems to have but I would look at something like a 550w Seasonic which should cost about the same.

There's no need for an aftermarket CPU cooler if you buy a "boxed" processor. The stock Intel coolers are actually pretty good these days & the i3 isn't very hot to start.

-Will

 

[SigmundPiper]

Great thanks for the info, I'll definitely look into getting a couple of those molex to SATA cables.

If the IBM is an improvement on the LSI, I'll definitely have a crack at flashing it.

What do you think?

 

[SigmundPiper]

Bump for advice, specifically on the RAIDcard and any suggestions for the hardware.

Should I just get a SATA controller instead and just use ZFS?

 

[b1ghen]

If you are just going with 8 drives and never expand it, get a motherboard with 6 SATA and then a compatible 2-port SATA PCIe card and be done with it.
Saves money, problems and you will get to use ZFS like it's intended to be used.

 

[b1ghen]

And get a motherboard with 4 RAM slots and with the money you saved by not getting an expensive RAID card fill it with some more RAM, 16GB would be my suggestion or go wild with 32GB.
Also like said before, a smaller PSU is even better for efficiency, I would get something between 400 and 550W, anything smaller than that is hard to find with decent quality.
I would boot on USB like 99% of everyone else running FreeNas is doing, anything else is just complicating things as I see it.
Look into getting an Intel NIC as well since the onboard ones (unless using an Intel board) usually are not as good.

Also, you mentioned RAID1 (mirroring) as redundancy method, since you say a single MAC Mini (max 1Gbit/s) will be used to access the NAS I would look into either RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 instead for added redundancy (any two or three drives can die and the pool is still operational, but if the 2 wrong drives die in a pool made of mirrored vdevs the whole pool will be lost) you could also do 3 way mirroring but that would need 9 drives then and decrease storage. And there is the storage capacity that will be larger going with a RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 than with mirrors.
Now I don't know how much storage you need out of this thing but in my world added redundancy and added storage seems to outweigh performance here since you are accessing it through one Mac Mini.

Sorry for my ramblings, was interrupted by work several times while writing this ;)

 

[SigmundPiper]

Thanks for the reply!

RAIDZ2/3 is a bit of a new one for me, if it's added redundancy without a significant loss in storage then I'll definitely give it a go. In terms of expandability, maybe for two more drives in the 5.25" bays, I'd prefer to have the 8 volumes on a single SATA controller. Can you recommend one that won't give me too much hassle? I'll definitely look into getting some more RAM and a different power supply.

I'll have a look into RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 in the mean time. Thanks again.

 

[b1ghen]

Thanks for the reply!

RAIDZ2/3 is a bit of a new one for me, if it's added redundancy without a significant loss in storage then I'll definitely give it a go. In terms of expandability, maybe for two more drives in the 5.25" bays, I'd prefer to have the 8 volumes on a single SATA controller. Can you recommend one that won't give me too much hassle? I'll definitely look into getting some more RAM and a different power supply.

I'll have a look into RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 in the mean time. Thanks again.

There is no storage loss going with RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 when using that many drives but a storage increase instead, just a performance loss that doesn't seem to matter here if I understand it correctly (because the single client).
Although if you want to be able to expand with a couple of drives after a while, mirror vdevs is the way to, then you can add drives 2 at a time. This is not an option with any level of RAIDZ.

I personally think it's a waste of money to buy an 8-port controller and not use the onboard SATA ports as long as they are all compatible (actually not sure most Intel MB's have 6xSATA that works with FreeNas, AMD does but someone else will fill you in on that if needed).
If you really want one controller the IBM M1015 like survive said, it's widely used and it works with 3TB drives, you need to flash it with IT firmware though.
There is also LSI's own version of this card if the M1015 is hard to get hold of, there are lots of "pulled from new system" M1015's for sale cheaply on Ebay but I'm not sure that's an option for this build since there will be no warranty or place to turn if the card malfunctions, you need to buy a new one basically.

It sounds you need to read up a little on the different features of ZFS and experiment so you are more comfortable with FreeNas and ZFS before putting such a system into production use though.

 

[SigmundPiper]

At this point I'd prefer the increased space and redundancy of RAIDZ2, I'll get two additional 3TB drives for the 5.25" bays and call it "quits".

The only problem with the IBM M1015 is (with SAS-SATA) I can only get a maximum of 8 SATA connections (despite support for 16).

So ten drives in total, the question then is which AMD Board and SATA controller. Then I can wrap this up!

I'll have a play around with freenas on one of our old PCs in the mean time, thanks for the help.

 

[b1ghen]

At this point I'd prefer the increased space and redundancy of RAIDZ2, I'll get two additional 3TB drives for the 5.25" bays and call it "quits".

The only problem with the IBM M1015 is (with SAS-SATA) I can only get a maximum of 8 SATA connections (despite support for 16).

So ten drives in total, the question then is which AMD Board and SATA controller. Then I can wrap this up!

I'll have a play around with freenas on one of our old PCs in the mean time, thanks for the help.

Just a heads up on going with 10 drives in a RAIDZ2 configuration, you should read up on "the power of two" when it comes to the number of drives you use. I don't think it will be an issue since you will only serve a single gigabit connection. Also a lot of people would suggest splitting the 10 drives into two 5-drive vdev's, more than 8 drives per vdev seems to be frowned upon, haven't tried that many myself so can't really say anything about it.

And you are fine going with Intel motherboards if you are only using 2 of the onboard SATA connectors. Intel gets you more performance for less power consumption but no ECC RAM support unless you go for a Xeon (enterprise) solution.

The main reason to go AMD (at least earlier) is the ability to use ECC RAM with consumer hardware, make sure to check for ECC support since every AMD motherboard doesn't support ECC, and from what I understand FM1 socket doesn't support ECC at all so you only have to choose from AM3/AM3+ sockets, make sure the CPU supports it as well, I know the Athlon/Phenom II had ECC support at least but these are really hard to get hold of now from what I see.

So ECC or no ECC, that is the question.

 

[SigmundPiper]

I think this looks pretty good: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3462&dl=1#sp

Supports EEC (with CPU support) and has 6 SATAII ports.

Just to confirm, if there is a significant price difference between a sata controller and a sata raid controller, should I just opt for a 4 port sata controller? Will any intel controller do?

Couple with a intel NIC, 10x3TB drives in two vdevs with radz2 (with a mild performance hit), 16GB of EEC Ram and I'm good to go!

 

[b1ghen]

I think this looks pretty good: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3462&dl=1#sp

Supports EEC (with CPU support) and has 6 SATAII ports.

Just to confirm, if there is a significant price difference between a sata controller and a sata raid controller, should I just opt for a 4 port sata controller? Will any intel controller do?

Couple with a intel NIC, 10x3TB drives in two vdevs with radz2 (with a mild performance hit), 16GB of EEC Ram and I'm good to go!

That board doesn't have any onboard graphics. So either a separate graphics card (waste of money, space and power) or look for another motherboard.

If you are insisting on having a separate SATA controller card and not using the onboard SATA (onboard SATA needs to be confirmed to work with 3TB drives, this MB is using an older chipset), you should get one without RAID functionality (same here confirm 3TB support first and FreeNas/FreeBSD compatibility).

 

[b1ghen]

I would look into ASUS since they are known to be one of the few manufacturers that have ECC support on quite a few of their boards.
Look for AMD boards with a G in the chipset name like 880G since the G means onboard graphics.

I did a quick search and found this http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A89GTD_PRO/#specifications
I think it has some nice features including dual 16x PCIe (runs at 8x when both are in use) and also one 4x and one 1x. Will make for some nice expansion options if needed.
Have not tried this board myself but it looks good on paper.

 

[SigmundPiper]

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A88TDM/#specifications

It supports ECC, has onboard graphics, and supports 3TB drive after a BIOS update... just not sure if the sata (6 ports) controller is supported by freenas. That coupled with a 4 port controller should do it.

Thanks for your help up to now, nice to know that FreeNAS has a good community.

 

[b1ghen]

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A88TDM/#specifications

It supports ECC, has onboard graphics, and supports 3TB drive after a BIOS update... just not sure if the sata (6 ports) controller is supported by freenas. That coupled with a 4 port controller should do it.

Thanks for your help up to now, nice to know that FreeNAS has a good community.

Very similar to the board I am running in my home FreeNas with ECC, I run the M4A88T-M http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3/M4A88TM/
Mine only has SATA 3Gb/s though, so I am not sure the one I have support 3TB drives.
I think that board would work out just fine for you, now all you need is to find a working 4-port SATA card, I am not much help there unfortunately :(

We are here to help, I try as much as I can with my basic knowledge at least.

 

[SigmundPiper]

Nah you've been great! I'll have a poke around for the SATA controller, but I think I'm pretty much set up now!

EDIT: Going slowly insane finding a 4-port sata controller with 3TB + freenas support...