Hi from Upper Michigan

[dkemppai]

Hi All,

Been reading the forums for a while now. Just starting to build a FreeNAS box, and have a few questions that don't seem to pop up in the search easily, so I guess it's time to register.

Anyway, to Start - Will it FreeNAS? (I Hope so!)
X11SSM-F (Yeah, ok maybe a bit old, but seems popular! :)
i3-6300 (Hopefully low Power)
Two 16Gb DDR4-2400 ECC RAM (Maybe two more??? Is more data cache a bad thing?)
Four 4Tb WD RED NAS Drives (Maybe two more also??? see Below)
Seasonic SSR-750FM PSU (G550's are old now, so what's a guy to buy?)
Two Samsung FIT USB 64Gb Boot Drives (Yeah, Yeah, I know. still just testing this whole thing out yet.)

I'm hoping to add a Chelsio T520-CR soon. Ideally two fiber links from the NAS Box. The NAS Box will reside in secure reinforced concrete fireproof bunker, on isolated power, in a hopefully lightning proof configuration. (Yes, I AM that guy! LOL!)


The Goal is a NAS box for the house. The Main PC on a dedicated fast line, with most PC's accessing files as needed via network. I'd like to give the main PC a 10Gb link to the NAS to reduce latency and increase throughput. Data is to be the main "Files" drive, the less often used but larger "Working" drive, and an offsite backup from work. Work backup is just hand carried offsite backups on an encrypted disk, copied to NAS Box to ensure offsite data even when the "transit" disks are in transit. Eventually I'd like to setup VPN for nightly offsite backups, etc.) Total NAS Storage currently about 1.5Tb. Maybe growing to 3Tb in a couple of years.

Currently FreeNAS hardware is running Ram tests. Will probably do a quick windows install to run some large number crunching calculations for a few weeks. (Y-Cruncher, and/or similar) for a hardware stress test (And, it's my standard benchmark for new PC's...).

But, My biggest question is if the Chelsio T520 series cards are supported for windows 7? My current main PC is windows 7 still, and I'd like to do some testing between FreeNAS and the Win7 box with some 10Gb stuff, but can't seem to spot drivers.

My second questions is for a the given usage, how to optimize the vdev for redundancy and speed. What's a good balance. 3 mirrored 4Tb disks per vdev, or would some RAIDZ be better... ...but still reading on this.

So, if anyone wants to offer insight on the Chelsio/Win7 thing, great. If not I'll ask in a day or two in the networking forum...

Anyway, I'm sure you'll all be hearing more from me soon!

Dan

 

[Jailer]

Welcome from central Michigan. Can't help you much with the 10G parts, I have zero experience with them. As far as pool arrangement for your stated use case I'd stick with a RAIDZ2 configuration with a minimum of 4 drives, preferably 6 for future storage needs.

 

[dkemppai]

Welcome from central Michigan...

Centeral lower, I assume? We're western upper. Still in 3 feet of snow!

Ok on RAIDZ2. Sort thinking that. Maybe even RAIDZ3, the old WD4000YR's left a bad impression (Still don't really trust WD's yet...). I'm probably going to try a few different configurations and do some testing. Now's the time to figure what makes the most sense. If throughput is near the internal raid array in the current PC (~250Mb/s) over the network, that will be perfectly workable. Even a little less would be OK considering the 5400 RPM Red drives...

All in all, it'll probably take some time to roll this out. The plan is to go slow and get everything right before deploying data to it...

 

[Jailer]

Centeral lower, I assume?

Yes, central lower aka troll, Ithaca specifically. ;)

Still in 3 feet of snow!

I see yoopers every tuesday and Thursday when they come down for prisoner transfers. They've got as much snow on the ground in Kinross as you do. One of the guys said his dog climbed a snow bank last weekend and was playing on the roof!

I'm probably going to try a few different configurations and do some testing. Now's the time to figure what makes the most sense.

That is an excellent plan that I wish more users would follow. Now is the time to figure out what works before you commit your valuable data to it.

 

[dkemppai]

Slow progress. Ran about 75 hours of Memtest 86+

Installed a temporary copy of Win7 on the box. Ran Y-cruncher stress tests for 48 hours. Actually quite impressed with the i3-6300 proc. Pi calcs about 1/4 as fast as an i7-4790K, and 4 times faster than my Phenom II x4. Should be fine for a data server.

Next, added a pair of 10G network cards and waited for a cable to arrive. Did learn the hard way on the X11SSM0F board, some of the 8x pcie slots only actually have 4 lanes. The 10G cards did't like that.

Tested an M.2 drive (attached to only two lanes on host) over the 10G network. Maxed out the M.2 drive on the other PC (Both Win7). Get basically the same speeds on the large data chunks over the network as on the actual PC it's installed in, so pretty cool. Minor problem is I had to give up some pcie lanes on the m.2 drive to get the 10G card installed).

Only one issue with the server. I keep needing to reset the BIOS on the supermicro board for it to boot. Every once in a while it just won't boot. No fans spinning, nothing. Shorting the reset jumper does the trick. Not sue what's going on there. Checked the battery, and it's at 3.0V. If anyone has hints on that, I'm all ears... ...probably a setting I'm missing somewhere.

Now it's back to waiting until the new case with 8 bays shows up...

Dan