BUILD I want my build checked

[Klox]

Just read through the whole thread, and still trying to take everything in. I should probably make a separate post, but there is just a ton of experience here and also wanted to see if my build follows the recommendations. I would appreciate any & all feedback (first build ever).

$100 - Rosewill RSV-L4500
$170 - Supermicro MBD-X10SLM-F-O (uATX, LGA 1150, Intel C224, DDR3 1600)
$70 - Intel Pentium G3220 (3 GHz, 2 core)
$100 - ServeRAID M1015
$340 - 32 GB DDR3 1600 ECC RAM
$60 - SeaSonic SSR-360GP 360W (80+ Gold)
-------
$840 without cables + HDDs.

I'll be starting off without the HBA, with only 16 GB RAM, and probably only 3 x 4 TB drives (RAID10). Next year I'll be adding another 6-10 drives, the extra RAM, HBA, and possibly SSDs for ZIL & L2ARC (depends on how I see the usage going, not entirely sure yet). That puts it more in the range of $570 + HDDs/cables up front.

Couple of questions:

1. Everything is consistent and is supported?
2. Is 360 W enough for everything + 15 drives at rough 50% utilization?
3. If I get 52 TB of raw space is 32 GB of ram enough (+ the SSDs for caching)?
4. I am very interested in virtualization, and ideally I will be creating a second VM box with a proper Xeon CPU w/ VT-d support (or just buying a C1100 when I have enough space to not hear the fans). I've seen lots of new posts about virtualizing FreeNAS. Should I just pass and go with my original plan? I guess that is more a personal question about $ than anything.
5. Finally, I have read tons about RAIDZ2 vs RAID10. If I can tolerate the read speed of Z2, then I should definitely pick that? Although at 13 drives I should probably do a few pools. Data integrity is important, but I also want to be realistic. Is protecting 2 drive failures out of the 15 a good level of risk?
6. Since I am new to the "purchasing half a dozen internal HDDs market", what price point is usually the sweet spot? Seems like things are a bit more expensive lately and I should wait for a good sale. Consumer Barracudas seem like the best deal atm (with good redundancy), but WD Black would be nice.

Very excited about the build and finally clicking order ;) I apologize if my lingo is off or I missed some obvious advice, just been trying to read everything for several weeks now. Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

Made you a new thread since thats what we do here.

1. Everything looks good. There's been some issues with the X10 boards with FreeNAS. You might want to read through them. I'm not 100% sure the cause has been found and a fix is forthcoming.
2. I'd probably go with a 500w just to cover starting current.
3. Depending on your type of load, services provided, and number of users, it may be okay. If you plan to go with iSCSI or NFS with ESXi then you are probably short on RAM. I typically recommend nothing less than 48GB of RAM if you plan to use one or both of those. The explanation is long and drawn out, but just push the "I believe" button for now.
4. Virtualizing FreeNAS requires special things. You should read http://forums.freenas.org/threads/p...duction-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/#post58364 and http://forums.freenas.org/threads/a...ide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.12714/ and recognize that it is less "safe" than using bare metal. So definitely backup your most important data! But that's something you should be doing regardless.
5. At 13 drives you should probably do 2 vdevs. 2 pools is optional. Typically more than a RAIDZ2 of 10 disks is considered "unsafe". And even at that, that's only if you monitor your server closely and preemtively replace drives on the first sign of problems. Personally, I'm a fan of RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 vdevs. But, if you plan to go heavy with iSCSi or NFS with ESXi then you might want to look at vdevs that are mirrored and striped(aka RAID10). Again, the explanation is long and drawn out, so just push the "I believe" button for now.
6. Hard drives aren't changing in price much. 5TB drives are due before xmas, so you might see prices drop if you can wait a month or two. Aside from that, just wait for a sale on Amazon or Newegg and then buy them. You might have to get a friend to buy 1/2 of them as they usually have a limit on the number you can purchase during the sale.

Very good first build! You've recognized that the advice here is written in blood, sweat, and tears and not chosen to try to save a buck with non-ECC RAM and cheap consumer grade parts. Plenty have paid the price for not recognizing that simple truth.

 

[Klox]

Thank you very much! I didn't see the new thread and ended up adding another post to the previous one. My bad! Thanks for all your help; looking forward to contributing too.

 

[underpickled]

Hey... been reading these forums for a while trying to figure out a good build. It's my first time posting, but your (Cyberjock) posts have been extremely useful to me in terms of figuring out a setup.

I've settled on a very similar system to the one listed here (same mobo, i3-4130 or G3220, 16GB Crucial ECC, same PSU) but haven't pulled the trigger on ordering because I'm waiting for the Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 case to become available (sometime this month).
I'm planning to have 6x 3TB WD Reds in RAIDZ2... since they're spindle drives I don't expect them to all need SATAIII and until I saw the discussions about the M1015, I was planning on using the Intel SATAII and SATAIII controllers on the Supermicro. With this in mind, I have a few questions...

1) Are the mobo SATA controllers likely to limit performance more than GigE?

2) Since ZFS is fairly portable, could I add an M1015 later, hook up the drives (JBOD mode, of course), and have the filesystem and data preserved?

3) A bit separate, but since the G3220 is about half the price of the i3-4130, is there any compelling reason (other than AES-NI) to go with the i3 over the Pentium? Obviously higher clock, extra threads... but for media streaming (not necessarily transcoding) and general file/media serving with MAYBE up to 4 simultaneous users, would the G3220 be more than enough or barely cutting it? The i3 would be a safe bet, sure, but I don't want to put something in there and totally waste the capability/money.

 

[Klox]

Here is the ARK comparison for the two processors: http://ark.intel.com/compare/77774,77773,77481,77480

It looks like the only differences are: supports DDR3-1600, AES, and two extra threads. Seems like it shouldn't be a bottleneck.

 

[underpickled]

Well I know that Samba/CIFS is a single threaded animal... so I'm imagining a situation where one core on the G3220 is being dominated by a Samba transfer and only one core is left to handle RAIDZ2 parity, DLNA/uPNP, other transfers (AFP, Samba, FTP), etc. Also I don't know if scrubs and resilvering are faster with the additional threads.

 

[jgreco]

1) Are the mobo SATA controllers likely to limit performance more than GigE?

2) Since ZFS is fairly portable, could I add an M1015 later, hook up the drives (JBOD mode, of course), and have the filesystem and data preserved?

3) A bit separate, but since the G3220 is about half the price of the i3-4130, is there any compelling reason (other than AES-NI) to go with the i3 over the Pentium? Obviously higher clock, extra threads... but for media streaming (not necessarily transcoding) and general file/media serving with MAYBE up to 4 simultaneous users, would the G3220 be more than enough or barely cutting it? The i3 would be a safe bet, sure, but I don't want to put something in there and totally waste the capability/money.

1) Motherboard SATA controllers are generally preferable to the M1015 for spinny rust because the M1015 adds (about 10) watts. A SATA-II port is capable of 3Gbps, or, very loosely, 300MB/sec. The typical SATA hard drive is probably 150MB/sec. The SATA-III port for spinny rust buys you almost nothing, so use the free motherboard ports first. Of course, if they are wonky, then feel free to try the M1015.

2) Flash the M1015 to IT mode, then the answer is yes.

3) Yes, choices, choices.

 

[neonflx]

I spent several days researching what hardware to purchase for my build, this forum and the thread on hardware recommendation really helped me out a lot.

my build is as follow
Supermicro MBD-X10SLQ-O
E1230v3
32g GSkill Ram (already had this so I will try it before deciding on ECC)
Seasonic G Series SSR-550RM Gold
4ea WD Red 3tb (plan on adding 4 more)
Fractal R4
IBM M1015 is on the way, will flash to IT mode.

the question I have is with regards to using a SSD for cache/zli
the motherboard has an Msata and I have a 64gb msata ssd that i'm not using, with this setup are there any advantages of using it for cache/zli/

thanks, and again great information.

 

[underpickled]

Awesome! Though I'm not sure ECC boards support non ECC RAM... check on that before installing it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[survive]

Hi neonflx,

Might as well order the ECC ram now.....the board requires it when you use a Xeon proc.

I'd hold off on the zil/cache drive for now.....read up on the use of them in the forum as they are not the catch-all solution for awesomeness they seem. Get the pool going first & see if your use case would benefit from either.

-Will

 

[neonflx]

after reading your comments I unpacked my mobo, cpu and memory, I am happy (sigh of relief) to report that it does work with the non-ecc memory, I booted the system with a CF and SATA to CF adapter loaded with Freenas and it does work, the Xeon however does not have an integrated graphics card so i have to install a temp card on it.

i will load the 4 hd i currently have just to do some burning and make sure everything works before the m1015 gets here

thanks

 

[cyberjock]

I'd definitely make going to ECC RAM your top priority.

 

[Hisma]

Made you a new thread since thats what we do here.

1. Everything looks good. There's been some issues with the X10 boards with FreeNAS. You might want to read through them. I'm not 100% sure the cause has been found and a fix is forthcoming.
2. I'd probably go with a 500w just to cover starting current.
3. Depending on your type of load, services provided, and number of users, it may be okay. If you plan to go with iSCSI or NFS with ESXi then you are probably short on RAM. I typically recommend nothing less than 48GB of RAM if you plan to use one or both of those. The explanation is long and drawn out, but just push the "I believe" button for now.
4. Virtualizing FreeNAS requires special things. You should read http://forums.freenas.org/threads/p...duction-as-a-virtual-machine.12484/#post58364 and http://forums.freenas.org/threads/a...ide-to-not-completely-losing-your-data.12714/ and recognize that it is less "safe" than using bare metal. So definitely backup your most important data! But that's something you should be doing regardless.
5. At 13 drives you should probably do 2 vdevs. 2 pools is optional. Typically more than a RAIDZ2 of 10 disks is considered "unsafe". And even at that, that's only if you monitor your server closely and preemtively replace drives on the first sign of problems. Personally, I'm a fan of RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 vdevs. But, if you plan to go heavy with iSCSi or NFS with ESXi then you might want to look at vdevs that are mirrored and striped(aka RAID10). Again, the explanation is long and drawn out, so just push the "I believe" button for now.
6. Hard drives aren't changing in price much. 5TB drives are due before xmas, so you might see prices drop if you can wait a month or two. Aside from that, just wait for a sale on Amazon or Newegg and then buy them. You might have to get a friend to buy 1/2 of them as they usually have a limit on the number you can purchase during the sale.

Very good first build! You've recognized that the advice here is written in blood, sweat, and tears and not chosen to try to save a buck with non-ECC RAM and cheap consumer grade parts. Plenty have paid the price for not recognizing that simple truth.

you mention the X10 boards have issues with freenas. What kind of issues? I tried to search and couldn't find anything.
Any show-stoppers?

 

[Klox]

I just got the X10SL7 last week and it is working fine. I was able to flash the HBA to IT mode with no problems, but I only have a couple drives atm so I haven't really pushed it yet.

 

[phireant]

I currently am running freenas on one m1015 card passthrough in esxi. The mobo I have is the x10SLM+-F. Unfortunate to me, I own 3 m1015 cards, but my third one won't show up in esxi. I think it might be due to the third pci-e card is behind a pci switch and not strait to the cpu.