I'm on the half way (new build advices needed)

[KpuCko]

Hello guys,

I did some research, tried to read as much as I can, already bought some parts, but need advice for the rest. I have some doubts when I have to select hardware components for FreeNAS/ZFS. So at the moment I have:

Case: MicroATX - Fractal Design Node 804
Mainboard: Supermicro X11SSM-F-O
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230v6
RAM: 2x Samsung 16G DDR4-2666 UDIMM ECC Unbuffered

What's left?

4x HDD: Western Digital 2TB SATA 3 5400RPMs -> based on my knowledge will prefer this one, because it have more cache - 256MB and produce less hot
or 4x HDD: Western Digital 2TB SATA 3 7200RPMs

SSD: I don't have any clue here.. As far as I know I should get Enterprise SSD with power protection, but believe me I don't know why I need this in case I have UPS power protection. Will be very happy if somebody explain me this.
Some notes about SSD, I have intention to have 2 of them, to mirror them and use it for SLOG functionality. Unfortunately here I have doubts because I read somewhere in the forum, using SLOG with less than 64G RAM is nonsense.
Also if I'm going to use these devices for SLOG, I should install OS on USB drive, or somewhere else.

HBA - Don't have a clue here also. Even I'm not sure I have to use HBA at all. I don't know if this mainboard supports direct access mode, and if it do I have to use it or not.
Because I read in the forum, that I have to avoid all RAID controllers if possible. (Because of SMART handling, and data storing on the disks)

FANs - This should be trivial, I only need to stick with bigger fans, and to keep the noise level down.

POWER: By doing some basic calculation (Please see the attachment file) I've decide that I can use Seasonic FOCUS GX-650W Gold (Focus GX-650) for example. What do you think?

Thanks you very much for time you've spend by reading/commenting on this.

 

[Alecmascot]

4x HDD: Western Digital 2TB SATA 3 5400RPMs -> based on my knowledge will prefer this one, because it have more cache - 256MB

You must buy EFRX drives to get CMR. The drives with a large cache will be SMR. NOT FOR A NAS.

 

[KpuCko]

Aha, thanks a lot @Alecmascot I've never heard about CMR/SMR. I will have a look.

 

[Inxsible]

SSD: I don't have any clue here..

Don't overthink it. Just get the smallest SSD you can find. Use 2 in a mirror if you are so concerned.

HBA - Don't have a clue here also. Even I'm not sure I have to use HBA at all.

it depends. On your board, your case and the number of drives you want to install. Your board supports 8 drives. Your case supports a max of 12 drives. So depending on how many drives you plan to use, you may or may not need an HBA. You mentioned using 4 SATA drives -- in that case you don't need the HBA. But in the future, if you add more drives such that the total number of drives go above 8 (your board limit) you will need an HBA. Yes and avoid hardware RAID at all costs. Get an IBM M1015 or Dell H210 or Dell H330 or LSI 9208 or 9211 based card. There are a couple other HP cards too, but I don't recall their model numbers.

POWER: By doing some basic calculation (Please see the attachment file)

In the attached file you have only put in 2 sticks of RAM -- your board supports 4
you also only put in 4 SATA drives and 2 SSDs -- your board supports 12 total drives.

My advice would be to max out the components that you can add to the board and case and then see the minimum power requirement. This means max memory, max number of drives, an HBA, CPU etc etc. This would allow you to expand in the future without having to buy another PSU in case the total power requirements go above the value rated on the PSU.

Secondly keep in mind that all the disks require spin up when you start the machine. The more the disks, the higher the power required. So keep around 25-30W per drive instead of the 10W that the online calculators usually use for each HDD.

As an example -- I have a Node 304 with max 6 HDDs, a Pentium G3240 CPU, 16GB RAM and I use a 450W Gold rated PSU

 

[KpuCko]

Don't overthink it. Just get the smallest SSD you can find. Use 2 in a mirror if you are so concerned.

Hm, but this is the opposite of what I think. My intention is to use these disks for SLOG, and as far as I know, I must use enterprise SSDs which can achieve great speed when doing random I/O. But you are right about the size, they should be quite small.

it depends. On your board, your case and the number of drives you want to install. Your board supports 8 drives. Your case supports a max of 12 drives. So depending on how many drives you plan to use, you may or may not need an HBA. You mentioned using 4 SATA drives -- in that case you don't need the HBA. But in the future, if you add more drives such that the total number of drives go above 8 (your board limit) you will need an HBA. Yes and avoid hardware RAID at all costs. Get an IBM M1015 or Dell H210 or Dell H330 or LSI 9208 or 9211 based card. There are a couple other HP cards too, but I don't recall their model numbers.

My doubts here are related to direct access to the disks. How I can be sure that the controller shiped with the mainboard supports direct access?
Because it's all about my data, I prefer to stick with good HBA adapter which supporting feature like that.

My advice would be to max out the components that you can add to the board and case and then see the minimum power requirement. This means max memory, max number of drives, an HBA, CPU etc etc. This would allow you to expand in the future without having to buy another PSU in case the total power requirements go above the value rated on the PSU.

Secondly keep in mind that all the disks require spin up when you start the machine. The more the disks, the higher the power required. So keep around 25-30W per drive instead of the 10W that the online calculators usually use for each HDD.

Yeah, you are right about this power requirement estimations. But to be honest, I'm sure I will never go above 4 disks (as SATA) and 2 disks (as SSD)
I'm using this for home NAS and somebody have to pay the electricity bill ;>

What do you think about the power supply I proposed?