Long Time Synology User, ready to switch..

[memyselfundnas]

Hi!

My aging 1812 is locking for a replacement. I was looking into a new NAS solution, as my 24TB are getting fuller and fuller. I have heard about freenas, but have never used it before. After a few days on the internet, I´m ready to pull the trigger on a 10g capable NAS for my oversized SHO enviroment. I don´t really need the Freenas to host services, a just want a high performance datastore for various VM´s that are running on a different system.

Motherboard:
Supermicro A2SDi-H-TF
https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/atom/A2SDi-H-TF.cfm
2x Kingston 16GB DDR4 KTH-PL424/16G RAM
I will probably put it all in Fractal design Define R6 with extra cages, so I can fit 10 3.5" HDD´s and a few ssd´s in the case.

I´m still unsure about the HDD configuration - I have 8x 4TB WD Reds at the moment, and I need more for future expansions, growing Movie/Music Library, and ever growing personal backups from the laptops/pcs in the household.
I was thinking about 10TB WD Reds, and wanted to start with 2 just to get a feel for freenas, and then buy the rest when I´m sure I want to go this path.
I´m Searching for information on Performance with raidz2/3 and how to configure my Setup for max space, rebuild times when something fails and so on ( I have had quite a bunch of Seagate drive fail on me, so I am abit paronoid..)

Thanks in advanced for all the help I´m getting here!

 

[Chris Moore]

The best value in drives right now looks to be 8TB but it depends on what local deals you are able to take advantage of.
There are some significant differences between Synology and FreeNAS.
Take some time and learn about FreeNAS for you make the jump.

 

[memyselfundnas]

yeah the underlaying stuff ist alot different, and I´m really having a hardtime to figure out what is more sensible for a roundabout 50tb system storage option wise. but the other stuff - software and stuff that runs on top, is similiar, but still quite different from the implementation.

 

[Chris Moore]

yeah the underlaying stuff ist a lot different, and I´m really having a hardtime to figure out what is more sensible for a roundabout 50tb system storage option wise. but the other stuff - software and stuff that runs on top, is similiar, but still quite different from the implementation.

Here are some links to resources that you might want to read, if you have not see them yet. I hope they will assist you with your understanding and please ask all the questions you need. Someone will be happy to help you.

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Why not to use RAID-5 or RAIDz1
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[Chris Moore]

I´m really having a hardtime to figure out what is more sensible for a roundabout 50tb system storage option wise.

Because you have selected the small system board you listed in the original post, I am guessing that you want something compact and quiet.
To that end, and with the 50TB requirement in mind, I would suggest using a chassis like this:
http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17640&cat=249&page=1
We have actually had a half a dozen (that I recall) forum users build in this chassis and they have been happy with it. It allows for eight hot-swap drive bays and the system board you selected has SAS ports that can be used to connect these bays. You may need to purchase the appropriate wire between ports on the board and ports on the drive backplane.

For hard drives, I used the calculator at this site to determine what size drive you would need based on the idea of a single RAIDz2 vdev of eight drives. https://wintelguy.com/zfs-calc.pl
It indicates that even using 10TB drives, you will be a little short of your desired capacity:

If you really must have 50TB of capacity, you might need to consider an enclosure that will accommodate more drives. The "sweet spot" for drives with regard to cost per TB of storage is around 8TB depending on what deals you can get locally, but with 8TB drives, you would need around 16 drives to get the capacity you seek.

The 10TB drives are a bit on the high side and 12TB drives are really expensive. If you must have 50 TB of usable storage

 

[memyselfundnas]

Yeah 50TB was a ball park (Double what I have now..), but I think I will go with smaller drives for the "production" stuff at home, and I might update to larger drives if I REALLY need the space. but I think at the moment I will go for 6-8TB drives, and clean up and /or put some data in cloud storage, just to keep the initial costs abit lower.

I went for the small board - because I think I don´t really need "more" the freenas wont be doing plex, or anything else fancy, it will be running fileservices, and maybe a dhcp/dns server. I have a dedicated ESXi Xeon box for the heavy stuff. (with extra DAS in it for IO performance and stuff like that) the Freenas (and the synology for that matter..) are really just storage, and if the DAS is full, for running 4-5 VM´s in a test lab, for short periods of time.

The case I am planning on using, is already laying around :D So I don´t want to really buy a new to me case. And yes noise is an issue as my office is in the same room ^^ The fractal is a neet little case, that fits nicely into the landscape with other fractal cases :D With my hopefully reduced data needs, I hope the 10 drives + 4 ssd´s will be enough for my needs.

I have 4x 246 Samsungs 840´s laying around that I was planning on using for SSD Cache for the new NAS, but I think ram is the way to go with freenas?

 

[Chris Moore]

I have 4x 246 Samsungs 840´s laying around that I was planning on using for SSD Cache for the new NAS, but I think ram is the way to go with freenas?

Unless you are doing synchronous writes to FreeNAS, there is no need for SLOG, but you might see some benefit to a L2ARC as it can speed directory listings. ZFS doesn't do cache in the way that most people think of it. The system RAM is used for ARC (Adaptive Replacement Cache) so the first thing to do if you want more performance is to upgrade RAM. I have 64GB on both of my home NAS systems.

PS. Drives that you use in FreeNAS will be repartitioned and formatted for ZFS when you create a storage pool. Data is added to the NAS via the network.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Yeah 50TB was a ball park (Double what I have now..), but I think I will go with smaller drives for the "production" stuff at home, and I might update to larger drives if I REALLY need the space. but I think at the moment I will go for 6-8TB drives, and clean up and /or put some data in cloud storage, just to keep the initial costs abit lower.

I went for the small board - because I think I don´t really need "more" the freenas won't be doing plex, or anything else fancy, it will be running fileservices, and maybe a dhcp/dns server. I have a dedicated ESXi Xeon box for the heavy stuff. (with extra DAS in it for IO performance and stuff like that) the Freenas (and the synology for that matter..) are really just storage, and if the DAS is full, for running 4-5 VM´s in a test lab, for short periods of time.

The case I am planning on using, is already laying around :D So I don´t want to really buy a new to me case. And yes noise is an issue as my office is in the same room ^^ The fractal is a neet little case, that fits nicely into the landscape with other fractal cases :D With my hopefully reduced data needs, I hope the 10 drives + 4 ssd´s will be enough for my needs.

I have 4x 246 Samsungs 840´s laying around that I was planning on using for SSD Cache for the new NAS, but I think ram is the way to go with freenas?

Don't bother with the ssds yet, they only help very specific workload and even then you need a special kind of cach for slog.

 

[memyselfundnas]

You guys seriously rock!

should I be aware with 32 GB ram? I am going to scale down the HDD´s. as I have about 16 TB of data at the moment, and 8x 6TB will also double what I am actually using at the time. (about 35tb - bringen down the price for the drives by a pretty decent margin).

2 More storage related questions:

1 Drive Pool oder 2? Is there performance benefits of splitting it up? In Theorie it should help with disk failure rates / rebuild times, using 2 pools - correct? But does it help generell Performance? I´ll be using 8 drives in raid z2, or 2x 5 also in raid z2. I´d like to go with one pool, because of more usable space, but the server will have 10g network, and I´ll like to get more then 2x 1g performance out of the nas - I´m pretty sure I wont saturiate a 10g link, but getting 5g would be nice ;)

The Supermicro A2SDi-H-TF only has a pci-e 4x - so using a HBA is not going to work, will the onboard soc, well suck or should I reconsider the board choice to be able to run a hba?

Thanks alot for you help!

 

[SweetAndLow]

1 pool is normal. Multiple pools is a strange setup usually. More vdevs increases performance, number of pools does not affect performance much. Stick with a single pool.

The onboard sata and an HBA are pretty much the same thing, don't get an hba unless you need more ports.

Your single 8 drive vdev will probably do close to 10gig speeds for writes in a perfect world. And easy do 10gig speeds for reads if coming out of the arc. And close if coming off disk. In real world workflows expecting about half that speed would be reasonable.

 

[memyselfundnas]

yeah, sorry n00b mistake. I did mean the vdevs. 1 vs 2. vdevs for more performance sacrificing space