Motherboard for Borg build?

[LoftyGoals]

I'd like to buy a (new, not used) motherboard for a new TrueNAS system (I can afford it and I can't afford headaches right now). Can someone validate my selection of the X11SRL-F? If I was okay with 64 GB RAM, could I get away with the X11SSi-LN4F?

Here's how I got there:

• start with SuperMicro (based on TrueNAS HW recc & forum guidance)
• narrow to server boards (TrueNAS HW recc)
• narrow to ATX (per this thread I don't care about size and ATX is the most flexible)
• eliminate X12 and H13 (too new) leaving only X11
• sort by price (X11SSA-F < SSi-LN4F < SRL-F < SPL-F < SPI-TF < SPH-nCTF < DPL-I < SPH-nCTPF)
• eliminate X11SSA-F (don't need legacy PCI, X11SSi-LN4F is same price)
• bump from SSi-LN4F to X11SRL-F for $100 and a little breathing room 4->8 memory slots, 6->8 SATA ports, 64GB -> 1TB RAM)

Is that reasoning sound? Thank you!

-- Salvatore
smile.

GOALS

• TrueNAS CORE
• Borg server in a jail (needs 16 GB RAM, minimal CPU)
• 20 TB disk (6 x 8 TB RAIDZ2)
• SSD boot drive

PRIORITIES

• absolutely important
  • reliable (and, therefore, ECC)
• important
  • powerful enough to not be straining against RAM or CPU limits
  • runs quiet (will be in a living space)
  • cost effective (not "budget" -- I will pay for a performant system but don't want to pay more than I need to)
• somewhat important
  • reasonably cool (will be in a well ventilated space)
  • expandable (don't want to max out motherboard)
  • power consumption (I don't want to be wasteful but I care more about total cost of ownership than low electricity bills)
• unimportant
  • physical size

 

[NugentS]

Looks good.
IPMI - check
Expansion available for 10Gb & HBA
M.2 - only one, but check
8 SATA Ports, can be expanded with HBA, 2 of these support SATADom with power.

 

[LoftyGoals]

Thank you! Any concerns around a single M.2? I'm trying to think of a scenario where I would need multiple M-2 attached SSD drives or some other M.2 peripheral?

 

[NugentS]

Whats your use case?

 

[LoftyGoals]

Whats your use case?

GOALS

• TrueNAS SCALE (per https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/ram-qty-for-borg-build.113606)
• Borg server in Docker (needs 16 GB RAM, minimal CPU)
• 20 TB disk (6 x 8 TB RAIDZ2)
• SSD boot drive + backup

PRIORITIES

• absolutely important
  • reliable (and, therefore, ECC)
• important
  • runs comfortably
  • runs quiet (will be in a living space)
  • cost effective (not "budget" -- I will pay for a performant system but don't want to pay more than I need to)
• somewhat important
  • reasonably cool (will be in a well ventilated space)
  • expandable (don't want to max out motherboard)
  • power consumption (I don't want to be wasteful but I care more about total cost of ownership than low electricity bills)
• unimportant
  • physical size

 

[NugentS]

Thats not a use case - its a kit list

 

[LoftyGoals]

Thats not a use case - its a kit list

USE CASE

• 10 TB cold storage, mostly images, videos, and large (~20M) tarballs of projects.
• 2 TB Time Machine backup from two OSX laptops
• 1 TB live Borg backups of running OSX laptops and Linux desktops
• 1 TB database and several million small (~1k) blob files with high latency tolerance
• 4 small Git repositories with high latency tolerance
• Borg server running in VM
• primary access through Borg, Time Machine, scp, and rsync, with some remote login and local file manipulation
• no low-latency requirements
• all access from from local network, generally over WiFi except for one-off large transfers or initial backups
• growth of about 10% per year on all uses

 

[NugentS]

Then I would buy a small Optane / Enterprise grade M.2 and use that as a SLOG drive. Keep all writes to datasets as async EXCEPT for the dataset with the database which I would set to sync writes, In the event of a unexpected power outage the SLOG will prevent db corruption due to un-comitted writes being lost (up to 5 seconds).

I note no 10Gb, but I would size the SLOG for 10Gb anyhow - 20GB will easily cover it. If you get an Optane, then get a proper Optane and not one of the M10 units which are not as good (and definately not an H10 unit). P1600X would be good I think.

I should point out that this is me being paranoid. SYnc writes without a SLOG are very slow. Sync writes with a decent SLOG are OK. Async write are much better but can be subject to dataloss in the event of a power outage. This matters with databases and virtual hard disks.