Rico Viqueira
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2016
- Messages
- 7
Background
I have freenas 9.10 Stable running on my bare metal server, specs below. I would like to increase performance by adding ZIL and L2ARC caching to the Volume. In keeping with what I've observed are best practices of mirroring the ZIL I am short 1 SATA port on my board since this would require 3 SSD's. (which I have, 3xSAMSUNG PRO 840 250GB)
To give some background on why I want to do this, I run 1 ESXi datastore via iSCSI for a home lab to test applications and would like to increase performance to VM's with their storage on this datastore.
Other uses I have for this NAS include PLEX jail, and CIFS/AFP shares with personal data on it.
Question
I have freenas 9.10 Stable running on my bare metal server, specs below. I would like to increase performance by adding ZIL and L2ARC caching to the Volume. In keeping with what I've observed are best practices of mirroring the ZIL I am short 1 SATA port on my board since this would require 3 SSD's. (which I have, 3xSAMSUNG PRO 840 250GB)
To give some background on why I want to do this, I run 1 ESXi datastore via iSCSI for a home lab to test applications and would like to increase performance to VM's with their storage on this datastore.
Other uses I have for this NAS include PLEX jail, and CIFS/AFP shares with personal data on it.
Question
- What cheap HBA/PCIe SATA Controller could I accomplish this with?
- Would something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124045 work? I really want to avoid expensive controllers and would love to not mess with flashing/cross-flashing. I went through some hell on a LSI 9211 on a different box when going to P20 IT firmware.
- Which of the 7 drives I have be best suited to be placed on this proposed card? (or does it even matter)
- SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SLL-F-O
- Intel Core i3-4170 3M Haswell Dual-Core
- Mushkin Enhanced Proline 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 UDIMM ECC DDR3 1333
- 4xWD RED 3TB (in a Mirror/Stripe) (6TB Usable) (All attached to this board's on-board SATA 2 ports.
- 3 Samsung Pro 840 SSD's for L2ARC and Mirrored ZIL (but only have 2 SATA3 ports left on the board)