New build help

[lanbladez]

I plan on building a 10 drive x 4 or 3 tb zfs raidz2 nas. This will be mainly for storing media files, at most two people might be watching those 2 media files over Ethernet from other pcs in the house. Is 16 gb ram going to be enough? What board would be recommended for this build.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

Use raidz3, 16gb ram, m1015 sata controller, super micro x10 mb and a core i3 4130. Alternative mb is Asus p9d

And do some research into recommended hw. It's the sticky thread at the top of the hardware forum.

 

[lanbladez]

Raidz3 seems a bit of an overkill, do I need to go with raidz3? If I go with raidz3, I would need a total of 11 drives for an ideal size. Also, what drives are recommended to be more reliable the Seagate nas ones or the WD Red ones?

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

WD Reds are popular around here. I have never heard anything about reliability compared to seagate. I would buy wd reds.

As for raidz3: with 10 disks in your pool a failure in more than 1 drive is likely. My recommendation is based on my gut feeling regarding drive reliability. I would not feel comfortable with only 2 parity disk with a 10 disk zpool.

 

[lanbladez]

I was told that I need to buy the drives in batches, since I do not want them to fail all at the same time. If I am going to buy 11. What should my batch size be, and how long should I wait to buy another batch.

 

[Z300M]

I was told that I need to buy the drives in batches, since I do not want them to fail all at the same time. If I am going to buy 11. What should my batch size be, and how long should I wait to buy another batch.

I've seen that suggestion, but I don't know how many people actually recommend it. I bought my original four drives at the same time, and only one failed (and was replaced under warranty)

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

I bought 6 drives from two vendors. All 6 drives had wildly varying serial numbers. Even the 3 from a single vendor.

So honestly it's probably not a big deal. But you could do as I did and buy 3 from 2 different vendors.