Norco 4020 + Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 + IBM BR10i + RES2SV240 Build Advice

[SeeThruHead]

20 drive build. Want to stick with 1155 socket because I have hardware for that already. 2tb drives, 32gb of ram (too much? not enough?)

MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H
The Gigabyte GA-Z68M-D2H is recommended (http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...-or-is-recommended&p=6757&viewfull=1#post6757) but only has 1x16 slot, I'd like to have another x16 slot (with both x16 slots capable of 8x) for expandability.

6 sata slots on board meaning I need to find another 14 slots somewhere.

That's where the sas HBA comes in.
The IBM BR10i is recommended as well as fairly inexpensive. It has 2 SFF 8087 connectors which would give me 8 drives, not enough and here comes in the SAS expander:

Intel RAID Twenty-four port Expander Card RES2SV240 has 6 SFF 8087 and supports dual link for more bandwidth.

Connect two SFF 8087 on BR10i to two SFF 8087 on RES2SV240 then connect up to 16 drives to the RES2SV240, I only need 14 drives.

Set those up in 4x 5-disk raid-z2 all in one pool.

This also leave me one 8x slot to expand the storage into another enclosure with a LSI 9200 8e at a later date.

So I'm hoping this should work since it's all hardware that is recommended. What do you guys think? I'd like to finalize hardware choices before I begin to buy stuff.

 

[b1ghen]

I would go with another SAS card that has support for larger than 2TB drives to be future safe. I don't know how the compatibility is with expanders though.

 

[survive]

Hi SeeThruHead,

If you don't have the mobo already take a look here http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/#1155 & pick yourself out something nice.

Since you are looking at the BR10i I assume you are going the ebay route....if so see if you can get some IBM M1015 cards....those are based off the LSI 2008 chip. If you don't ever see swapping out the drives for something more than 2TB the BR10i should be fine....that's what I use!

-Will

 

[SeeThruHead]

you know what, that's a great suggestion, actually I think I'll switch to the LSI 9211 8i and use 3tb drives. Going to go Hitachi since I've had a good experience with my 2tb drives.

 

[b1ghen]

Might I also suggest an Intel NIC, the onboard Realtek is not worthy such a nice build.

 

[SeeThruHead]

Well the realtek NIC is one of the reasons I decided on that board, since it was in the recommended http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...-or-is-recommended&p=6757&viewfull=1#post6757
The intel NIC card that's recommended is Intel Gigabit CT PCIe Adapter so something like this should work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106036

 

[b1ghen]

Well the realtek NIC is one of the reasons I decided on that board, since it was in the recommended http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...-or-is-recommended&p=6757&viewfull=1#post6757
The intel NIC card that's recommended is Intel Gigabit CT PCIe Adapter so something like this should work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106036

Yes the Realtek usually works pretty decently, but Intel is the way to go for optimum performance and stability. On such a large build I would not skimp out on an Intel NIC. The one you linked to should work fine, the most important bit is that it's PCIe and not PCI.