Older server hardware - Xeon E5540 2.53 GHz, 32gb ram, 8x4tb drives in RAIDZ1

[bob64]

Found an older supermicro box with a Xenon E5540, 32gb ram.
Thinking of tossing 8 drives, 4tb each. RAIDZ1 in two sets of 4. Will it freenas? Anyone got an idea of how much performance once would expect from it?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Should work just fine. Using bhyve probably won't work because it requires Westmere or above. Using raidz1 is a bad decision and everyone uses at least raid z2 now. You will probably lose multiple driver during a rebuild and with raid z1 that would result in losing the pool.

 

[bob64]

I'm planning on storing veeam backups onto it. So I suppose I should be ok as long as I don't suffer failures on both primary and backups at the same time. I'm more worried about performance as it's a really old chip. Any way to tell if the chip is the bottleneck after freenas is installed?

 

[Chris Moore]

I'm planning on storing veeam backups onto it. So I suppose I should be ok as long as I don't suffer failures on both primary and backups at the same time. I'm more worried about performance as it's a really old chip. Any way to tell if the chip is the bottleneck after freenas is installed?

We have gotten all but three servers of that generation out of our datacenter at work because they use more power and put out more heat than newer generation servers. The three I still have are dual socket with high specs and we will probably replace them next fiscal year. Performance of the CPU should be more than satisfactory if all you are doing it using it for file storage.
There is nothing particularly wrong with that kind of system, but if you want your zpool to be reliable over time, it would be best to follow the recommended configuration with RAID-Z2. I had to replace a drive in one of the pools at work and it took about two and a half days to resilver because of the amount of data that had to be copied to the new drive. When drives are new, that isn't such a big deal but as they get older, it can be the cause of another drive to fail. The suggestion is based on mathematical models and you are taking a real risk in not listening. Why make a backup at all if you can't rely on it 100%.

 

[Chris Moore]

Anyone got an idea of how much performance once would expect from it?

Your disk configuration will likely be more of a factor than the CPU. Based on a guess of 150 MB/s on each drive, the array configuration you suggested should yield around 480 MB/s of transfer. That will vary depending on the type of file. Large files will be sequential writes and that will be faster. Small files are more like a random workload and they will transfer more slowly.
Are you planning on a 10GB network connection?

 

[bob64]

Currently have 1gb onboard nics. Alright, which is better: all 8 disks in 1 zpool @raidz2 or two zpools of 4 disks @ raidz1?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Currently have 1gb onboard nics. Alright, which is better: all 8 disks in 1 zpool @raidz2 or two zpools of 4 disks @ raidz1?

2 zpools is never a good idea. Why do you want 2? Make a single pool with all 8 disks in raid z2.

 

[Chris Moore]

Currently have 1gb onboard nics. Alright, which is better: all 8 disks in 1 zpool @raidz2 or two zpools of 4 disks @ raidz1?

When you say "two zpools of 4 disks", I am guessing that you mean, 'two 4 disk vdevs in one pool'. That might make some sense, as it would give you more potential (theoretical) IOPS. It is not a recommended solution for reliability reasons.

I have used RAID-Z2 in my NAS because I think it is the superior solution. It should be more than fast enough to fully saturate a single 1GB interface. If you move to 10GB at some point in time, you will not be able to fully saturate a 10GB link, but you should still see speeds roughly equal to the average current (Sep 2017) generation of SSD. RAID-Z2 is more reliable due to the fact that the redundant disks are shared with the entire vdev.

 

[danb35]

You will probably lose multiple driver during a rebuild

Nonsense. We're doing way too much fearmongering in this regard. If another disk is "probably" going to fail during a RAIDZ1 resilver, the likelihood is just as high that a second disk will fail during a RAIDZ2 resilver--and that just isn't something we see here with any frequency*. The consequences of that failure will be different, of course, but the likelihood of failure wouldn't change.

Of course RAIDZ2 is safer than RAIDZ1, and it'd be a rare case (if at all) where I'd recommend RAIDZ1. But we don't need to be artificially inflating the chances of that second failure.

* Just as a matter of personal experience, I've probably resilvered a dozen disks among various iterations of my FreeNAS box, and have not had so much as a checksum error pop up during any of those operations. That's obviously a tiny sample size, but if a failure is "probable", I should have seen an error at least once. Or I'm just really darn lucky.

 

[Stux]

I would just use 8-way RaidZ2.

2 vdevs of 4-way RaidZ1 will offer better performance (twice the IOPS), but worse reliability.

This generation is a power suck.

 

[mindaugas.st]

damn,
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5540 does not support FreenasCorral

 

[Chris Moore]

damn,
Intel® Xeon® Processor E5540 does not support FreenasCorral

FreeNAS Corral is discontinued and you should not be trying to install it.

 

[mindaugas.st]

only when i have installed corral it has showed me right error,
because freenas starting VM, but you cant connect via VNC

 

[Ericloewe]

only when i have installed corral it has showed me right error,
because freenas starting VM, but you cant connect via VNC

I'm sorry, what do you mean?

 

[CraigD]

2 zpools is never a good idea. Why do you want 2? Make a single pool with all 8 disks in raid z2.

One pool is more efficient, however multiple pools work. The most common example of this is a mirrored pool along side a RAIDz pool.

Have Fun