Opinion needed for a new NAS system - Supermicro X11SSM-F or X11SSH-F or X11SSH-LN4F

[Revan]

I am planing to setup a new FreeNAS system with the following setup:

CPU: Pentium G4500 (i already have that CPU and i want to reuse it for the NAS)
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM Intel DIMM Kit 32GB, DDR4-2133, CL15-15-15, ECC (KVR21E15D8K2/32I) (Crucial isn't available here at the moment)
HDs for Data storage: 6x WD 4 TB RED in one RAIDz2 vdev setup
Power Supply: be quiet! Straight Power 10-CM 500W ATX 2.4 80 Gold Plus
Computer Case: Inter-Tech IPC-9008 5U, it allows to use an EATX motherboards and ATX power supply. Rack support is optional it can be used standalone without a 19-inch rack like a normal computer case.
Hot-swap SATA Hard Disk Drive Trays: 2 x Supermicro CSE-M35TQB, yes this gets expensive but i really like to have hot-swap drive trays.

System storage: 64 - 128 GB M.2 PCI or SATA consumer grade SSD as a system drive. M.2 or SSD depends on the selected motherboard. I won't use an USB stick solution for the system.

Motherboard:
About the motherboard it will be one of these three, but i am still undecided they have all pros(+) and cons(-):

Supermicro X11SSM-F
+ does have an addition PCIe Slot
+ is the cheapest from these three
+ 2 NIC ports + 1 additional NIC Port for IPMI
- doesn't have a M.2 PCI Slot
- because of the lack of a M.2 PCI Slot i will need to buy a SATA SSD for the system disk which will consume 1 SATA port
- 7 SATA connectors usable for data storage, while 1 is consumed by the system SSD

Supermicro X11SSH-F
+ does have a M.2 PCI Slot, thus i can use a M.2 PCI card for the system disk instead of a SATA based SSD
+ 8 SATA connectors available for data storage
+ 2 NIC ports + 1 additional NIC Port for IPMI
+ price is somewhere between the other two.
- one less additional PCIe Slot

Supermicro X11SSH-LN4F
+/- The same as the X11SSH-F with the following exceptions:
+ 4 NIC Ports which might be useful for Link Aggregations with my Cisco SG300-10 10-Port Gigabit Managed Switch
+ 1 additional NIC port for IPMI
- is the most expensive of these three

I am not planing to buy an LSI Controller card because i will very likely not need more than these 6 SATA 4 TB drives for the next 8 years.
They will offer plenty of storage. RAIDz2 will allow to use 16 TB for future data storage and at the moment i have only about 6 TB of data to store at the moment.

If i buy one of the two X11SSH-* versions the additional 2 free SATA ports might be used or an additional pool with a mirror vdev setup in the future.
If i buy the X11SSM-F version, i won't be able to setup an additional pool with a mirror vdev setup because 1 SATA port is used for the system SSD.
Buying a M.2 Controller card might solve that but it would cost additional money for the M.2 controller card, and a M.2 card as a new system drive.
The old SSD probably won't be usable for a new vdev anymore, because at that time in let's say 6 years it will be probably be too small.
The use for a zil or L2ARC is possible but it's very unlikely that i will ever need that in my home user scope.

So at the moment i tend to buy one of the two X11SSH-* versions, but maybe you have a word for the X11SSM-F version.

About the Link Aggregation feature i understand that it will not increase the transfer speed for a single connection.
In my home there are about 3-4 real computers (smart-phones, tablets not counted), so theoretically the 2 additional NIC ports might be usable, but on the other
side it's unlikely that i really need a full 1 GBit/s connection for each computer at the same time.
And the smaller Supermicro X11SSH-F with only 2 NIC ports does already have 2 NIC Ports which could be used for a smaller link aggregation setup to.
The switch does support link aggregation and LACP.
Thus the 4 NIC ports might be nice to have but probably not really necessary.

I also assume that these 2 additional NIC ports of the X11SSH-LN4F will consume additional power thus a NAS with a X11SSH-F motherboard with only 2 NIC ports will probably consume less power.
Is this assumption correct?

The X11SSM-F version does offer an additional PCIe Slot but it's unlikely that i will need it.
A 10GBase-T NIC card is too expensive at the moment and i won't need and use 10GBase-T before consumer motherboards support it out of the box.
Thus it's unlikely that i will need it in the next 10 years.

I probably also won't put a DVB tv card in my NAS. Even if drivers were available i won't need to do that because i already have a desktop computer that is used and available for the DVB TV stuff.
Thus using a DVB card in the FreeNAS might be only a gimmick or optional nice to have but definitely not required.

It's also very unlikely that i will put a video card into the FreeNAS computer. The FreeNAS computer will offer IPMI and as a home theater PC using Kodi/XMBC i am planing to use a Raspberry Pi 3 instead. I also won't use that machine for gaming, its main usage is really only being a NAS, thus a dedicated GPU is not required.

Thus i assume that these 3 PCIe slots of the X11SSH-* version will be, compared to the X11SSM with 4 available PCIe slots, more than plenty enough PCIe slots.
I really don't know what i could put into them, except a 10GBase-T NIC in 10 years or the above mentioned DVB card.
A LSI controller might be only usable if the SATA controller of the C236 chipset is really slow, which i doubt.

I am planning to use the NAS for the following purposes:

1. Being a NAS. That's it main purpose.
2. Running a git server
3. Running a Plex server
4. I also might run a webserver with a SQL based DBMS and Java and PHP support not connected to the internet for development purposes. But this is not a requirement. My desktop machine is fast enough to handle that too.
5. I am not the guy that buys every 3 years new hardware. Thus i am planing to use this NAS system for the next 10-20 years. If a hardware part gets broken i will replace it. This is also, besides ZFS, one reason why i decided to setup a FreeNAS instead of buying a Synology or QNAP NAS. This system will be also much faster than a Synology or QNAP, which is an additional feature.

I am also planing to use LZ4 compression and optionally maybe deduplication if the CPU is fast enough. But both of these features are not a requirement.
If the CPU is too slow, i just will turn these features off.

One last thing. Does it make any sense to use a unique NIC for each server service (NAS, git, plex, webserver)?
If this might be the case, the X11SSH-LN4F with its 4 nic ports might be still of good use.

Before i buy all the hardware i am interested to hear your opinion. Maybe you have some recommendation to do something different.
I would also like to know if only 16 GB of RAM instead of 32 GB are enough?
My calculation was 8 GB of RAM for FreeNAS + 1 GB for each TB of hard drive space. I will have 6 x 4 TB of hard drive space thus the requirement will be according to the rule of thumb 8 GB + 24 GB = 32 GB of RAM.
And which of these three motherboard would you recommend in this usage scope?

The CPU is already bought, that is something i don't want to change.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

The Intel Pentium G4500 is fine for the NAS itself but is just barely adequate for a single Plex stream. You don't have enough RAM for deduplication and probably not enough CPU. Your motherboard might last ten years but you certainly won't be using it in twenty. Get the least expensive motherboard: you don't need two NICs let alone four NICs.

For just NASsing around, 8G is fine. For everything else, 16G is fine for a home-user. Once you start throwing VMs into FreeNAS, look at your RAM utilization and performance and adjust accordingly.

I'd give up hot swap and put that money toward a more powerful CPU.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Revan]

Thank you very much for your answer.

In this case i wouldn't use deduplication then.
All of the three motherboards have at least 2 or more NICs. There is not one with only one NIC. The Extra NIC for IPMI not counted.

EDIT:
One thing i have forgotten to mention. My old 486 is now 26 years old an i am still using it. Till 2005 i also used it as a Linux Router with a DSL modem attached to it in my home.
If i did buy desktop computers with ECC RAM and ECC RAM support, i would replace the NAS hardware some day but that won't happen, thus i will use the NAS for a very long time.

 

[Ericloewe]

RAM: Kingston ValueRAM Intel DIMM Kit 32GB, DDR4-2133, CL15-15-15, ECC (KVR21E15D8K2/32I) (Crucial isn't available here at the moment)

So get Samsung or Hynix or whatever else is available and is on the QVL.

- because of the lack of a M.2 PCI Slot i will need to buy a SATA SSD for the system disk which will consume 1 SATA port

No, you can buy a cheap PCIe slot to M.2 adapter card and save money overall.

optionally maybe deduplication if the CPU is fast enough

Nope, bad idea. Trust me, "potentially unbounded amounts of RAM required to import a pool" is not a fun concept.