BUILD Out with the small...in the with big(ger)?

[JimPhreak]

OK so while stressing my space situation I had put together (and ordered) the parts to build a FreeNAS server in an 8-bay NAS enclosure. However, as some of the FreeNAS vets on here know, I've been wavering back and forth as to whether or not this SFF build would fit my current needs as well as those needs going forward over the next few years.

I don't want to build a storage server and then have to upgrade in 2 years. I also don't want to have to be replacing hardware often (or even worse lose data) because of poor cooling with regards to my disks and CPU/RAM. For these reasons my #1 objective is to build a server that will last me for a long time and/or be upgradable.

So with that in mind, and for the purpose of this post lets pretend I have no space issues (for a tower that is, rack mountable hardware is still not an option). How does the following build look for both performance sake (read/write speeds) and for future-proofing:



CPU: Xeon E3 1230v2 - $220
MB: SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O Micro-ATX MB - $160
RAM: 16GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1600 ECC RAM - ALREADY OWN
HBA: IBM ServerRAID M1015 - $105
DRIVES: Western Digital Red 3TB drives (x8) - ALREADY OWN
NIC: Intel EXPI9301CT Adapter - ALREADY OWN
CASE: NZXT Tempest 210 - ALREADY OWN



The total out of pocket cost would be $495. Compare that to the 3 SFF components (U-Nas NSC-800, ASRock E3C226D2I, i3-4130) that I can return right now for $530 plus the fact I won't need to buy an aftermarket CPU HSF that will fit my enclosure ($40-50). Therefore I'm saving almost $100 and building a server that should last me longer / be more capable.

If this is a good way to go (and from everything I've read on here it sounds like it should be) my only other question than is what to do with my 8 drives. Create an 8 drive RAIDz2 pool or a 6 drive RAIDz2 pool (12TB usable space should be plenty for a while) with 2 spares. I guess this is a topic for another thread though since I'd like to take performance into account as well.

 

[JimPhreak]

Got an offer to sell an old LGA 775 DDR2 tower that I've been using for testing over the past few years but now that I'm building a VM server it can all be virtualized. Therefore I now will for sure have the space to put a tower FreeNAS box. So I think I'm going ahead with this larger build as I'm going to head to MicroCenter shortly to pick up the last E3 1230v2 they have in stock :D.

 

[survive]

Hi JimPhreak,

I think going with something bigger is a wise move.

Here are some random thoughts:

There's nothing wrong with the Xeon, it's a strong chip, but I think it's likely much stronger than you need. The i3 you already have is a perfectly fine chip, it supports AES-NI for encryption & when paired with the proper motherboard and RAM, does ECC as well.

http://ark.intel.com/products/77480

Personally I would pair that chip with a new Supermicro X10 board. Give this thread a look:

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/supermicro-x10-series.15125/

There's a particularly interesting variant in the X10 lineup, the X10SL7-F:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SL7-F.cfm

That has an 8 port LSI2308 SAS controller on-board. It lists for ~$240.00, but you don't have to buy an M1015 controller. 2 things to note if you go this way....you need to flash the board to run in "IT" mode and you trade the nice, neat SFF-8087 SAS cables for individual SATA cables.

About the case:

I really don't like cheap cases, and the NZXT case is cheap....that said, you already own it so no reason not to give it a whirl (said the guy with 5 first gen. Antec Solo cases still in use). First thing I would do is get a couple of quality 120mm fans for it. I like the Yate Loons from here:

http://www.svc.com/120fans.html?page=3

I would head over to Monoprice.com and order your cables for your M1015. Take a piece of string and map out how you want to run the SAS to SATA cables to be sure you get the right length. Monoprice also sells these 4 SATA power to Molex adapters that can make it really easy to run power to the drive stack.

Be sure to bust out the label maker and tag the visible end of your drives to make it easier to identify which drive is which!

I would do an 8 drive raidz2. 6 drives is more mathematically correct (and performs better), but it only costs you a few 10's of MB/s. When I switched to raidz2 I lost ~40MB/s, going from 480MB/s to 440 using the "dd" write test. Since you are starting out fresh you have the luxury of trying both, but an 8 drive riadz2 should work out just fine.

Personally I use a Fractal Design R2 8 drive case and I have been very happy with it, if you decide you want a "better" case I would certainly give them a look.

-Will

 

[JimPhreak]

Thanks for the reply survive. I didn't really consider keeping the i3 if I was going with the larger size build but if you're saying it's more than powerful enough that's good to hear.

As for the M1015, certainly if I don't need to buy it because the board I get has 8 SATA ports that would be fine with me. I guess either way though its's about the same cost for that X10 MB as it would be for the X9 plus the M1015. Are there any other advantages to going with that X10 board other than the 8 SATA ports?

As for the case, I know it's a cheap case (heck it was $40). But can you point to anything (other than the fans) that make the R2 (which costs $100) a more effective case? Just looking at the case it doesn't strike me as one that is worth $60 more than the NZXT. I'd be willing to pickup a new case if it was worth it but I think I'd want some tangible reasons.

 

[survive]

Hi JimPhreak,

I can't say that it's powerful enough for you, but I can say that my i3-2100 (3.1Ghz Sandy Bridge) is plenty powerful enough for me. I can't ever think of a time I thought I didn't have enough proc in my filer, honestly I don't really know what it would take to actually use all the processing power I have have available in the box.The i3-4130 you have is probably a good 20-25% faster than my chip.

Here's my CPU graph for the last month:

http://imgur.com/OCqkIjL

The big spike 3 weeks ago was a big zfs replication I ran to another disk in the system.

The X9S board you linked to (I have the SCL myself) only has 6 SATA ports, so no matter what you will need 2 more ports to run 8 drives. Personally I would do all 8 drives on an M1015 simply because the SAS-to-SATA cables make the wiring so neat & clean. The X10 board I linked to actually has 14 SATA\SAS ports, the 6 on-board Intel plus 8 more from an on-board LSI controller. If you expand your question to something like X10 vs. X9 then you get into the question of is it better to run the latest & greatest or should you use something a little older and time-tested. I made the suggestion since you already have the socket 1150 i3 chip. As I understand it the new X10's do work very well with FreeNAS, but I would confirm that with a through reading of the X10 thread I linked to above. The short answer is the new X10 systems should cost about the same as an equivalent X9 and has all the latest hardware (mostly newer NIC chips) and is more energy efficient (note: more might not mean much more, SB & IB chips are already very efficient).

So, about the case.....I'm not going to try & sell you on moving to something else, you have the case already & presumably it hasn't caused you any degree of grief yet, so you should certainly try your build out in it first & if there is anything annoying or awful you can make the switch then. I'd go ahead and pick up some of the Yate-Loon fans I linked to above (no need to drop $15.00 per on fancy fans, many of those are just re-branded Yate-Loons) and see what your drive temps are like when you are doing a scrub or an iozone test with a big data size and go from there. You can always re-use the fans in a different case if the NZXT proves to be not what you want.

I'm a big believer in paying a premium for cases, power supplies & monitors because those are things that will persist across multiple generations of processors & boards so you should get you money out of them in the long term. My big measure of case quality is if I am simply comfortable running the back of my hand around in the edges inside the case, no cuts means I won't have damaged cables. I like heavy cases because they don't flex so I have less worry about stripping out screws and the extra weight of heavy gauge steel means less vibration & noise. I like the Fractal Design hard drive mounts (very much like the Antec Solo's) that isolate the drives with a silicone grommet.

The only thing that really concerns me with the NZXT case is that the drive stack looks like they are really close together (based on the side-view on the mfg. page) so you might actually run into the same problem you were advised of with the U-NAS box. It's easy enough to find out by building the box & testing hot hot the drives get as reported by SMART.

-Will

 

[JimPhreak]

I think I will pick up some good fans like you said and monitor my temps with the NZXT case. I think I'll also stick with the i3 as I can always upgrade to the E3 down the line if I feel I need more juice. At least now with the bigger case I have the headroom (cooling wise) to be able to make the jump with peace of mind.

How about this board paired with an M1015 since I won't need the 8 on board SATA ports?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182

The only other thing is I need to pick-up a PSU. I have a Corsair HX650 but I think that's too much juice to where my box will be operating at below the 20% usage which I've read makes it less stable/efficient.

 

[Sir.Robin]

I too was looking at th eX9SCM-F.

However, i too was looking at the M1015, but the price for these two were quite a bit more than what i got the X10SL7 for.

I use 30cm short SATA cables and have noe cable clutter. :)

You can argue that the X10's are more "future proof", but really, it's just one generation. Power consumption at idle is just around 20W lower than it was for my old AMD system. Minor thingy in other words.

I beleive you can go with either one. If i were buying again, and would not need the LSI controller, i'd go X9SCM.
As for CPU, i went' with the Xeon because the price difference werent big, and i got power to spare if i wan't to do something more exotic :)

 

[JimPhreak]

Ok so all parts have been ordered (or are in hand) and my final build looks like this:

CPU: Intel i3-4130 3.4Ghz CPU
MoBo: SuperMicro X10SLM-F-O Micro-ATX MoBo
RAM: 16GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1600 ECC RAM
HBA: IBM ServerRAID M1015
PSU: Seasonic SS-400FL2 400W Platinum Fanless PSU
DRIVES: Western Digital Red 3TB drives (x8)
NIC: Intel EXPI9301CT Adapter
Case: NZXT Tempest 210 (with 4 Yate Loons)

Thanks everyone for all your recommendations. Budget certainly expanded but I feel much better that this server will give me the room to do whatever I may need to in the future for my home network.

 

[JimPhreak]

Btw I have 2 128GB SSD's sitting around from 2 parted builds. I was going to use them in my VM server but thinking about getting a larger one for my VM datastore so either I'm gonna sell them or is there any legitimate use for them in my FreeNAS build? I've read about ZIL and L2ARC but I've seen a lot of conflicting data as to whether or not it's really worth it especially for a home server. Thoughts?

 

[JimPhreak]

Hmmm, the Fractal Define R4 is on sale for $50 at my local MicroCenter. Tempting.

...and yea it appears I'm talking to myself in this thread haha.

 

[MtK]

I'm curios, why did you add the additional NIC?

 

[JimPhreak]

Honestly I don't NEED it but I had an extra one so I figured why not in case I wind up doing some more advanced VLANing. I plan on using my zpool for many different purposes (media streaming, PC image backup, VM snapshot backups, etc.) and segregating the traffic as much as possible will be an ice option for testing down the road. Like I said probably not needed but I had an extra.

 

[MtK]

oh, i though you ordered it...

 

[JimPhreak]

Yea the last 3 items on my list (Drives, NIC, Case) I already had.

 

[cmfisher4]

My define r4 just came from newegg today. Havent opened it yet, but looking forward to it!

 

[JimPhreak]

My define r4 just came from newegg today. Havent opened it yet, but looking forward to it!

It's a very nice looking case and it also looks like it would be very quiet. I'm just a little concerned about airflow. Let me know how your temps look!

 

[cmfisher4]

Will do. It's going to be a slow build for me (budget constraints), though, so you might beat me to it.

 

[JimPhreak]

Yea I should be done (at least with the physical build) within 1-2 weeks.

 

[JimPhreak]

Welp a new development on the case I'll be using. Since I was able to get rid of one of my towers (will be VM'd) and I sold my gaming PC (which was a Switch 810) I have room to put a big tower in place of that Switch. A friend of mine agreed to trade me his Lian Li PC-A76 for my Switch 810 since he wants to build a gaming PC and he's only going to use 2 hard drives. The A76 can fit 12 3.5" drives stock and you can always add 3 more to the top 2x5.25" drive bays if you wanted. It's the same size basically as my Switch but much better suited for a storage server. I'm pretty happy with this trade :D.

Now my SuperMicro uATX case is going to look so small in this thing haha. But hey I'll be able to put my 8 drives in it with room to add 7 more in the future if I want to add more VDevs to my zpool in the future. The A76 is also very quiet and has excellent cooling so I think I found the perfect case.

 

[cmfisher4]

Wow. That's big. Roomy! Looks like its a great choice, though. Some of the reviews mention using it as a server case, too.