Server being given to me (any changes req for freenas w/Plex)

Andrew Parsons

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Aug 15, 2018
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Hello Everyone,

First I want to thank you for reading this post and helping me.

I consider myself very lucky, I am being given the below server. I am currently running a freenas setup that I have out grown, mainly do to my growing 4k meida collection. My question, is there anything that sticks out that is not compatible with Freenas or is there something that you would change. I am mainly looking to run plex on it. Since the server is free I do have some disposable income to make some changes here and there for the best possible fit for Freenas and Plex.

4U X9DRi-F 24 Bay SAS2 Expander
w/ BPN-SAS2-846EL1 24-port 4U SAS2 6Gbps single-expander backplane
2x Intel Xeon E5-2695 V2 2.4Ghz 12 Core 115W Dodeca (12) Core 2.4Ghz
128GB DDR3 (8 x 16GB - DDR3 - ECC REG PC3-10600R (1333Mhz) )
24x HITACHI 3.5" 4TB 7.2K SAS 6Gb/s HUS724040ALS640 (Really wish these were 5400 rpm and WD reds)
1x LSI 9211-8i HBA JBOD UNRAID
24x 3.5" Supermicro caddy
2x 920Watt Power Supply PWS-920P-1R Platium

Again, I want to thank you for any help and guidance you may have.
With respect
Andrew
 

Andrew Parsons

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Aug 15, 2018
Messages
13
I am thinking I should increase the number of 4TB drives to 28 so I can run 2 Vdevs @ Raid2 each with (6^2)+2 That would bring my total drive count to 28. That being said, since I have no idea how this server was treated, perhaps I go Raid3 and bring the drive count up to 30. Any other suggestions to this or the above post?

Thanks in advance again.
 

anmnz

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Feb 17, 2018
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so I can run 2 Vdevs @ Raid2 each with (6^2)+2

Um. Are you perhaps thinking of the old "2^n+p" rule for RAIDZ? Don't. It is obsolete, at best.

An authoritative discussion is here:
https://www.delphix.com/blog/delphi...or-how-i-learned-stop-worrying-and-love-raidz

Putting your 24 disks in just 2 vdevs makes those vdevs pretty wide -- though IMO not unreasonably so, especially for RAIDZ-3, depending on your use case. Can you provide more details about how you intend to use the server, how many users, etc.?

It looks to me like for most home server use you would not want to make any changes to the hardware you're getting to start with, at least not until you've had a chance to measure it in action and assess where the actual bottlenecks are. (Do ensure the HBA is flashed to IT mode.)
 
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Andrew Parsons

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Aug 15, 2018
Messages
13
First thank you for your response.

On my current system I have 12 pretty active plex users, with 6 typically transcoding 1080p. (No 4k transcoding). I am looking to use this server primarily for plex. I am looking to increase the number of users to 30ish with the odd 4k stream.

I did read the link that you provided me and in truth, I am more confused than I was before. It says the being wide is okay, but at the end it says dont be too wide. Be splitting into more vdevs i can double my IOPS reads and writes, what I dont know if media streaming is very IOPS intensive?

Thank you for your help thus far
 

anmnz

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Media streaming itself is not typically IOPS intensive. Unless you are suffering from fragmentation, it's typically nice long sequential reads without the need for intensive disk seek activity. However if you are serving a lot of busy users at once, and they are all reading from different files, and their read requests get interleaved at lot, that does tend to make the workload more about random reads than sequential reads, which is where IOPS become more relevant.

I can't really provide great advice on your setup as your needs are a bit different from what I have experience with. It feels to me like you have a basic choice to make between RAIDZ (maybe 4x 6-disk RAIDZ-2 vdevs) and mirrors (maybe 12x 2-disk mirrors). If it was me I'd really want to figure out a way to do some testing to try and assess which would fit my needs before becoming too committed to one strategy or the other. Hopefully people with more relevant experience will be able to provide better info.
 

Jessep

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Andrew Parsons

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Aug 15, 2018
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One last question, since the server is mainly for media, there is no point in using compression correct?
 

Jessep

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Aug 19, 2018
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The default LZ4 compression is basically free as far as performance impacts/CPU cycles, may as well leave it on.

If you have a lot of archive type data to move into pool one good idea I've seen suggested here was to use the MAX compression while you transfer the data and then change it to the default LZ4. This gives the best compression for unchanging data and the least performance impact for new or changing data.
 
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