BUILD Small Team Server / VM Hosting Server

[mka]

Hi, I'm currently selecting parts for a FreeNAS server for our developer team (roughly 20 users). Mainly hosting workspaces and some Virtual Box VMs via NFS and CIFS ...and I would love any hints or insights on the setup. I'm planning on using a 16TB Pool with a RaidZ2 setup. The current Hardware selection is:

1. 6x HGST Ultrastar 7K6000 4TB SAS 12Gb/s
2. Supermicro X10SRH-CLN4F (2011-3 socket, 4x GbLAN, 10 SAS ports)
3. Intel Xeon E5-2630 v3 8x 2.40GHz (socket 2011-3)
4. 128GiB Crucial LRDIMM ECC Ram (4x32GB, DDR4-2133)
5. ZIL/SLOG: Intel SSD DC P3600 Series 400GB (PCIe 3.0 x4, low profile, NVMe)
   
6. Cache/L2ARC: Intel SSD DC S3500 Series 600GB (2.5")
   
7. Supermicro 823TQ-650LPB (2HE, 6-bay Hot-Swapping, 650W redundant PSU)
8. or: Supermicro 835TQ-R800B (3HE, 8-bay Hot-swapping, 800W redundant PSU)

Is this machine in combination with the 7200rpm HGST drives, the RAM and the SLOG/L2ARC balanced for running multiple VMs? Are any hardware incompatibilities excepted (mybe with the NVMe SSDs)? I wish to use 4x GbE link aggregation cause there is no 10G infrastructure. Maybe a seperate10GbE card is added with the combination of an additional backup server if 10GbE is needed over 1GbE; but probably not.

I like the option of upgrading the machine to 256GiB of RAM when necessary.

I also havn't made up my mind upon getting a 2HE 6-bay chassis or a 3HE 8-bay chassis and maybe use some hot-standby drive.

Next step: I'm planning on building a stripped down backup machine beeing the nightly backup partner of this host machine.

 

[mka]

Any ideas? I don't wanna spent 8000€ with maybe obvious mistakes in it.

 

[depasseg]

If that is your budget, give Ixsystems a call.
Are your NFS exports going to be configured to use sync ? If not, the slog is a waste.

Also you likely need more drives and use the Raid10 equivalent (striped mirrors). I would be worried that Raidz2 could really slow things down even with that large of an l2arc.

 

[Ericloewe]

Honestly, it looks like massive overkill for a 16TB pool.

Keep in mind that SAS3 stuff is still unstable. YMMV with SAS3.

Intel Xeon E5-2630 v3 8x 2.40GHz (socket 2011-3)

I'd probably go with 6 faster cores instead (like a Xeon E5-1650 v3 - 6 cores @3.5GHz nominally).

16TB Pool

Keep in mind that 4x"4 drive manufacturer TB" is less than 16TB. Plus overhead, not filling the pool beyond 8%, ...

I wish to use 4x GbE link aggregation cause there is no 10G infrastructure.

Don't get your hopes up. It might work, but it's something that sounds better on paper than it works.