To Expand or not to Expand.. that is the question

[Terry Wilson]

whether it is nobler of man... ok.. let me see if I can word this without writing a book in the process.

I have a small business that started out with a few backup customers on a small 5TB Freenas server, life was good. Then business picked up so I got a Dell R710 and loaded it up with 8 6TB drives (largest they had at the time) and life was great! Well guess what, its time to add more storage...

So the question then becomes what is the most cost effective way to lets say double the capacity of what i have now? Granted you can get 8Tb drives now but that doesn't help much and they are still mondo $$

I am wondering if I am better off to try add an external drive chassis like a (insert favorite vendor here) 12 bay with an LSI SAS card and cable, or build a whole new server with 12 bays from the start (vs 6 on the Dell R710) with something like the Supermicro 2U Server X8DTN ?

Surely 12 6TB drives in a Z2 setup with your favorite vdev layout would suffice!

Currently I am running 6 of WD Red 6TB Z2 and have apx 24TB of storage. Speed is not an issue as all this data is being sent over a 100mb internet connection so the bottleneck there far outweighs any speed issue with the 7200 RPM drives, Z2, etc..

Looking for more Cap, than speed anyway..

So what do you think on the best way to grow/expand this beast?>

 

[Johnny Fartpants]

How old is the R710 you're using? If its a few years old or more it seems silly to expand that system (unless you plan on running it 'forever') and then perhaps a new one is the way.

 

[Terry Wilson]

ITs about 3 years old. New Drives, have no issue running it longer as never seen a R710 fail in less than 10 yrs

 

[Terry Wilson]

What about using a MD3000 to expand the capacity? I can pick up a new one (literally) for less than $400 with caddies, etc.. Any issue with this approach I need to be aware of?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

What about using a MD3000 to expand the capacity?

That's what I would do. We use the HP equivalent (HP D2600 and D2700) units with FreeNAS. Dirt cheap way to expand your disk capacity.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Terry Wilson]

Perfect, that is where my research was learning towards. I assume I just throw in another LSI 9210 running IT mode and configure the MD3000 to do JBOD or each drive as RAID 0 (if it does not support JBOD) and then configure the vdevs and make a new pool (or expand the existing pool) ?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

throw in another LSI 9210 running IT mode

It wouldn't be a 9210. That only has internal ports. You'll need an HBA with external ports. For example, the 9200-8e or 9207-8e.

configure the MD3000 to do JBOD or each drive as RAID 0 (if it does not support JBOD)

I'm not as familiar with the Dell storage arrays as I am the HP line. Make sure that the MD3000 can be used as JBOD before you walk down that path. If it can't, buy a different enclosure. (Such as the HP units I know work.)

Also, of note, the MD3000 is an original SAS, 3gbps enclosure and not a faster SAS2 (6gbps) or SAS3 (12gbps) enclosure. That probably won't matter if you're just hosting backups but if you were hosting VMs or databases, I'd get at least a 6gbps unit. You should also confirm it supports 8TB drives.

and then configure the vdevs and make a new pool (or expand the existing pool) ?

Once you have the drives attached to the server, they work exactly like the drives you have physically inside the server. The only possible difference is if the enclosure supports multi-path. Then the drives will be presented with an alias instead of a hard path. But, for the purposes of using them in FreeNAS, there is no difference.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Terry Wilson]

It wouldn't be a 9210. That only has internal ports. You'll need an HBA with external ports. For example, the 9200-8e or 9207-8e.

Yeah I was going to rig up a cable thru the slot covers, I will just spring for a 9207 then.


I'm not as familiar with the Dell storage arrays as I am the HP line. Make sure that the MD3000 can be used as JBOD before you walk down that path. If it can't, buy a different enclosure. (Such as the HP units I know work.)

I found a new MD3000 for $200 (I guess because they are older SAS 3gbps) so I jumped on it. I would not even considered this if were for any production stuff on the LAN. as this is write mainly and read occasionally archival backup data being streamed over the internet I am not worried about performance as much as I am about capacity,but thats for the heads up...


Also, of note, the MD3000 is an original SAS, 3gbps enclosure and not a faster SAS2 (6gbps) or SAS3 (12gbps) enclosure. That probably won't matter if you're just hosting backups but if you were hosting VMs or databases, I'd get at least a 6gbps unit. You should also confirm it supports 8TB drives.

Ugggghh I think my heart just sank... May have thrown away $200... Looks like its only showing 2TB as the max supported drive and only if you have the latest firmware... So yeah... whats the model number of the HP unit that will support at least 7.3K 6TB SAS?


Once you have the drives attached to the server, they work exactly like the drives you have physically inside the server. The only possible difference is if the enclosure supports multi-path. Then the drives will be presented with an alias instead of a hard path. But, for the purposes of using them in FreeNAS, there is no difference.

Cheers,
Matt