Techweasel
Cadet
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2020
- Messages
- 7
Hi everyone, and thanks for contributing to such a great resource - I’ve learned a tonne in the last couple of months of lurking.
I’m finally pulling the trigger on my first system for my office to clean up my current “solution” of several direct-attached RAID-5 enclosures and a big shelf of redundant naked SATA drives for cold storage. It works, but isn’t pretty. Use case is strictly file storage. Files all are large media files (100-200GB) but used infrequently, and usually an entire file is sequentially read or written (almost no NLE editing that would requires lots of non-sequential reads, or concurrent writes). Lots of “copy this 100GB file to a workstation” or “transcode this 250GB file sequentially” (over the network, not on the NAS itself). ~3 users.
I lucked into getting my hands on 12x brand new Seagate EXOS 10tb SAS drives last month - so have been in the weird position of sitting on a pile of SAS disks and trying to work backwards from that - I’m leaning towards an 11-disk Z3 pool +1 hot spare (My thinking is that’s a worthwhile tradeoff over 2x6 drive Z2 pools - slightly more space efficient, and I like having a hot spare on standby when dealing with such large drives).
This whole project wasn’t in my limited “equipment upgrades” plans for right now, but the offer on the disks was too good to pass up - so I’m now trying to find the most affordable way to get them into use.
My original thinking was to use a mix of new and used hardware, something like:
- Used Supermicro CSE-826BE 2U Chassis w/ SAS2 Backplane
- Used LSI 6GBPS HBA (would probably buy pre-flashed from Art of Server just to sidestep compatibility and counterfeit headaches).
- New Supermicro X11SCA-F Motherboard
- Core i3-9100 (3.6 Ghz 4 Core)
- 32 GB Hynix DDR4 (Supermicro approved list) 2x16GB
- M2 or SSD Boot Disk (I have spares kicking around but haven’t dug them up to check what exactly)
- 10GbE Internet Card (Probably a Chelsio - although I keep holding my breath that the Aquantia FreeBSD driver might get the bugs sorted out and make its way into a new build sooner rather than later).
That would also leave at least one 8x PCIe slot free to add a second HBA down the line so I could chain in a 24 disk shelf for future growth.
However, getting my hands on reliable used equipment in Canada is turning out to be a pain. Cross border shipping from the US is often more expensive than the components themselves, and locally available equipment is scarce and old - so anything I could find would need Backplane and PSU replacement, and those parts would need to come from the US... etc, etc. The above setup would be nearly CAD $2,000 once shipping and parts replacements get taken into account.
Another option that I started considering this morning, was to just jump to an off-lease 4U Supermicro Server, spend less money overall, and be done with it - have the caddies for future expansion built in from the get-go. This eBay listing caught my eye as a possible starting point:
- Supermicro CSE-847E16-R1400UB 4U Chassis (2x SAS2 Backplanes, 1x24 and 1x12)
- LSI 9211-8i HBA (implied pre-flashed)
- Supermicro H8DGU-F Motherboard
- 2x AMD Opteron 2.6Ghz 8 Core (16 Core total)
- 64GB DDR3 8x8GB
The shipping from this supplier is more reasonable - so I could get the whole thing for ~ CAD $850 - and the only items I’d need to add are boot drives (which I likely have) and a 10GbE card so would be considerably cheaper.
I have very little familiarity with AMD chips - but given that the auction house is pretty much selling it as a suggested FreeNAS / unraid setup, I’d expect that it’d at least run... even if I had to swap out a bum part or two - it would still likely be a cheaper option overall.
Are there any Pros / Cons between the approaches that people would suggest given their personal experience, that I might not be thinking of? Or anything in that listing that might be a red flag that I’ve missed?
Presumably the 4U would be louder, but it’s in a separate room and with only 12 drives would be under a minimal load.
Also - from what I’ve read I know I'd be better served by a higher clock single CPU - but I’m assuming this should still be plenty for my needs, and allow for cheaper DDR3 RAM to boot.
In any case - appreciate any thoughts or comments.
I’m finally pulling the trigger on my first system for my office to clean up my current “solution” of several direct-attached RAID-5 enclosures and a big shelf of redundant naked SATA drives for cold storage. It works, but isn’t pretty. Use case is strictly file storage. Files all are large media files (100-200GB) but used infrequently, and usually an entire file is sequentially read or written (almost no NLE editing that would requires lots of non-sequential reads, or concurrent writes). Lots of “copy this 100GB file to a workstation” or “transcode this 250GB file sequentially” (over the network, not on the NAS itself). ~3 users.
I lucked into getting my hands on 12x brand new Seagate EXOS 10tb SAS drives last month - so have been in the weird position of sitting on a pile of SAS disks and trying to work backwards from that - I’m leaning towards an 11-disk Z3 pool +1 hot spare (My thinking is that’s a worthwhile tradeoff over 2x6 drive Z2 pools - slightly more space efficient, and I like having a hot spare on standby when dealing with such large drives).
This whole project wasn’t in my limited “equipment upgrades” plans for right now, but the offer on the disks was too good to pass up - so I’m now trying to find the most affordable way to get them into use.
My original thinking was to use a mix of new and used hardware, something like:
- Used Supermicro CSE-826BE 2U Chassis w/ SAS2 Backplane
- Used LSI 6GBPS HBA (would probably buy pre-flashed from Art of Server just to sidestep compatibility and counterfeit headaches).
- New Supermicro X11SCA-F Motherboard
- Core i3-9100 (3.6 Ghz 4 Core)
- 32 GB Hynix DDR4 (Supermicro approved list) 2x16GB
- M2 or SSD Boot Disk (I have spares kicking around but haven’t dug them up to check what exactly)
- 10GbE Internet Card (Probably a Chelsio - although I keep holding my breath that the Aquantia FreeBSD driver might get the bugs sorted out and make its way into a new build sooner rather than later).
That would also leave at least one 8x PCIe slot free to add a second HBA down the line so I could chain in a 24 disk shelf for future growth.
However, getting my hands on reliable used equipment in Canada is turning out to be a pain. Cross border shipping from the US is often more expensive than the components themselves, and locally available equipment is scarce and old - so anything I could find would need Backplane and PSU replacement, and those parts would need to come from the US... etc, etc. The above setup would be nearly CAD $2,000 once shipping and parts replacements get taken into account.
Another option that I started considering this morning, was to just jump to an off-lease 4U Supermicro Server, spend less money overall, and be done with it - have the caddies for future expansion built in from the get-go. This eBay listing caught my eye as a possible starting point:
- Supermicro CSE-847E16-R1400UB 4U Chassis (2x SAS2 Backplanes, 1x24 and 1x12)
- LSI 9211-8i HBA (implied pre-flashed)
- Supermicro H8DGU-F Motherboard
- 2x AMD Opteron 2.6Ghz 8 Core (16 Core total)
- 64GB DDR3 8x8GB
The shipping from this supplier is more reasonable - so I could get the whole thing for ~ CAD $850 - and the only items I’d need to add are boot drives (which I likely have) and a 10GbE card so would be considerably cheaper.
I have very little familiarity with AMD chips - but given that the auction house is pretty much selling it as a suggested FreeNAS / unraid setup, I’d expect that it’d at least run... even if I had to swap out a bum part or two - it would still likely be a cheaper option overall.
Are there any Pros / Cons between the approaches that people would suggest given their personal experience, that I might not be thinking of? Or anything in that listing that might be a red flag that I’ve missed?
Presumably the 4U would be louder, but it’s in a separate room and with only 12 drives would be under a minimal load.
Also - from what I’ve read I know I'd be better served by a higher clock single CPU - but I’m assuming this should still be plenty for my needs, and allow for cheaper DDR3 RAM to boot.
In any case - appreciate any thoughts or comments.