Xeon Gold 6144. My first NAS

[Chris Moore]

-8i is fine if I intend to only use 2,3 drives or so (up to 8 drives). I was thinking using the -24i so I can hook up more SATA or SAS drives later on. My intention is to use those drives as a second pool, vdevB. There is no SAS controller on the MB so I would need a such card to utilize all the bay possibilities.

You are not understanding what a SAS expander backplane does. You only need an 8i because the expander backplane takes care of the connection to all the individual drives. You could connect at least 120 drives to the 8i card.

 

[Ericloewe]

-8i is fine if I intend to only use 2,3 drives or so (up to 8 drives).

It has been stated above that the chassis includes SAS expander backplanes, so you only need two connectors' worth of connectivity. In other words, an -8i card.

My intention is to use those drives as a second pool, vdevB.

It's either a pool or another vdev, make up your mind. They're completely different things.

 

[TFAiSO]

It has been stated above that the chassis includes SAS expander backplanes, so you only need two connectors' worth of connectivity. In other words, an -8i card.


It's either a pool or another vdev, make up your mind. They're completely different things.

This saves me both time, money and less headache. I'll go for the -8i in the form of IBM M1215.

 

[Axemann]

From the image at Supermicro’s page for that board, it looks like they’re delivering 8x SATA by way of two vertical SFF-8087 connectors. Would that suffice to connect to the SAS backplane, or would the onboard SATA controller blow chunks due to the command set differences?

Just curious...


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[Chris Moore]

8x SATA by way of two vertical SFF-8087 connectors. Would that suffice to connect to the SAS backplane, or would the onboard SATA controller blow chunks due to the command set differences?

It would not suffice. The backplanes are SAS expander backplanes and a SATA controller can not work with that.
It would, 'blow chunks'...

 

[bigphil]

This saves me both time, money and less headache.

After reading this thread, these are the three things I thought you didn't care about ;) All joking aside, it sounds like you'll have quite a beast once done.

 

[farmerpling2]

You should get either 10k or 15k speed drives with all of those spare slots. You could make this a BEAST for I/O load capability! Of course you could just get SSD's...

 

[danb35]

-8i is fine if I intend to only use 2,3 drives or so (up to 8 drives).

No, the -8i will cover all 36 bays in your chassis, and anything larger won't do anything more for you--each backplane has a SAS2 expander, so it takes one SAS2 cable in, and connects that to all bays. A -16i or -24i card will just cost a lot more, and leave you with a lot of unused SAS ports.

 

[TFAiSO]

No, the -8i will cover all 36 bays in your chassis, and anything larger won't do anything more for you--each backplane has a SAS2 expander, so it takes one SAS2 cable in, and connects that to all bays. A -16i or -24i card will just cost a lot more, and leave you with a lot of unused SAS ports.

I have already got the parts indicated on the first page. An -8i is on its way along with two hot swap brackets for two 2.5” SSD’s. I think the bottleneck will be HDD I/O when serving multiple video streams. I’ll benchmark this thing to see how much it can do.

I’m tossing between z2 and z3, not sure which z2 configuration would be best, if even possible. My z3 suggestion should be OK though.

 

[MrToddsFriends]

My two cent: I would start with two vdevs with 6 disks each in a RaidZ2 configuration (if your are heading to two vdevs, not two pools). In this way, you could expand to up to six Raidz2 vdevs with 6 disks each in the future. Of course, this would put aside 1/3 of the total raw disk capacity for parity.

 

[Martin Maisey]

Crashplan.

Just in case you didn’t know, CrashPlan Home is discontinued for new subscriptions and renewals.


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[TFAiSO]

I’ll pick Backblaze then. Hoppfully it’s supported in FreeNAS.

 

[Martin Maisey]

The unlimited personal offering won’t, but I believe rclone in a jail with Backblaze B2 will probably work. Unless you’re backing up very large amounts of data, it’s pretty cheap.


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[TFAiSO]

Hmm earlier both Crashplan and Backblaze gave unlimited storage. Seems I’m out of luck. ;( If so, I need z3 for sure.

 

[styno]

Any 'personal' solution should work in a vm, but as 11.1 will natively support s3-type backup solutions my go-to backup solution for non-reproducable data will be Backblaze B2.
I can't wait!

 

[TFAiSO]

Any 'personal' solution should work in a vm, but as 11.1 will natively support s3-type backup solutions my go-to backup solution for non-reproducable data will be Backblaze B2.
I can't wait!

B2 would be too dear. I’ll go for the personal at 5$ a month using a vm. I hope a windows in vm can view the files and back it up.

 

[LTCM]

Since you have 36 bays, you may as well get the SAS controller for the system now. What are you thinking of or would you like a suggestion?

Maybe he's trying to control cost by not getting the SAS controller.;)

 

[TFAiSO]

Maybe he's trying to control cost by not getting the SAS controller.;)

The SAS controller is already ordered.

 

[Evertb1]

Optane is overkill for a boot device, but better than USB. Also, can FreeNAS boot from an Optane device? I don't know, never had one to test. I'd suggest a mirror of standard, cheap SSDs. Some people say using 120G or even 64G drives is a waste, but I disagree. That extra space is useful for boot environments and wear leveling.

I agree with you. At the current prices the extra space on an SSD is nothing to get sleepless nights over. Smaller SSD's are getting sparse but if I had to build a new rigg I would just buy a 120 GB SSD without a problem.

 

[BigDave]

No, the -8i will cover all 36 bays in your chassis, and anything larger won't do anything more for you--each backplane has a SAS2 expander, so it takes one SAS2 cable in, and connects that to all bays. A -16i or -24i card will just cost a lot more, and leave you with a lot of unused SAS ports.

Not that it will matter for SATA hard disks, but the server specs SAS3 backplanes.