Thoughts on company NAS build?

D

diehard

Gawd
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Aug 4, 2002
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So i will be attempting to build a ZFS based NAS with FreeNAS, using a custom built server.
So far, i will be ordering

LSI MegaRAID Internal Low-Power SATA/SAS 9261-8i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 w/ 512MB onboard memory RAID Controller Card
SUPERMICRO SuperChassis CSE-846E26-R1200B Black 4U Rackmount Server Case 1200W Redundant

Plus a single socket 2011 Supermicro mobo, an E5 based XEON and 64GB of ECC RAM. In total it will be using about 48TB of storage. It will be a backup target for VMWare.. so speed isn't the main priority.

Technically it would be a SAN as it will be using iSCSI to connect an ESX server.

Any thoughts/suggestions/pointers would be GREATLY appreciated.
 
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Looks good to me. i'm doing the same thing though on a smaller scale with a 8 bay super micro, quad-core xeon core2 era, 16gb ram, LSI hba. Works great. You're talking freeNAS on bare metal, right?

What kinda disks are you going to use?
 
Yeah bare metal, will be using some older 1TB enterprise SATA drives.. then with ZFS i'm hoping to later add 2TB ones.

ZFS is about 9 drivers per pool right?

ugh i'm in over my head!

Any idea if 1 of those controllers is fast enough to handle that many drives?
 
Why would you choose an LSI raid controller? ZFS works best with an HBA card like the newest 9207-8i.
 
the LSI raid controllers do IT mode usually, too without flashing.

I'm using an Intel SASUC8i (which is an LSI raid controller) and it works great.

Enterprise or SAS drives are highly recommended for this application in my opinion.
 
Suprnaut said:
Why would you choose an LSI raid controller? ZFS works best with an HBA card like the newest 9207-8i.
Click to expand...

I was just going to run them in JBOD on that controller.. i didn't actually know there was a non-RAID SAS controller cards.

So that controller you mentioned would be preferable?
 
There will be SAS connectors just like there are on a raid sas controller, just it will be a hba only and present the bare drives to the os. Which is what you want with ZFS.
 
diehard said:
If i was to get a mobo with an integrated SAS controller like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182354

Would i not need to get an HBA pci-e device?

I'm still not sure how all the bays actually connect to the controller.. will there be a mini-SAS cable coming from the bays to just plug into the motherboard/card?

very noobish questions i know
Click to expand...

You most likely don't need a dual proc board. Get a single proc board with lots of PCI-E slots, fill up RAM.

I'd also suggest not to get onboard SAS HBA as you have to tweak setting to get it working in IT mode.

I use Suermicro X9SRL-F with XEON E5-2620, 128G RDIMM, LSI 9207 HBA.

As how to connect HBA to bays, it really depends on the backplain.
 
diehard said:
Yeah bare metal, will be using some older 1TB enterprise SATA drives.. then with ZFS i'm hoping to later add 2TB ones.

ZFS is about 9 drivers per pool right?

ugh i'm in over my head!

Any idea if 1 of those controllers is fast enough to handle that many drives?
Click to expand...

Have you used ZFS before? Before you put anything in production I would get comfortable with it. Make sure you know what to do when a drive fails, how/when to do scrubs, how to troubleshoot bad discs ect,.

Also from Solaris:

RAIDZ Configuration Requirements and Recommendations
A RAIDZ configuration with N disks of size X with P parity disks can hold approximately (N-P)*X bytes and can withstand P device(s) failing before data integrity is compromised.

Start a single-parity RAIDZ (raidz) configuration at 3 disks (2+1)
Start a double-parity RAIDZ (raidz2) configuration at 6 disks (4+2)
Start a triple-parity RAIDZ (raidz3) configuration at 9 disks (6+3)

(N+P) with P = 1 (raidz), 2 (raidz2), or 3 (raidz3) and N equals 2, 4, or 6
The recommended number of disks per group is between 3 and 9. If you have more disks, use multiple groups.

That being said I made a 13 disk raidz2 and the performance has been fine so far
 
I've never used ZFS before but time is sort of an issue.. this at least won't be our main file server and will just host backups.

Watch me get fired.. lol
 
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