Inexpensive ZFS or BTRFS build

I kind of just want to stick with one zpool long term. I really need about 8tb right now but obviously that will increase with time. And I want at least 2 parity disks across the entire pool, but would be fine with 3.

So thinking that 7 drives in raidz3 makes sense. The smart thing to do would prob be to get 3 4TB's now to ultimately convert 8tb usable into 16tb. But I'm undecided on whether I wanna buy 3 $150 drives right now.

With this in mind, if 8 drives (7+1) is the most I envision ever using, is the R4 still the best choice or overkill? I'd like to keep everything in a single enclosure if I can. Similarly would an LSI be overkill?
 
The R4 will do fine, since you already have one controller I'd just grab another one. Getting a LSI card for this is a bit overkill if you're only going for 8 HDDs in total.
 
OK sounds good! Just need to decide on drives then. I'm leaving heavily towards just grabbing 3 Toshiba 2tb's even though I'd like to eventually replace all 7 with 4tb drives.
 
More like having a hard time getting past taxes this year Lol.

I just know that I should really be putting together 12-16tb usable space. Just cheaping out on 3 4tb drives right now, especially since I only even see the benefit once I eventually replace all the 2tb drives, which hopefully wouldn't be any time soon...
 
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I recently ordered these parts for a BTRFS build:

Xeon X3450 LGA 1156 (5000ish in Passmark)
Supermicro X8SIL-F mATX (IPMI, 4 DIMMs, 4 PCIe)
Samsung 4 x 8GB DDR3-1333 ECC RAM
Dell XR997 10 GBe (modified to lower the fan speed)

All of the above was $195. Then I bought four White Label 6TB 7200 RPM drives for $170 each. They appear to be doppelgangers for WD's RE-series at half the price. 1 year warranty. They vibrate considerably less than my 2TB Samsung drives.

In total, this system will be under $900 for 18TB of usable space (assuming R5) on a fast, lower-power 10-gigabit ECC platform with 32 GB of RAM. Plenty for VMs and whatever else.

If there's a more economical way to achieve a similar outcome, I haven't found it.

I do see these limitations that may be relevant to some:

* No AES-NI (though this may work with the i5-650/60/70/80 in addition to ECC)
* No upgrade path if you need more CPU power
 
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As a side note, the G3220 performs about the same and uses less power ;-)
A Dell T20 build would be slightly more expensive but have much newer hardware.
 
From what I can tell, the T20 is much more expensive, much slower in multi-core workloads, and a similar platform save for the addition of USB 3.0. Is there a better source for them than EBay?
 
Ah. Not a bad deal given that it comes with a decent case. Still, no IPMI with the Pentium, and it's a pretty weak spec.
 
The CPU is pretty much the same as a i3 CPU and performs most tasks just, that includes maxing out gbit connections. ;-)
 
I would stay away from BTRFS as it is not stable, you might loose all your data. From the BTRFS wiki:
FAQ - btrfs Wiki
"Q: Is BTRFS stable? A: Maybe"

If you read the forums on BTRFS, there are lot of people loosing data. Sure, BTRFS might be faster than ZFS, but you might loose your data:
Btrfs Seems To Finally Have Failed Me On A Production System - Phoronix

If you read the forums on ZFS, people very seldom loose their data. During one year, visiting lot of different forums, I see maybe one post where people loose data with ZFS. ZFS is much safer than BTRFS
 
If you do not want your data loose, keep it locked up.

How many times can someone write "loose" instead of "lose" in one post? I think that was a new record. Give that poster a medal and make sure he does not loose it.
 
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