20 TB FreeNAS help!

[JohnHenrySolo]

Long time lurker, first post.....

About to take the plunge and build the set up below for a FreeNAS ZFS build. Hows everything look? How does the KVM/Remote stuff work on the super micro board. I am planning to run two raidz2 arrays of 5 disks, and possibly an SSD as a cache device.

I am hoping to make this server as power effecient/quiet as possible, is the build overkill for typical home use? I know I don't need it, but I want it!

Any case recommendations?

SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O
Intel Xeon X3440
Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2 x2
CORSAIR Professional Series AX750 750W
PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II (3.0Gb/s) 4-Port Adapter
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM x10

 

[Dangman]

Ditch that mobo and adapter and go with this motherboard instead:
$280 - Supermicro X8SI6-F

Once you factor in shipping, the above mobo isn't that much more than your planned setup but offers significantly faster storage performance. Review of the above mobo here:
http://www.servethehome.com/supermi...ew-including-onboard-lsi-sas-2008-controller/

However if you don't want to go with the above motherboard for whatever reaason, that Promise controller still isn't a good buy at all for the money since you can get faster and twice the amount of connections for not much more:
$117 - Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8i PCI-Ex8 8 Port SATA Controller Card (Will need some slight modification to work in normal ATX cases)
$30 - 2 x 3ware SFF-8087 to Multi-lane SATA Forward Break-out Cable
---
Total: $147 plus shipping.

Yes it costs $70 more but it's a significantly better bang for the buck value than the Promise card. However, if you don't mind low performance, you can go with this card:
$100 - SuperMicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI-X (PCI Compatible) 8 Port SATA Controller Card

So no matter what way you look at it, that Promise card is a bad choice.

 

[JohnHenrySolo]

5. LSI 2008 8-Port 6Gbps SAS Controller;
RAID 0, 1, 10; RAID 5 optional
6. 6x SATA (3 Gbps) Ports
RAID 0, 1, 5, 10

No experience with SAS. Would I need adapters?

From the review: The only issue was with FreeBSD/ FreeNAS installations which do not have default LSI SAS 2.0 drivers except for FreeBSD 9-Current.

Would that be a problem?

 

[BonOeil]

Yes, FreeNas doesn't support LSI 6Gbps SAS 2008 so you can't use it with this controller.

 

[pjkenned]

Here is a bit on the Supermicro IPMIview which, along with the WebGUI is the way to use the KVM-over-IP stuff.

A few comments:
1. Get 8GB of RAM with ZFS.
2. LSI 1068e based cards for FreeBSD are fairly great. The AOC-USAS-L8i is a good example, as would be the Intel SASUC8i // LSI SAS3081E-R and IBM ServeRAID BR10i //LSI SAS3082E-R
3. I would strongly suggest getting a LSI 1068e based card for FreeBSD over that PCI Promise card. The Promise card does not have the best driver support, and is a PCI card so you are limited on the four attached drives to 133MB/s max... total. So if you are doing sequential reads from those drives your best-case performance is 1/4 their maximum output. PCIe is the way to go right now.
4. The only special adapters you will need are SFF-8087 to 7pin breakout cables. The basic answer is that SATA works on SAS controllers, but not the other way around.

 

[JohnHenrySolo]

Thanks guys! This explains a lot

I'll get a build going soon and post some pics and benches.

 

[sub.mesa]

You actually CAN use the SAS2008 controller with FreeNAS/FreeBSD if you copy+activate the new kernel driver. If you want to try this i can help you to configure it. The new driver has some limitations though, it's not a mature driver like the LSI 1068E is under BSD. Since both LSI and BSD people are working on it, i assume the quality will improve and the limitations will be addressed. So it might be a viable option and would improve economical lifetime of the product (before it becomes obsolete).

As for RAM, with 20TB i would recommend you spend a little bit more on that. I've seen 24GiB (3 kits of 2x4GiB) for around 200 euro; which is a steal. Having lots of memory is great for ZFS performance.

As for motherboard, checkout my Recommended Intel Motherboards, the X8ST3-F would be great if you want to have a very sleek future-proof large ZFS server, while still being fairly cheap for all the features offered. With 14 SATA onboard and 4 PCI-express ports you have quite some room for expansion. Think about a 10 gigabit ethernet card in the future, for example, that would also require at least PCIe x4 and probably x8.