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Advice for NAS solution

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bmatic586

n00b
Joined
Dec 1, 2009
Messages
14
Hello all,
I am currently in the market for a NAS solution. I have an HP DL380 G6 server and I am running all VM's on the internal server storage. I am looking for something that I can use as an iSCSI target for data storage. I was looking at some of the desktop NAS solutions from QNAP (primarily the TS-451) but it seemed like it would be more than what I am willing to spend.

So that got me looking at purchasing maybe a Dell R310/R410 server on e-bay for around $150, and installing FreeNAS on it.

I am a little hesitant to pull the trigger because I had some issues with my current HP server and non HP drives. I was going to install 4 x 1TB HGST 2.5 in drives in a RAID 5 configuration, but due to SMART issues or whatever, the HP's fans would spin up to 80% and it was deafening. I don't want to have to return the Dell server if this is going to be the case with it as well.

I currently have one WD Red 2TB drive that I am running in a QNAP TS-212P NAS, with the intent of purchasing 3 more 2TB drives. I've played with FreeNAS before so I am familiar with it.

So having said all that, has anyone configured a system as described above (Dell R310/R410 with WD Red's and FreeNAS), and what is your experience with it? Is your server really loud? Have you used a RAID card? Does the R310/R410 motherboard allow for 4 drives to be connected? Does FreeNAS run on this model Dell?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.
 
I would say the first step is how much space do you need now and with growth. Some of those Dell's might not come with the raid card to support Raid 5 as well "from my prior ebay experience".

Personally I went with a Synology setup. I spent more then you but in the end it was a great decision. Low power and alot of great options for me personally.
 
Additionally, as they're essentially 1U systems, you've got someplace to rack them where the fan scream won't drive you slowly deaf?

That's the thing with the mid-range Synology/QNAP devices. They cost more, but they're QUIET.
 
I appreciate the input guys.

Like I said, I currently have an HP DL380 G6 and the fans, while audible are not deafening, which is something that I am looking for from a NAS solution.

My biggest turn off with QNAP/Synology is to get write speeds anything above 150MB/s you have to spend almost twice the money (QNAP TS-431 vs TS-451).
 
I have an R510 with an HBA card installed at factory along with 8x2TB WD Red NAS drives running FreeNAS and overall I've been happy with it. It's pretty quiet once the machine has gone through boot process. I'm just using it as an SMB file share primarily so I'm not stressing it much at this point, but I copy many many GBs of data every night to it as it's my archive server and longer retention backup server for Veeam.

Main thing, if you are working with large file sizes like I am, put 16GB of RAM in. I had 8GB as that was the minimum, but I quickly found out why thats the minimum. I upped it to 24GB and it's been working flawlessly since then.

I found a TS-453-Pro 8GB with 4x4TB Red drives near my for a good price that I'm considering picking up as a replacement for an older Buffalo Terastation I have at home, if I had it already I'd do some tests. If I do get it this weekend, I can update this thread with some comparison tests.
 
If you are using FreeNAS, you are familar with ZFS and its security and performance advantages over
a NAS with ext4. Any reason why you are looking for something without ZFS?

There are ZFS options around that work from 2 GB RAM up what is the Solaris minimum ex with a cheap
HP Gen8 Microserver. You can get one in Germany for less than 200 Euro with 2 GB ECC RAM and 4 external disk bays.

Such a box is upgradeable to a Xeon and 16 GB ECC RAM
 
_Gea said:
If you are using FreeNAS, you are familar with ZFS and its security and performance advantages over
a NAS with ext4. Any reason why you are looking for something without ZFS?

There are ZFS options around that work from 2 GB RAM up what is the Solaris minimum ex with a cheap
HP Gen8 Microserver. You can get one in Germany for less than 200 Euro with 2 GB ECC RAM and 4 external disk bays.

Such a box is upgradeable to a Xeon and 16 GB ECC RAM
Click to expand...

The reason I am looking at an ext4 solution is because it's all built and in a single box.Having said that, the purpose for this thread is to find out other options, primarily where I could use FreeNAS because of ZFS and advantages you specified.

I just really want to make sure that if I purchase a Dell R310/R410 that I won't have a jet engine. And if so, I just need to know what hardware is recommended.

Thanks for the reply.
 
charold said:
I have an R510 with an HBA card installed at factory along with 8x2TB WD Red NAS drives running FreeNAS and overall I've been happy with it. It's pretty quiet once the machine has gone through boot process. I'm just using it as an SMB file share primarily so I'm not stressing it much at this point, but I copy many many GBs of data every night to it as it's my archive server and longer retention backup server for Veeam.

Main thing, if you are working with large file sizes like I am, put 16GB of RAM in. I had 8GB as that was the minimum, but I quickly found out why thats the minimum. I upped it to 24GB and it's been working flawlessly since then.

I found a TS-453-Pro 8GB with 4x4TB Red drives near my for a good price that I'm considering picking up as a replacement for an older Buffalo Terastation I have at home, if I had it already I'd do some tests. If I do get it this weekend, I can update this thread with some comparison tests.
Click to expand...

which HBA card are you using? I assume that I could use the same HBA card in an R310/R410.
 
bmatic586 said:
which HBA card are you using? I assume that I could use the same HBA card in an R310/R410.
Click to expand...

Not quite seeing how an HBA is going to help you.. Do you mean a RAID controller? Dell makes many different types of RAID controllers, so don't assume one that works in an R510 would work in an R310 as the chassis is quite different and at a minimum, you would need the appropriate length sas extenders to connect to your backplane.

Older Dells generally are pretty compatible with 3rd party drives, only thing you will need to confirm is if the PERC you get in the system is compatible with larger sized drives. Pretty sure around that era, some of the older PERCS could only handle up to 1TB drives, and I don't think Dell ever bothered to make them compatible with larger drives.
 
Kelter said:
Not quite seeing how an HBA is going to help you.. Do you mean a RAID controller? Dell makes many different types of RAID controllers, so don't assume one that works in an R510 would work in an R310 as the chassis is quite different and at a minimum, you would need the appropriate length sas extenders to connect to your backplane.

Older Dells generally are pretty compatible with 3rd party drives, only thing you will need to confirm is if the PERC you get in the system is compatible with larger sized drives. Pretty sure around that era, some of the older PERCS could only handle up to 1TB drives, and I don't think Dell ever bothered to make them compatible with larger drives.
Click to expand...

Well... as far as I know... FreeNAS doesn't like RAID controllers when you put drives in a RAID. So HBA should just be able to see drives and not put them in a RAID config. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.
 
bmatic586 said:
Well... as far as I know... FreeNAS doesn't like RAID controllers when you put drives in a RAID. So HBA should just be able to see drives and not put them in a RAID config. Correct me if I'm wrong on this.
Click to expand...

This is correct. with ZFS (which is what FreeNAS uses) you do not want your drives setup as a RAID on the controller. This is also a big reason why ECC memory is so important to FreeNAS. While you can get FreeNAS to work with a lot of hardware and configurations, that does not mean you should if you actually care about the data on the system.
 
JesDer said:
This is correct. with ZFS (which is what FreeNAS uses) you do not want your drives setup as a RAID on the controller. This is also a big reason why ECC memory is so important to FreeNAS. While you can get FreeNAS to work with a lot of hardware and configurations, that does not mean you should if you actually care about the data on the system.
Click to expand...

That correct as far as I know. So that is why I am looking at a Dell R310, which supports ECC RAM. I just need to know what to look for as far as how to connect 2 drives on the server. What kind of card (HBA, RAID) do I need, and I want to make sure that it will work with WD Red 2TB drives. I think the H200 and the H700 RAID controllers have no hard drive size limit, but I don't know if that is something that FreeNAS will work with. I also want to make sure that the drives I put in will not cause the server fans to spin up like a jet engine.

Thanks for all the replies.
 
bmatic586 said:
That correct as far as I know. So that is why I am looking at a Dell R310, which supports ECC RAM. I just need to know what to look for as far as how to connect 2 drives on the server. What kind of card (HBA, RAID) do I need, and I want to make sure that it will work with WD Red 2TB drives. I think the H200 and the H700 RAID controllers have no hard drive size limit, but I don't know if that is something that FreeNAS will work with. I also want to make sure that the drives I put in will not cause the server fans to spin up like a jet engine.

Thanks for all the replies.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. Found this on the freenas forums:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/dell-r610-with-perc-6i-versus-sas-6-ir-jbod.27264/

Similar generation hardware that you are referring to. At a minimum, it sounds like whatever card you get, it will need to be reflashed with the base LSI firmware which then turns the card into a basic HBA. Some of the PERCs have a JBOD mode, but sounds like that doesn't work with ZFS either.

Seems you might be better off building a white box system with like a SuperMicro MB and a SAS/SATA HBA.
 
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