FreeNAS ZFS Build

[HelioX]

Components to be used:
Case: NZXT Whisper
Mobo: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 AM3 AMD 890GX
PSU: Corsair HX750
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 BE
HSF: ZALMAN CNPS9700
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB)
Drives: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TBx10
SATA Cards: areca ARC-1210 PCI-Express x8 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Cardx2
CF to IDE Adapter: SYBA SY-IDE2CF-NB25 Ultra IDE to Compact Flash Adapter
CF Card: Transcend 2GB Compact Flash

This box will have its own dedicated 40mb connection and be used as my personal Torrent box. It will and store/serve blu ray, and 1080p content dvds etc to an unannounced HTPC Front-End/PS3/XBOB360.

I will be installing FreeNAS via USB and onto my CF card. Once installed, the box will run headless in my closet and must be as silent and maintenance free as possible. Will be ran 24/7.

I am hoping to use an Intel X25-V 40GB SSD as a cache drive in my ZFS array. I am planning to run two drive pools of 4 disks with 1 hot spare for each pool, total of 10 drives. Each 4 disk zpool will be on it's own controller card with the SSD cache drive and 2 hot spares on the mobo's SATA ports. Will that be an issue?

Hows my build look and how will does the cache drive function? Will it serve both pools?

Also, would it be a bad idea to try and unlock the 2 extra cores on my CPU? Can I do it with my selected mobo? Would like to unlock and OC it to 4.0ghz for shits. I may go as far as running esXi on the box and learning a bit about virtualization and maybe run FreeNAS on a VM!

 

[pjkenned]

Some thoughts:

#1 I wouldn't unlock/ OC a CPU for a server. You don't want to find out the hard way that a core was actually disabled for a reason.
#2 RAM - looks OK but may want to consider ECC
#3 Mobo/ CPU - may want to think about a real server setup, especially if you want to run ESXi. If you go that route, you really want to stick to the most compatible hardware you can. Also, KVM-over-IP is probably something you want... unless you have an external unit or you want to keep a monitor/ keyboard handy.
#4 SATA cards - LSI 1068e cards, like the Intel SASUC8I (about $150) or the LSI 9211-8i ($250) would be cheaper. No real point in spending $300 for an 8 port controller for FreeNAS/ ZFS.
#5 CF - most server motherboards these days from Intel/ Supermicro/ Tyan/ ASUS support an internal USB header (or headers). You can use those to run a USB drive directly or even keep a second hot spare.
#6 NIC - personally I would want one or two Intel NICs over the onboard Realtek 8111E. You could do one for external traffic, one for internal traffic.

Just as a thought something like an Intel X3440 + a Supermicro X8SIL-F or X8SI6-F with controllers would actually be cheaper than what you are building.

555BE = $90
ASUS = $140
2x Areca = $600
Total = $830

X3440 = $230
X8SIL-F = $190
2x Intel SASUC8I = $310
Total = $730... and you get dual Intel NICs and KVM over IP and four cores + 4 hyperthreading cores without unlocking.

Despite the CPU/ Motherboard being $190 more (then again you get a $100 dual Intel NIC and KVM-over-IP built-in), you get way more cores and great ESXi compatibility (and OpenSolaris too if you ever want to go that route). Just some thoughts.

 

[sub.mesa]

You do not want to run ZFS on an Areca hardware RAID controller. Doing so reduces reliability significantly and kills many benefits/protections that ZFS provides.

Overclocking/unlocking on a storage system may not be very appealing, considering you would want stability for your important data and that CPU is quite powerful anyway. If you do overclock or unlock cores, make sure to stress test the system with prime95 (on windows) and memtest86+ for 48 hours or more, and even then there is a slight risk of mistakes caused by overclocking.

You might want to reconsider about FreeNAS; and i didn't know it had torrent capability? Or will it only store files and not use torrent client itself? What exactly do you need for functionality, and why do you want to use ZFS, how important is the data. All this information may help to analyze your options.

 

[HelioX]

@sub.mesa - It is a version of the Transmission bittorrent web client running in WebGUI mode (by default on your freeNAS server on port 9091 http://freenas:9091

Reviewing/Revising my build now after seeing the feedback, will post soon!

 

[Nelius]

X3440 = $230
X8SIL-F = $190
2x Intel SASUC8I = $310
Total = $730... and you get dual Intel NICs and KVM over IP and four cores + 4 hyperthreading cores without unlocking.

On that quote, you can actually do it even cheaper, switch the X3440 with an i3. The only difference will be that you can have a max of 16GB ram with the i3 vs. 32GB with the X3440. The i3 should support ECC UDIMM, according to both Intel and SM.
Original thread on nexentastore forums

Straight from SM

Since i am from Europe, i dont know how much that will save you, but here the i3 costs less than 50% of the X3440.