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iolaus

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Jul 12, 2009
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Hey All,

I'm looking to replace my existing home NAS/SAN solution with an eye toward the following goals:

  • Relatively quiet operation (will be located in server closet adjacent to home theater so noise is a concern, prefer replaceable 120mm chasis fans if possible)
  • Large/expandable storage capacity (probably 20+ 3.5in bays)
  • Sufficient performance (simultaneous support for 20-30 VMs, file sharing, HD video streaming, large file copying)
  • Reliability

Some limiting factors:

  • Rack mount (4U or less)
  • 1Gb ethernet (but switch ports available for trunking)
  • Price (would prefer to stay in the $2k - $5k range)

I'm especially interested in recommendations about where it makes sense allocate my budget. For instance, would I be able to see any benefit from things like SAS, 6gbs, SSD ZIL / L2ARC? Will my gigabit ethernet be the limiting factor? Specific hardware recommendations would also be very much appreciated.


For comparison, my existing NAS/SAN is comprised of:
 
Went ahead an picked up a case I found on ebay. It's an AIC RSC-4EG2 with 3x 120mm fans. Unfortunately, it seems to have come with the BKP-SAS3-12EG-R backplane which is the only one available on the RSC-4EG2 that doesn't appear to support 6G.

Could someone please help explain the difference between the 1x downlink and 2x uplink ports on the BKP-SAS3-12EG-R and what type of bandwidth it can support? Also, what kind of performance increase could I achieve if I were to upgrade the RSC-4EG2 backplane to one of the available models with 6G support?

Thanks!
 
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If you are doing lots of VM's the C32 / G34 platform is pretty cheap to do. You should be able to get a Supermicro case + MB, CPU and memory for like 2500. Throw in two M1015's at 130 bucks a piece and you'll be good to go.
 
I've now purchased the following hardware:


And I'm considering the following additional components:


I would like to utilize this storage for large file storage (video, music, etc) as well as for 15-20 virtual machines, a couple of which may host write-intensive services like SQL server. The vm hosting duties will be carried out by a pair of Dell R905s so the CPU/memory listed in this build is only for NAS/SAN duties.

Any thoughts on the suitability of the components listed would be helpful.

Additionally, suggestions regarding HDD Quantities, Pool Configuration, ZIL/L2ARC necessity/configuration would be greatly appreciated. Some questions I'm wrestling with:

  1. How should I allocate my 24 (front 3.5") + 2 (rear 2.5") drive slots?
  2. Would I benefit from dedicated SLOG/ZIL device(s)?
  3. Would I benefit from dedicated L2ARC device(s)?
  4. Should I use SSDs for double duty (ZIL, L2ARC, OS Drive)?
  5. Would I benefit from hot spare device(s)?
  6. How should I configure my pool(s)? One large Z2 or Z3 vdev, multiple striped Z2 vdevs, one Z2 vdev and one striped mirrored vdev, etc?
 
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