New ZFS Server

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Slackusr

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Nov 14, 2005
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I just wanted some more eyes to have a look at the specs of the ZFS server I'll be assembling soon to make sure I am not missing something. This will be used for general home data storage and iSCSI target for a soon-to-be ESXi box:

Motherboard: ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131646
CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103886
RAM: 4 x Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139077
iSCSI drives (in ZFS RAID10 equivalent array): 4 x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181
File share drives (in RAIDZ array): 5 x Western Digital AV-GP WD20EVDS 2TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136494
L2ARC drive: Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148357
SAS HBA: LSI SAS 3081E-R (eBay purchase)
OS: OpenIndiana (for now)

All housed in a 4u Norco case. Any thoughts...good, bad, ugly? Thanks.
 
Two suggestions. The memory you link to is server memory and is ECC. I don't believe that is a server board and my not take ECC memory. Also ECC is largely a waste under ZFS. It is also out of stock.

I also question your 500GB drives.. While they are good drives, 2TB Samsung F4 drives were on sale a few days ago for $79.00 each. While not the fastest drives available, I just benchmarked a 5 disk vdev raidZ at Read=406 MiB/Sec and Write=359 MiB/Sec.

WF
 
Slackusr said:
I just wanted some more eyes to have a look at the specs of the ZFS server I'll be assembling soon to make sure I am not missing something. This will be used for general home data storage and iSCSI target for a soon-to-be ESXi box:

Motherboard: ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131646
CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103886
RAM: 4 x Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139077
iSCSI drives (in ZFS RAID10 equivalent array): 4 x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152181
File share drives (in RAIDZ array): 5 x Western Digital AV-GP WD20EVDS 2TB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136494
L2ARC drive: Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC064MAG-1G1 2.5" 64GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148357
SAS HBA: LSI SAS 3081E-R (eBay purchase)
OS: OpenIndiana (for now)

All housed in a 4u Norco case. Any thoughts...good, bad, ugly? Thanks.
Click to expand...

My suggestion is to not use WD GP drives. I'm using Samsung F4EG (for only a few days though) but there are other alternatives also. I've been using 1.5GB GP drives (non 4k) for a year and not been that happy with them to be honest (one drive "died" without really dying (just sloooow), strange issues with drives "working" even when not used, IntelliPark problems ++).

Nice with 16GB ram but do you plan on using that much? I get respectable performance (550MB/s sustained read and write) with OpenIndiana and 4GB...
 
wingfat said:
Two suggestions. The memory you link to is server memory and is ECC. I don't believe that is a server board and my not take ECC memory. Also ECC is largely a waste under ZFS. It is also out of stock.
Click to expand...

This is not what just about everyone else is saying. Besides that: I'm using ECC memory on an Asus consument board (M4N82) just fine - at like a 10% premium from non-ECC memory.
 
wingfat said:
Two suggestions. The memory you link to is server memory and is ECC. I don't believe that is a server board and my not take ECC memory. Also ECC is largely a waste under ZFS. It is also out of stock.

I also question your 500GB drives.. While they are good drives, 2TB Samsung F4 drives were on sale a few days ago for $79.00 each. While not the fastest drives available, I just benchmarked a 5 disk vdev raidZ at Read=406 MiB/Sec and Write=359 MiB/Sec.

WF
Click to expand...

The ASUS board supports ECC memory so I figured I would use it, and also I am not buying it from Newegg it was just easy to link the description (Provantage has it for less). The 500GB drives are just for hosting VMs so I don't really need 2TB drives.
 
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