Wes Morgan wrote:
On Sun, 14 Feb 2010, Dan Langille wrote:
Dan Langille wrote:
Hi,
I'm looking at creating a large home use storage machine. Budget is a
concern, but size and reliability are also a priority. Noise is also a
concern, since this will be at home, in the basement. That, and cost,
pretty much rules out a commercial case, such as a 3U case. It would be
nice, but it greatly inflates the budget. This pretty much restricts me to
a tower case.
The primary use of this machine will be a backup server[1]. It will do
other secondary use will include minor tasks such as samba, CIFS, cvsup,
etc.
I'm thinking of 8x1TB (or larger) SATA drives. I've found a case[2] with
hot-swap bays[3], that seems interesting. I haven't looked at power
supplies, but given that number of drives, I expect something beefy with a
decent reputation is called for.
Whether I use hardware or software RAID is undecided. I
I think I am leaning towards software RAID, probably ZFS under FreeBSD 8.x
but I'm open to hardware RAID but I think the cost won't justify it given
ZFS.
Given that, what motherboard and RAM configuration would you recommend to
work with FreeBSD [and probably ZFS]. The lists seems to indicate that more
RAM is better with ZFS.
Thanks.
[1] - FYI running Bacula, but that's out of scope for this question
[2] - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058
[3] - nice to have, especially for a failure.
After creating three different system configurations (Athena, Supermicro, and
HP), my configuration of choice is this Supermicro setup:
1. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
2. SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping)
3. LSI SAS 3081E-R $235
4. SATA cables $60
5. Crucial 3×2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping)
6. Xeon W3520 $310
Total price with shipping $1560
Details and links at http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/14/supermicro/
Wow um... That's quite a setup. Do you really need the Xeon W3520? You
could get a regular core 2 system for much less and still use the ECC ram
(highly recommended). The case you're looking at only has 6 hot-swap bays
according to the manuals, although the pictures show 8 (???).
Going to
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/tower/5046/SYS-5046A-X.cfm it
does say 6 hot-swap and two spare. I'm guessing they say that because
the M/B supports only 6 SATA connections:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core2Duo/X58/C7X58.cfm
You could
shave some off the case and cpu, upgrade your 3081E-R to an ARC-1222 for
$200 more and have the hardware raid option.
That is a nice card. However, I don't want hardware RAID. I want ZFS.
If I was building a tower system, I'd put together something like this:
Thank you for the suggestions.
Case with 8 hot-swap SATA bays ($250):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058
Or if you prefer screwless, you can find the case without the 2 hotswap
bays and use an icy dock screwless version.
I do like this case, it's one I have priced:
http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/14/pricing-the-athena/
Intel server board (for ECC support) ($200):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121328
ECC, nice, which is something I've found appealing.
SAS controller ($120):
http://www.buy.com/prod/supermicro-lsi-megaraid-lsisas1068e-8-port-sas-raid-controller-16mb/q/loc/101/207929556.html
Note: You'll need to change or remove the mounting bracket since it is
"backwards". I was able to find a bracket with matching screw holes on an
old nic and secure it to my case. It uses the same chipset as the more
expensive 3081E-R, if I remember correctly.
I follow what you say, but cannot comprehend why the bracket is backwards.
Quad-core CPU ($190):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131
4x2gb ram sticks (97*2):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139045
same SATA cables for sata to mini-sas, same CD burner. Total cost probably
$400 less, which you can use to buy some of the drives.
I put this all together, and named it after you (hope you don't mind):
http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/14/273/
You're right, $400 less.
I also wrote up the above suggestions with a Supermicro case instead:
SUPERMICRO CSE-743T-645B Black 4U Pedestal Chassis w/ 645W Power Supply
$320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152047
I like your suggestions with the above case. It is now my preferred
solution.
For my personal (overkill) setup I have a chenbro 4U chassis with 16
hotswap bays and mini-SAS backplanes, a zippy 2+1 640 watt redundant power
supply (sounds like a freight train). I cannot express the joy I felt in
ripping out all the little SATA cables and snaking a couple fat 8087s
under the fans. 8 of the bays are dedicated to my media array, and the
other 8 are there for swapping in and out of backup drives mostly, but the
time they REALLY come in handy is when you need to upgrade your array. Buy
the replacement drives, pop them in, migrate the pool, and remove the old
drives.
This is really nice. :)
Thank you for your suggestions. They have been very helpful. :)
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