This seems like you're doing an awful lot of planning for only 8 SATA + 4 SAS bays?
I agree - SOHO usage of ZFS is still a scary "will this work?" deal. I found a working setup and I cloned it. It gives me 16x SATA + 2x SATA for mirrored boot, 4GB ECC RAM and a quad core processor - total cost without disks was ~ $1k I believe. Not too shabby. Emphasis was also for acoustics - rack dense would be great but my current living situation doesn't warrant that. The noisiest components are the 5-in-3 chassis used in the front of the case. I have to keep the fans on high (I tried to swap out for larger, quieter fans, but could not get the fan alarm to shut up) or they go over Seagate's recommended <= 50 degrees. I really should post my parts list up on my blog. I had to choose everything to the best of my research online and hope for the best. On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Ware Adams <rwali...@washdcmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > I have been researching building a home storage server based on OpenSolaris > and ZFS, and I would appreciate any time people could take to comment on my > current leanings. > > I've tried to gather old information from this list as well as the HCL, but > I would welcome anyone's experience on both compatibility and > appropriateness for my goals. I'd love if that white box server wiki page > were set up now, but for now I'll have to just ask here. > > My priorities: > > 1) Data security. I'm hoping I can get this via ECC RAM and enterprise > drives that hopefully don't lie to ZFS about flushing to disk? I'll run > mirrored pools for redundancy (which leads me to want a case w/a lot of > bays). > 2) Compatibility. For me this translates into low upkeep cost (time). I'm > not looking to be the first person to get OpenSolaris running on some > particular piece of hardware. > 3) Scaleable. I'd like to not have to upgrade every year. I can always > use something like an external JBOD array, but there's some appeal to having > enough space in the case for reasonable growth. I'd also like to have > enough performance to keep up with scaling data volume and ZFS features. > 4) Ability to run some other (lightweight) services on the box. I'll be > using NFS (iTunes libraries for OS X clients) and iSCSI (Time Machine > backups) primarily, but my current home server also runs a few small > services (MySQL etc...) that are very lightweight but nevertheless might be > difficult to do on a ZFS (or "ZFS like") appliance > 5) Cost. All things being equal cheaper is better, but I'm willing to pay > more to accomplish particularly 1-3 above. > > My current thinking: > > SuperMicro 7046A-3 Workstation > http://supermicro.com/products/system/4U/7046/SYS-7046A-3.cfm > 8 hot swappable drive bays (SAS or SATA, I'd use SATA) > Network/Main board/SAS/SATA controllers seem well supported by OpenSolaris > Will take IPMI card for remote admin (with video and iso redirection) > 12 RAM slots so I can buy less dense chips > 2x 5.25" drive bays. I'd use a SuperMicro Mobile Rack M14T > (http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/mobilerack/CSE-M14.cfm) to > get 4 2.5" SAS drives in one of these. 2 would be used for a mirrored boot > pool leaving 2 for potential future use (like a ZIL on SSD). > > Nehalem E5520 CPU > These are clearly more than enough now, but I'm hoping to have decent CPU > performance for say 5 years (and I'm willing to pay for it up front vs. > upgrading every 2 years...I don't want this to be too time consuming of a > hobby). I'd like to have processor capacity for compression and (hopefully > reasonably soon) de-duplication as well as obviously support ECC RAM. > > Crucial RAM in 4 GB density (price scales linearly up through this point and > I've had good support from Crucial) > > Seagate Barracuda ES.2 1TB SATA (Model ST31000340NS) for storage pool. I > would like to use a larger drive, but I can't find anything rated to run > 24x7 larger than 1TB from Seagate. I'd like to have drives rated for 24x7 > use, and I've had good experience w/Seagate. Again, a larger case gives me > some flexibility here. > > Misc (mainly interested in compatibility b/c it will hardly be used): > Sun XVR-100 video card from eBay > Syba SY-PCI45004 > (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124025) IDE card > for CD-ROM > Sony DDU1678A > (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827131061) CD-ROM > > Thanks a lot for any thoughts you might have. > > --Ware > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss > _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
