Lets build my storage server!

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Diavuno

Active Member
I'm investing in my stack again, currently Im running a mix of LSI Perc and (OMG OLD!)3ware RAID, freenas... and storage spaces. (the raid cards are mostly bare metal installs I am retiring or P2V during this project.

Id like to reduce the number of systems I have.

Im thinking 10gig connected FreeNas boxes. (primary / backup)


(I'm an IT company, so few dozen VMs, lots of backup data/archive/video)

Mostly big dumb storage (8x 16tb Exos on the way(don’t count this towards the budget as its already spent.))


Given a budget of $1500-$3500 US, what would you buy or build?

I was thinking Superserver 5029P-E1CTR12L but that's $2000 for a bare bone! another $500+ for a cpu, $200 for ram and $400+ on zlog and arc2 drives and I'm way over budget. two of them? forget about it!


I do have a bunch of stuff laying around:


dozens of supermicro x7's (ironically, an old Compellent SAN

couple of 826 with sas2 expanders (I don’t know if these ones had the LBA issue?)

few 8x fat twins

couple X8DRI some X8DTN

Most promising is an X9dri-ln4f that's already installed in a 846 (TQ) chassis

I could part them together/upgrade maybe I should use those? They are all pretty old, but short of needing some rails and 80+PSUs I have all the parts ram/cpus etc


I have 2x DL180 G6? they were a popular option on here a few years back...


I also have a surplus of dell 310/410/510/710 and a few 320/420



I’ve been busy elsewhere, so I’m a bit dated on the "sweet spot" or what the best bang/buck is these days.
 

i386

Well-Known Member
Mar 18, 2016
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Is power consumption a concern?
If yes don't use X8 or older generations (My xeon e5630 system consumes about 130 watt idling with an active cooler and 6x 4GByte ram and no other componenets connected while my x10 nas with 16 hdds consumes about 180watt @ medium workloads)
 

BeTeP

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
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I tend to separate my compute and storage nodes with NVMe being the only local storage in the computes nodes. For my storage nodes (both primary and backup) I still use dual socket 2011 systems with a single low power IvyBridge CPU installed (E5-2648L v2).
 
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Diavuno

Active Member
I tend to separate my compute and storage nodes with NVMe being the only local storage in the computes nodes. For my storage nodes (both primary and backup) I still use dual socket 2011 systems with a single low power IvyBridge CPU installed (E5-2648L v2).
Thats been my plan, storage of freenas with big spinners/nvme teirs. (though I do like the idea of storage spaces)

then compute having very small ssd/nvme to boot, maybe as local swap