DIY WS2016/Storage Spaces Box (NVMe -> SSD -> Spinners)

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sebstr

New Member
May 22, 2017
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Hi, first post here :)

I'm about to build a dedicated storage box at home, where I plan to run WS2016 w/ Storage Spaces as I've grown tired of FreeNAS because of my growing interest in Windows env.

For this build I've planned to use the following components:

- BitFenix Phenom M (mATX version, some modding to fit in all disks)
- SuperMicro X9SCM-F
- Intel Xeon E3-1240v2
- 32GB UDIMM ECC (whatever I can get my hands on for a fair price)
- 2x Intel DC S3500 480GB
- 6x 4TB WD Red 5400rpm
- Dell H310 (Flashed to LSI fw/IT Mode)
- 10GB SFP+ Mellanox card (Direct-attached to ESXi host)

Most of the data is cold storage as in file backups, media etc, and some semi-cold folder redirection stuff from client computers. But I'd also like to be able to run VMs (ESXi for now) from the storage as well. FYI: this is not a production environment but a home/home office.

I think I've read through quite a lot of information regarding SS now but it's not very clear to me whether I'm able to do 3 tiers, as most information on this matter is regarding S2D. I will not be able to do S2D as that requires 2+ nodes.
I've understood that running the storage pool in parity would give me quite an impact performance wise, but as I'd like to have a balance between performance, redundancy and available space that I might need to add NVMe drives.

Have anyone used an add-in PCIe-card to be able to utilize an M2 NVMe SSD in a similar environment? Anything that I need to know when doing this? Any recommended cards (EU)? Any recommended cheap M2 NVMe drives that would be suitable as write cache in what I've described? Would I need two M2 drives to be able to do this, or would one suffice?

Is there anything else that I should consider when building this hardware/configuring software?

Thank you!
/Seb

EDIT: updated specs
 
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Mirabis

Member
Mar 18, 2016
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Do note: Three tiers (NVME + SSD + spinners) is only supported in Storage Spaces Direct, which in turn requires multiple hosts.

EDIT: I see you are aware ;)
 

sebstr

New Member
May 22, 2017
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Do note: Three tiers (NVME + SSD + spinners) is only supported in Storage Spaces Direct, which in turn requires multiple hosts.

EDIT: I see you are aware ;)
Yes, as I thought then. Thanks! The S3500's will probably be enough until I can get my hands on a 2nd host since I'm used to a zraid2 with spinners only right now :)

EDIT: any thoughts regarding parity or mirrored in storage spaces? I've read alot of complaining on performance in parity, but that it also should be fine with some nice SSDs in cache to them.
 

cesmith9999

Well-Known Member
Mar 26, 2013
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Parity is fine if you are doing the 3 tiered cake (NVMe/SSD/SATA) as long as your SSD space is ~ 10% of you storage.

and that the SSD's are the churn size of your working set.

Chris