Fast-Tier Storage

[Yves]

Build’s Name: Fast-Tier Storage
Operating System/ Storage Platform: HP ProLiant DL380 G7
CPU: 2x Intel X5670 @ 2.93GHz (6 Cores each)
Motherboard: HP ProLiant DL380 G7
Chassis: HP ProLiant DL380 G7 with SFF Expension for 16x 2.5" Drives
Drives: 10x Samsung 850 Pro
RAM: 196GB
Add-in Cards: LSI SAS 9305-16i, Intel X520
Power Supply: 2x Original HP
Other Bits: Should run Ubuntu with ZoL

Usage Profile: Goal is to use this box as a fast tier storage for the 9x VMware ESXi compute Nodes I run inside a C7000 Blade Center. iSCSI or NFS would be an option.

Other information… Any loopholes / pitfalls I did not see? Backplane should accept SATA3? And for the Future I guess even SAS3? Or am I mistaken? Also I never done Ubuntu / ZoL before. But I read a lot about it and it seams like ZFS is the way to go for storage of any kind currently...

Btw. this is all HW I have laying around. I would only have to buy the LSI SAS 9305-16i. This is why I was going for this setup... I know 850 Pros are not nice for mixed workloads...

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

The 850 Pro's aren't enterprise drives so might not be able to sustain IO for sustained periods... consumer drives have a tendency drop to a lower level of performance after X amount of time, although the 850 pro's are better in this regard than most. Never tried them in a softraid though.

 

[SeanFi]

I can't say for certain that it will support SATA 6Gbps or SAS 12Gbps, but since you are not using one of the expanders it's possible. However, those servers were meant to be used with the pX10 generation of SmartArray cards which only supported SATA 3Gbps and SAS 6Gbps. Doesn't mean it won't work, but it wasn't designed for use with the higher speed.

 

[Yves]

@EffrafaxOfWug: Thanks for the advice. But I wanted to go low budget and enterprise ssds arent that cheap to get... And the 850 Pro's are lying around. So I guess I sell.

@SeanFi Thanks. I guess I will stop tinkering around here and go for another solution.

Friend of mine offers me to get some good Intel 1U Servers (nice specs) for a very fair price and I will go with a clustered SDS solution. Probably Ceph or vSAN not sure yet. So the setup would change to this:

3 Nodes of these kind:
---------------------------
Build’s Name: SDS Storage Cluster
Operating System/ Storage Platform: VMware ESXi 6.5 with vSAN on Intel 1U Servers
CPU: 2x Intel E5-2630l v4 (1,80 GHz)
Motherboard: Intel
Chassis: Intel 1U Server with 8x SFF Slots
Drives: 4x Intel DC S4600 480GB Capacity Drive + 1x Intel DC P3700 800GB Cache Drive
RAM: 128GB
Add-in Cards: Intel X520 or faster
Power Supply: 2x Original Intel
Other Bits: vSAN Cluster

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

@EffrafaxOfWug: Thanks for the advice. But I wanted to go low budget and enterprise ssds arent that cheap to get... And the 850 Pro's are lying around. So I guess I sell.

I wouldn't sell them straight off the bat; if you've already got them, you can build the array and check whether it's performant enough for your workload. If it's as you say and you're generally just running these for compute tasks, this tends to be not bottlenecked on IO (although you'll know best what your workload is like).

Worst case you could have started off with ten non-enterprise SSDs and then replace them one disk at a time.

However, if you're changing your build to a server with enterprise SSDs in it doesn't that bump up your costs considerably?

 

[Yves]

build is done...

Build’s Name: SDS Storage Cluster
Operating System/ Storage Platform: VMware ESXi 6.5 with vSAN on Intel 1U Servers
CPU: 2x Intel E5-2630l v4 (1,80 GHz)
Motherboard: Intel
Chassis: Intel 1U Server with 8x SFF Slots
Drives: 2x Intel DC S4600 480GB Capacity Drive + 1x Intel Optane 900p 280GB Cache Drive
RAM: 128GB
Add-in Cards: right now HP NC523SFP which where lying around... already orderd 3x Intel IO Cards 10GB SFP
Power Supply: 2x Original Intel
Other Bits: vSAN Cluster

here are some pics

 

[Yves]

Thanks a lot for the many likes.

I will make an update as soon as the IO Modules arrive ;-) with the final build!