Future proof upgrading NAS4free/freenas box - ZFS ram

[FlashEngineer]

So I'm going to upgrade my current Nas4Free box which runs off a very low Sata count intel desktop board. I am going for a higher SATA port count board with about 10-14 ports and will also get a SAS expander as well for future drives. Will put this in a norco 4224. I have 12 drives right now.

I have multiple ZFS pool with mirror vdev's currently.

My question is for ram/zfs which places decision on which MB. Most MB can only accept 32GB ram max, and only a handful like true server boards 2011 and ones with dual/quad processor can do 192GB or more memory. It's overkill because NAS4Free works fine with even 3.0ghz dual core Pentium. So I don't really need the processing power, I just want the board that has more slots and memory.

I have 32GB now, currently about 12TB space. I know you should allocate 1GB per 1TB (doesn't include dedup which I don't use)

So realistically I can only put up to around 29-30TB of space.. maybe 27-28 to be safe.

That's a bad limit if I want to ever expand more space. Should I then just go for a MB that has ability to do 64GB+? Or I'm just overkilling the ZFS?

 

[Patrick]

I think you are going to be fine for awhile. If you did want to get something new, I am working on getting Pentium D-1500 series pricing and availability then I might have a good recommendation.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

The 1 GB per 1 TB thing is a guideline intended more for environments with many simultaneous users. For more limited use, such as for a few users in a home setup, it's overkill.

My current home setup is a 6 TB x 10 RAID2Z on 16 GB of RAM. It's fine:



If you're set on getting a new system that can handle additional RAM, the upcoming Supermicro X10SDV-2C-7TP4F might be a good choice provided the price is right and your chosen distro can support all its features.

 

[FlashEngineer]

The 1Gb/TB is for how many users though, like 50+? At most the home use would be 4-5 max in the future if anything.

 

[FlashEngineer]

I think that new SM Pentium-D is overkill for me.. haha

 

[Evan]

I think you are going to be fine for awhile. If you did want to get something new, I am working on getting Pentium D-1500 series pricing and availability then I might have a good recommendation.

Pricing will be really interesting on the new SM boards, i can't imagine them being that cheap, meaning compared to the d-1520 sub $500 price today.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

The 1 GB per 1 TB thing is a guideline intended more for environments with many simultaneous users. For more limited use, such as for a few users in a home setup, it's overkill.

Just test things like scrub and resilver (with the pool filled with your data; testing an empty pool doesn't prove anything) with whatever amount of memory you're going to use. You may find that these operations take forever if you don't have enough RAM. I'd say 6GB to 8GB would be an absolute minimum for running ZFS comfortably and being able to scrub / resilver at better than a snail's pace. [Yes, somebody may say "But I'm running ZFS on my notebook in only 2GB.", but they don't have a large pool and have probably never tried a resilver.]

I've been running 48GB RAM for 32TB pools, recently upgrading to 96GB in preparation for upgrading the pool capacity in the near future. Resilvers run around 1.4GB/second.

 

[StammesOpfer]

Well this gives you the Chassis, Motherboard, SAS expander, SAS card, the RAM slots and everything else you need. Yes it is a dual CPU rig that is a little older and going to use some power. But 18x slots for ram (288GB with 16GB DIMMs). Ready to run. From a reputable seller. You could pull one CPU until you grow into the need for the second.
4U Supermicro SATA SSD 24 Bay Storage Server 846TQ X8DTN+ 2x Hex Core 2.8Ghz

Or go with the 36 bay version less ram included and lower power CPUs. Same motherboard.
4U Supermicro 847E16-R1400LPB 36 Bay Server X8DTN+ JBOD L5630 SAS2 6Gb Expander

They will knock 50-75 off the price if you OBO.

But as others have said you may be overthinking you RAM needs and these systems would be overkill CPU wise unless you start throwing a bunch of other stuff at them. Oh and they can be rather loud the 24 bay probably (don't know for sure) could be quieted down easier than the 36 bay since the 36 is split internally cooling to the rear drives kinda sucks.