Hardware for OpenIndiana

[Jay69]

Hi guys,

Looking for hardware recommendation for OpenIndiana SAN.

Motherboard - Currently using AMD Athalon X2 (8GB DRAM) and support 4 HDD , seems to be working fine.

JBOD controller -> Looking for something that will support Sata3 if possible

Power Supply -> Currently 460W for 3HDD -looking to increase the HDD to maybe 6 to 10

Chassis - > Looking for something that will be able to cool properly. If anybody can recommend something that can do HDD rack, that would be good.

SSD - > have 2x 128G SSD spare lying around, still considering if it's worthwhile to install this.

 

[gea]

If you buy a new motherboard and it does not need to be the cheapest, prefer Intel Serverchipsets ex SuperMicro X9 line.
With the HBA prefer LSI based ones like IBM 1015 (can be crossflashed) or the LSI 9211-8i (one of the best at all)

 

[Jay69]

Assuming that I have 4 SATA, 2x120G SSD and 2x2T HDD, 8G of DRAM, what would be my best configuration to get the fastest R/W performance ?
Mirror SSD and Mirror HDD ?

 

[Jay69]

I found the IBM 5015 instead on ebay. Would that be a good buy ?

If you buy a new motherboard and it does not need to be the cheapest, prefer Intel Serverchipsets ex SuperMicro X9 line.
With the HBA prefer LSI based ones like IBM 1015 (can be crossflashed) or the LSI 9211-8i (one of the best at all)

 

[mobilenvidia]

My suggestions as I happen to have both:

Get the M5015 only if you plan to run RAID 5 or 6, it kicks butt with these.

Get the M1015 for anything else ie Passthrough/JBOD, RAID 0 or 1, or even a mixture of hem all, does it better than the M5015

 

[Jay69]

My choice of hardware is somewhat limited to what I could get locally. I know about the ebay option, but again limited locally as I had some problems with Paypal long ago (they wanted whole branch of personal info which I wasn't willing to risk giving to a company without even a contact address (at that time)).

I managed to get a older Dell T610 with a H700 (which I understand is the same as the 5105). It comes with 2x500G SAS and 2x1T SAS . I'm trying to get additional caddy and if I can, I'll add another 4 disk but that's another challenge. As mentioned, I've 2x 128GB SSD. The Dell also support booting from USB.

So, my thoughts is , should I install the 128GB SSD as a Raid0, upgrade the 4 disk and install the OpenIndiana onto 32GB USB Flash ? Any comments ?
What Raid configuration should I do for optimum performance assuming I have 4 HDD and possibly 8 HDD (maximum).
What do you guys suggest , seeing that I'm hoping for maximum performance (IOPS) and disk space (with a thought to redundancy) at a minimum additional cost. Upgrading the 4 disk to a Enterprise class 2T/3T disk would cost me additional $1000+ although I'm still thinking about it.

My suggestions as I happen to have both:

Get the M5015 only if you plan to run RAID 5 or 6, it kicks butt with these.

Get the M1015 for anything else ie Passthrough/JBOD, RAID 0 or 1, or even a mixture of hem all, does it better than the M5015

 

[gea]

I do not know the H700 to say if it will work, but I doubt it will support 3 TB disks
In any case, best are LSI 2008 based HBA controllers

If you need performance, build your pool from mirrored vdevs, performance depends on number of vdevs, use your SSD's as cache. Forget the idea of booting from USB, use any disk > 20GB

 

[Patrick]

gea, the H700 is based on the LSI 2108 controller IIRC.

 

[Jay69]

Well, I believe based on Specs, the H700 supports 3TB disks. Again, not sure about performance or specific disks model.

Yes, I understand that mirror (RAID1) give the best performance/price , but if I have multiple disk, what would be the ideal scenerio. Given that I have only 4 SATA/SAS slot at the moment. Even if I get a 20G Sata disk, that's taken up 1 slot. Your original recommendation was not to use a partition or SLICE.

Would doing a RAID 10 give me a better performance. I.e. 4x disk of 2T
Or should I go for 2 sets of 2 Mirror disks ? I.e. Raid 1
Since the above takes up the SATA slot, would I be better off with 2x disk of 2T and using the other 2 slot for 2x128GB of SSD.

Essentially, my questions is build around this. I don't expect a outright "correct" answer but more of feedbacks from members about their experiences.

I do not know the H700 to say if it will work, but I doubt it will support 3 TB disks
In any case, best are LSI 2008 based HBA controllers

If you need performance, build your pool from mirrored vdevs, performance depends on number of vdevs, use your SSD's as cache. Forget the idea of booting from USB, use any disk > 20GB

 

[gea]

ZFS is a Pool-System.
Create a new pool from one mirror (the first vdev), you get a Raid-1
Add another mirror (second vdev), It is striped with first, you get a Raid-10

add as many vdevs as you can or need. Each one increases pool capacity and performance
by striping data over all vdevs

 

[Jay69]

ZFS is a Pool-System.
Create a new pool from one mirror (the first vdev), you get a Raid-1
Add another mirror (second vdev), It is striped with first, you get a Raid-10

add as many vdevs as you can or need. Each one increases pool capacity and performance
by striping data over all vdevs

Thanks. I've created a Pool, add 2SSD as vDEV as Write Cache. Turn on Dedup and compression.