Help with new build

[KJaneway]

You are absolutely right sir. Now I have to decide.

But another point: The Hardwareseller cancelled my HDD order because of pricing error. Now I have to look for new drives. I have no clue whats the use of SAS drives in homeservers, especially with my user profile. Should I choose them, or can I take the cheaper SATA models?

 

[pricklypunter]

SAS is great for applications requiring fast HA because you can then make use of MPIO, but I doubt that you will need it for your use case. SATA also has the slight advantage over SAS in that larger capacity disks are available at a better price point. If you go the SATA route, use quality enterprise rated disks, if you can afford them, not only are they a little faster, they are a lot more reliable.

 

[KJaneway]

My first home server used WD green HDDs. Wasn't my best idea. I modified the TLER time to enhance Raid compatibility. 2 years later a drive failed and was replaced by Western Digital. Couldn't even use it because they locked the TLER.
Now I will stick to HGST Enterprise Drives. Either the 7k6000 or the He8 models, depending on the price tag/TB. Afaik they have the lowest failure rate.

 

[KJaneway]

Any Idea how i could get a 8x SAS backplane for a Lian Li Q26. In in Video a Lian Li sales rep stated that one could easily add more backplanes. Unfortunately LianLi backplanes are SATA only.

 

[pricklypunter]

I know that Lian make at least one SAS/ SATA backplane, but I have no idea if it would go into that case or not. Your best bet would be to contact Lian Li directly, tell them what you would like to achieve and see if they can offer you a solution that meets your needs

 

[Sergio]

What about this?

X10SDV-4C-TLN4F
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/D/X10SDV-4C-TLN4F.cfm

In Europe is around 570€ and does it come with 2 x 1Gb Ethernet.
Supermicro Mainboard X10SDV-4C-TLN4F Single - Sona

For home, I don't care about the 2x10Gb

 

[pricklypunter]

That's a nice board, but it would take this project to a whole other level

 

[KJaneway]

I have mentioned that board in my starting post, too. It is a very nice piece of tech. But for the same price I can get a decent E3 or E5 Xeon also in M-ITX. I guess that idle power consumption isn't that much different between both worlds. So the only reason for the Xeon-D is the integrated 10GbE, which I cannot upgrade later on any other mini-ITX board (except that strange ASRock Extended-ITX thing), because I need the PCIe Slot for HBA.

 

[KJaneway]

The longer I think the more it boils down to just one single question: How much RAM do I really need for my home use ZFS Pool, no matter how big it will grow within the next years, but with consitently only 2 or 3 concurrent users?

SFF (mini ITX or µATX is settled now)

Is 32 GB sufficient? Then I will went the E3-Xeon Haswell way
Is 64 GB sufficient? Then E3-Xeon Skylake
More than 64 GB? Must be E5-Xeon Haswell then.

In terms of Prices: E3-Xeon Haswell is nearly the same as E3-Xeon Skylake. But Haswell has the sexier Mainboard (E3C224D4I-14S), whereas Skylake would require µATX. The E5 option is around 200 Bucks more expensive.

What do you think?
And would you buy a board with 10GBase Support (+100$), or would you use an expansion card for this, when the time comes (now +300$ then: ???$ hopefully less)