SATA v SAS drives (3.5" ultrastar) in a ZFS array for a client protecting his professional media

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TrumanHW

Active Member
Sep 16, 2018
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My two questions are:
1. When does using SAS vs SATA become a priority..?
2. As a media store (large video files) ...is TrueNAS Core (on FreeBSD) the right choice..?

Thanks

Dell PowerEdge T320 LFF Server
E5-2430v2 (6c HT) 2.5GHz (3.0GHz)
64GB ECC RAM
8i LSI controller (IT mode)
Dual SFP+ 10GbE
RAIDz2 (8x 6TB HGST Ultrastar SATA)
1x spare (6TB HGST Ultrastar SATA) on hand
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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1. It depends if we are talking about hard drives or SSDs;)
It also depends on single host or JBOD.

Assuming you are talking about a single box for the large video files then I would say it depends more on availability / cost than actual technical differences.

If we were talking about JBOD/Enterprise systems then having dual ported drives is an important topic.

And if we are talking about SSDs then o/c the vastly superior performance of SAS3 and in addition the significant better queuing (qd 256 vs 32) is way better for multiple users...

And that leads us to NVME ... but thats another story... ;)

2. There is no one right choice for everybody. TNC is perfectly capable of serving large media with a ton of extra functionality and features. If it is the right choice for you depends on more (unmentioned) factors I assume
 
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TrumanHW

Active Member
Sep 16, 2018
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Great point.
Just a single-controller system and no Dual-Port drives
(it's a sub-1500 solution including media, ram, shipping & setup)
With the above mentioned 8x 6TB HGST Ultrastar HD.
And ... I doubt it'll ever exceed QD 32 ...

I actually bought a couple of the P5800x 400GB off eBay for $625 (might grab another one) ...

As far as TNC vs TNS
It's a 1-machine, no failover / no quasi-SAN future in store for this.
It's just a fault tolerant option for someone who usually has no protection against drive-failure...

If I recall, Wendell (Level1techs) & maybe also Thomas (Lawrence-systems) both mentioned core having faster throughput than scale..?

Though -- you've made me think of something: Maybe I should add an external-SAS controller in case he likes this fault-tolerant repo...
And wants expansion options; which'd make it easy to send him an LSI disk shelf (pre-populated) in the future.

I could discuss another project I'm working on re: NVMe and SATA SSD, etc., but I'll preserve the subject here.
I really appreciate your time and input.
 

ddaenen1

Member
Jul 7, 2020
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i run TNC on 2 x 100GB SSD HDD's in mirror as a bootpool and for storage a pool of 4 x 2Tb SAS LFF HGST HDD's with an LSI HBA in ZRAID1. This setup runs Plex and Nextcloud.

There are a couple of reasons why i chose for SAS:

1. The 2U enclosure i bought had a SAS backplane and required a special cable to connect SATA drives so SAS was the easier approach
2. Some time ago i bought 15 refurbished SAS HDD's for about 20 USD per piece which were installed in a Dell MD1000

Refurbished SAS drives are really cheap and in terms of reliability, in 2 years i had only out of 15 one that started failing but TNC allows an easy hot-swap so it wasn't a big deal. Now i have 4 running for about a year without a glitch.

I have become a big fan of TNC as it is rocksolid and very reliable. Also looked at TNS but there are still too many issues with the current releases and even iXSystems recognizes it is not on par with TNC yet.
 

TrumanHW

Active Member
Sep 16, 2018
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There are a couple of reasons why i chose for SAS:
1. The 2U enclosure i bought had a SAS backplane and required a special cable to connect SATA drives so SAS was the easier approach
2. Some time ago i bought 15 refurbished SAS HDD's for about 20 USD per piece which were installed in a Dell MD1000
Good vote re TNC.
Dang, I'm sorry to hear that about your backplane; usually SAS is backwards compatible with SATA ...

Had I been buying the drives I absolutely would've chosen SAS ... but I had them already and was just curious if there were any reasons to go out of my way to buy them.

Thanks for the anecdote.