Swedish Sushi NAS, need expert chef advice!

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protomouse

New Member
Jun 15, 2013
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Sweden
protomou.se
A very warm hello from Sweden, as this is my first post :). As a developer myself, I'd humbly like to thank the developers of the OpenIndiana/Illumos, and those sponsoring it, for building great open source software! It is in fact what will enable my very first home NAS!

Without further ado, I'd like some input on my build idea from you, the storage experts.

The NAS should:
  1. be highly expandable, with as many drives as possible [sup]*[/sup]
  2. support hot-swapping
  3. run OpenIndiana, RAID-Z1
  4. consume power sparingly

My budget: around/above 11000 SEK (with drives), which is roughly 1300 EUR. I'd imagine the same price in USD.

I already have:
  1. Delicious 4 GB USB stick [sup]**[/sup]
  2. 1 x 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000
  3. Stock Core i7 HSF
  4. IBM ServeRAID M1015 flashed with 2118it.bin

My shopping list:
Pics and spec links here: NAS 2013-06-14

  1. Xigmatek Elysium Full-Tower Case (~120 EUR)
  2. ASUS P8C WS motherboard (~120 EUR)
  3. Intel Pentium G2020T 2.5GHz TDP 35W CPU (~60 EUR) [sup]***[/sup]
  4. Be-Quiet Straight Power BQT E9 CM 580W 80+ Gold PSU (~90 EUR)
  5. Kingston ValueRAM DDR3 PC10600/1333MHz ECC CL9 16GB (KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G) (~120 EUR)
  6. 4 x 5.25" 5in3 or 4in3 HDD hot swap racks (~240-320 EUR)
  7. 3 x 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (~480 EUR)

Notes:
[sup]*[/sup] 16-20 drive slots, can fit two ServeRAID cards in x8 for a total of 32 useable SATA ports, so the limiting factor would be heat and performance (hard RAM limit of 32 GB)?
[sup]**[/sup] The system will boot from this.
[sup]***[/sup] From what I've read, Ivy Bridge desktop CPUs (Celeron/Pentium/Core) in conjunction with Intel's Panther Point chipsets WILL support ECC.

TL;DR. My questions:
  1. What would you recommend in terms of affordable 5in3 or 4in3 HDD racks and where to buy them?
  2. I'm a noob, anything else I've overlooked?

Oh, and thanks to anyone who bothered to read this far and double thanks for replies as well! :D

EDIT: updated with correct ECC modules, thanks Mike!
 
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Mike

Member
May 29, 2012
482
16
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EU
For 450+ bucks you can get a nice rackmount that was made to have hotswap bays. Check Ebay over on our side of the pond. Also you need unbuffered ECC RAM, not registered.
Im not a bit fan of the T-series cpus. Extra power saving measures are IMO bullchit on the ivy bridge cpus, TDP is not golden.
 

protomouse

New Member
Jun 15, 2013
4
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Sweden
protomou.se
Hey Mike, thanks for your reply!

Also you need unbuffered ECC RAM, not registered.
A keen eye! Thanks, that was a big oversight.

For 450+ bucks you can get a nice rackmount that was made to have hotswap bays. Check Ebay over on our side of the pond.
The thought crossed my mind. I'm going to look into that.

Im not a bit fan of the T-series cpus. Extra power saving measures are IMO bullchit on the ivy bridge cpus, TDP is not golden.
I'll have a look at the Pentium G2020, which actually is a bit cheaper. The mobo/CPU combo is what I'm most uncertain about at this point, due to the 32 GB RAM limit. Sadly, anything over 32 GB is LGA2011 stuff, e.g. X79 and C606. The cheapest board I could find in this class, Intel's DX79TO, supports 64 GB RAM and costs about as much as the P8C WS, but the cheapest LGA2011 CPU (Xeon E5) is well over 100 EUR more expensive than the Pentium. Quite unsure if it's worth stretching the budget for.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
3,141
1,184
113
DE
only some personal preferences,
but maybee you can compare with

mainboards, I would prefer Supermicro over Asus
- SuperMicro 1150 or 1155, use a -F model with ipmi, uATX are cheapest
Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Xeon

example (SAS controller included)
http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SL7-F.cfm

- CPU
use a Xeon, Dual CPU is ok for storage

- ECC
use always, I would use at least 16 GB


case
- Norco RPC-4224 (or similar Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4324L in Germany)

OS
-OmniOS (better maintained than OI)

-pool config (up to 24disks)
2 x raid-z2, each 10 disks, you an start with less, but expect a pool re-create when going to full equipped


maybee a little more expensive than your config but this is what most experienced ZFS users would consider
 
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protomouse

New Member
Jun 15, 2013
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0
Sweden
protomou.se
hey gea, thanks for your reply! As a matter of fact, I've spent the entire day browsing the web for input, and reached about the same conclusion as you just handed me on a silver plate! :)

My revised build:

Intel Xeon E3-1230v2
Supermicro X9SCM-F
2xKingston ValueRAM TS DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL11 ECC 8GB (KVR16E11/8)
Fractal Design Newton R3 600W
IBM ServeRAID M1015
X-Case RM424 "home server"

Changes:
A 4U rackmount case as per Mike's and your suggestions.
A single 12V rail PSU as suggested here
An IPMI-compliant Supermicro board
Xeon CPU
1600MHz RAM

Thoughts on expansion:

The RM424 has 24 hot-swap bays, 6 backplanes, 4 drives each. Each pair of backplanes would be controlled by a M1015. The X9SCM-F has 4 physical x8 slots, but two of them run at x4. At 2 GiB/s, I'm assuming it won't be a bottleneck for 8 normal mechanical drives?

Finally, thanks for the OmniOS recommendation, hadn't heard of it! Will try that first.

It's gonna be a bit more expensive, but I won't be building another machine for a very, very long time.

Does all this seem reasonable?
 

TheRonin

New Member
Mar 10, 2013
27
1
3
Nottingham, UK
I would also recommend the supermicro boards. Just a thought though the x10 boards are starting to appear so maybe wait for the a x10 board as they are pretty much the same price. I have a x10slh -f on order and should be here next week. Its no big deal but its always nice to have the latest hardware.
 

protomouse

New Member
Jun 15, 2013
4
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Sweden
protomou.se
Hey TheRonin, that was a good suggestion - I hadn't considered Haswell/Lynx Point at all, being that it's brand new and prices are still on the high end. It might indeed good to wait a little while longer and properly read up on Haswell. From past experiences, stuff takes longer to arrive here though. Which CPU are you getting?