So I am contemplating an upgrade of my Freenas ZFS pool capacity by upgrading the hard drives to larger ones. Classic case but I am trying to do it as cheaply as possible without getting into reliability issues associated with refurbished/used drives.
Some limitations:
The chassis supports 16 drives but due to electricity usage and re-silvering times, I'd like to maintain the number of drives as low as possible. I am currently using 8 drives.
I need a usable pool size of 22TB. This is based on a detailed usage calculation and I assume I would have enough space for at least the next 5 years or more...
Out of the 8 drives I use, I currently have three 3TB drives and five 2TB drives in the pool. To minimize costs I thought of reusing the 3x 3TB drives. A good idea? I am confused because here in Canada, prices are all over the place and are in average 25-35% higher than in the US..... I guess thats the price for living in the Great North (TM)
If I keep the existing 3TB drives, a possible scenario according to the STH RAID Calculator, would be to get another 9 drives for a total of 12 in RAID-Z3 which will give me 24.6TB pool usable space.
So some questions:
The following configurations will provide a pool size of about 22TB:
6 drives of 8TB (21.8TB) = Astronomical cost (around $2800), lets forget that
8 drives of 6TB (27.3TB) = A bit excessive capacity and insanely expensive ($2400)
10 drives of 4TB (25.5TB) = Again insanely expensive and a bit larger than necessary ($1960)
12 drives of 3TB (24.6TB) = A bit larger than necessary but cheapest option so far (already own 3 drives) ($1280)
Which is best?
Why is storage so expensive !!!!??? Damn 4TB drives came out in 2011 and are still overpriced.
Some limitations:
The chassis supports 16 drives but due to electricity usage and re-silvering times, I'd like to maintain the number of drives as low as possible. I am currently using 8 drives.
I need a usable pool size of 22TB. This is based on a detailed usage calculation and I assume I would have enough space for at least the next 5 years or more...
Out of the 8 drives I use, I currently have three 3TB drives and five 2TB drives in the pool. To minimize costs I thought of reusing the 3x 3TB drives. A good idea? I am confused because here in Canada, prices are all over the place and are in average 25-35% higher than in the US..... I guess thats the price for living in the Great North (TM)
If I keep the existing 3TB drives, a possible scenario according to the STH RAID Calculator, would be to get another 9 drives for a total of 12 in RAID-Z3 which will give me 24.6TB pool usable space.
So some questions:
The following configurations will provide a pool size of about 22TB:
6 drives of 8TB (21.8TB) = Astronomical cost (around $2800), lets forget that
8 drives of 6TB (27.3TB) = A bit excessive capacity and insanely expensive ($2400)
10 drives of 4TB (25.5TB) = Again insanely expensive and a bit larger than necessary ($1960)
12 drives of 3TB (24.6TB) = A bit larger than necessary but cheapest option so far (already own 3 drives) ($1280)
Which is best?
Why is storage so expensive !!!!??? Damn 4TB drives came out in 2011 and are still overpriced.
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