Need hardware recommendationds for 36 TB Expandable to 72

[smelsco]

Hi, new to the board and need some help.

I have a client that has outgrown their 24 TB QNAP TS1279URP both in speed and in storage.

I need to build a box that has about 36 TB of storage but is easily expandable. I am looking at SUPERMICRO SSG-6047R-E1R36N for the case and motherboard but am not set on it. I already have this fiber card in the current NAS that I will pull out and put into the new one. LAN-10G2DA-U-EMULEX.

Other than that, I'm not sure where to go or what my best options are. Any and all help is appreciated.

 

[phoenix]

Re: Need hardware recommendationds for 36 TB Expandable to 7

This is what we use for our storage boxes. They are currently optimised for bulk storage, not speed (SAS expanders, consumer-grade 7200 RPM SATA drives, 1 Gbps Ethernet, etc). It wouldn't be hard to optimise it for throughput, though.

The original setup (head unit + JBOD + 2 TB drives) was just under $18,000 CDN. The most expensive part was the drives.

We just filled our first storage unit, and our second has just arrived. I'm putting it together tomorrow.

Head Unit
The head unit is a 2U chassis with 24x hot-swappable 2.5" drive bays. 4 of these bays are occupied by SSDs, used for the OS install, the L2ARC devices, and the separate ZIL device.

• SuperMicro SC216 chassis
• SuperMicro H8DGi-6F motherboard
  • 2x G34 CPU sockets, supports up to 16-core Opteron 6300-series CPUs
  • 2x Intel gigabit NICs onboard
  • dedicated 10/100 NIC port for IPMI management (which works wonderfully)
  • 6 PCIe slots (x4 or better)
  • no IDE or floppy connectors
  • 6 SATA ports onboard, using an AHCI-compatible controller
  • 2 SFF-8087 connectors onboard via LSI2008 SAS controller (8 SAS/SATA channels)
• 2x AMD Opteron 6100-series CPU
• 128 GB ECC DDR3-SDRAM
• 2x Intel 330 SSD for the OS and separate ZIL (write-optimised)
• 2x Intel 520 SSD for the L2ARC (read-optimised)
• 4x LSI 9211-8e SAS controller with external SAS ports
• 2x hot-swappable PSUs

The onboard SAS controller is connected to the 2.5" backplane for the SSDs. So the OS, swap, read/write caches run off the motherboard controller, and the storage boxes run off the PCIe controllers.

Storage Unit
The storage (JBOD) unit is a 4U chassis with 45 hot-swappable 3.5" drive bays, SAS backplanes with expanders, external SAS connectors, and hot-swappable, redundant PSUs. There isn't a motherboard in this box, just a power controller. Using Supermicro SC416EL2 version of the chassis. Connected to the head unit via the external SAS cables and controllers. Each storage unit gives you 90 TB of raw storage (using 2 TB drives).

Each head unit can support 4 storage units directly (360 TB raw storage), and 8 storage units (720 TB raw storage) if you daisy-chain them.

 

[Terri_Kennedy]

Re: Need hardware recommendationds for 36 TB Expandable to 7

Other than that, I'm not sure where to go or what my best options are. Any and all help is appreciated.

Here is an article I wrote about my RAIDzilla II file servers. This design is now 3.5 years old, and if I were doing it from scratch I'd use higher-capacity drives (possibly SAS, depending on the cost penalty) and the latest generation LSI SAS controller. I have actually upgraded the 'zillas to 10 Gb Ethernet, though that isn't reflected in the article (yet).

I'd suggest reading the article, particularly the sections on what I'd learned from the previous generation and what I learned during the build/deployment process.

This is a picture of four RAIDzilla II's (128 TB total) along with a bunch of other hardware mounted in my home server room.