Need help with NAS/server hardware build

D

Dre

I kind of need some help….

I’ve dealt a little bit with FreeBSD before but that was barely scratching the surface. This is supposed to be my real “entry” project and I’m a little bit afraid of compatibility issues.

What I’m looking at building is a home NAS/server. A minimum of 8 2TB discs must be supported (+ OS disc) (4 now and another 4 in another 6-12 month). ZFS…

Performance wise it must be able to stream 1080 material. Beyond that I’m looking for low power (as low as possible that is :)

I don’t have any leftover hardware lying around so I’m building this from scratch.

All I’ve settled on so far is a chase and a power supply..
Fractal Design Define R3
Corsair TX 650W 80+


Does any of the “cheaper” 2TB drives work without problems?
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green (WD20EARS)
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green (WD20EADS)
2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 (HDS722020ALA330)
2TB Samsung EcoGreen F3 (HD203WI)
2TB Seagate Barracuda LP (ST32000542AS)

These are a tad more expensive but I would consider them if they are hassle-free.
2TB Western Digital Caviar Black (WD2001FASS)
2TB Western Digital AV-GP (WD20EVDS)
2TB Seagate Barracuda (ST320005N4D1AS-RK)


Mobo is another big question.
Would a core i3 530 processor work? If so, could anyone recommend a mobo for it that they are using (and that doesn’t have any compatibility problems… :)
If the i3 isn’t a good processor to use. Would a Celeron 430 have enough computational power for zfs?

I’ll also need 1-2 4-8 port SATA PCIe card(s). Anything known to work? The SiI3124 controller appears to be recommended. Can someone recommend some specific cards?

Regards,
 
When they are talking about the 2TB Hitachi that’s working fine, are they talking about HDS722020ALA330 then?
 
A word on the hdd's ... I would go with WD Green. Personally I have incredibly bad experience with Seagate and I cannot comment on Hitachi (although I hear they are ok). The reason I say WD Green, is because you need low consumption and high performance: "they use IntelliPower and IntelliSeek technology to achieve faster performance. IntelliPower is a fine-tuned balance of spindle speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. IntelliSeek calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration".

I have managed to get 51MB read/write speed on a WD green on a s-ata1 controller and 110MB/100MB constant read/write on a s-ata 2 controller (500GB and 640GB hdd's).

Anyway, if you don't plan on streaming 10x 1080p movies at the same time, I believe that any hdd will do the job. I don't know how much throughput a 1080p movie requires but if you do, you can calculate how many you can stream without problems.
 
Dre said:
Corsair TX 650W 80+
Click to expand...
If you want low power, that supply is utterly overkill and inefficient.

Dre said:
2TB Samsung EcoGreen F3 (HD203WI)
Click to expand...
I'm eying Samsung's latest F4 series...

Dre said:
Would a core i3 530 processor work?
Click to expand...
Yes.

Dre said:
If so, could anyone recommend a mobo for it that they are using (and that doesn’t have any compatibility problems
Click to expand...
Zotac H55-ITX (I don't have one... yet - search the forum though)

Dre said:
If the i3 isn’t a good processor to use. Would a Celeron 430 have enough computational power for zfs?
Click to expand...
An Atom board will probably be enough even.
 
da1 said:
A word on the hdd's ... I would go with WD Green. Personally I have incredibly bad experience with Seagate and I cannot comment on Hitachi (although I hear they are ok). The reason I say WD Green, is because you need low consumption and high performance: "they use IntelliPower and IntelliSeek technology to achieve faster performance. IntelliPower is a fine-tuned balance of spindle speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. IntelliSeek calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration".
Click to expand...

Skip the Green drives in any situation where you want speed and throughput, they just don't work worth beans. The only time they are useful is in a home machine that does bulk backups where speed doesn't matter. These drives are slow. Period. They are 5900 RPM drives. Any other drive would be better.
 
I’ll aim for the 2TB Hitachi drives (HDS722020ALA330) then unless I find something that discourages me.

You’re right, a 650W PSU might be a tad too much. Enermax Modu/Pro87+ 500W or even a Seasonic X-400 might be a better. Expensive but better…

The Zotac mobo only has one PCIe unfortunately. It would be enough for 8 drives but I would prefer not to limit my options for future “upgrades”.
 
olav said:
650w PSU?

I just bought a Chieftec 350w PSU which I plan to use with 16 drives.
Click to expand...

the only time you need alot of power is when the machine starts Check the max watt of the harddisks * 16 plus 80 of something for the rest of the machine..

but anyways it doesn't hurt to buy a 500 or 650 watt psu.
 
Matty said:
but anyways it doesn't hurt to buy a 500 or 650 watt psu.
Click to expand...
It does if you're trying to maximise efficiency - power supplies usually operate most efficiently between 40% and 60% load.
 
aragon said:
It does if you're trying to maximise efficiency - power supplies usually operate most efficiently between 40% and 60% load.
Click to expand...

then buy a good psu.... even so losing some of the efficiency will hardly show up on your energy bill.

chance is that the 350w won't boot your system or run it stable.
 
Try these motherboards:

SuperMicro X8SIL (3x PCI-express + 6x SATA + 2x Intel gigabit)
http://www.supermicro.com/xeon_3400/Motherboard/X8SIL.cfm

SuperMicro X8ST3-F (4x PCI-express + 14x SATA + 2x Intel gigabit)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/X58/X8ST3-F.cfm

SuperMicro X7SPA (Atom) (1x PCIe + 6x SATA + 2x Intel gigabit)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm?typ=H

And be aware of RAID-Z performance issues with 4K sector drives like Samsung F4 and WD EARS. Either pick 512 byte sector drives (EADS), use mirroring instead of RAID-Z or setup RAID-Z in a special way to avoid significant performance decrease due to 4K sectors emulating 512-byte sectors in these newer 'Advanced Format' harddrives.

To avoid performance issues with RAID-Z, you could try the following untested theory:

As i understand, the performance issues with 4K disks isn't just partition alignment, but also an issue with RAID-Z's variable stripe size.

RAID-Z basically works to spread the 128KiB recordsizie upon on its data disks. That would lead to a formula like:

128KiB / (nr_of_drives - parity_drives) = maximum (default) variable stripe size

Let's do some examples:
3-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 2 = 64KiB = good
4-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 3 = ~43KiB = BAD!
4-disk RAID-Z = 96KiB / 3 = 32KiB = good
5-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 4 = 32KiB = good
9-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 8 = 16KiB = good

4-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 2 = 64KiB = good
5-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 3 = ~43KiB = BAD!
5-disk RAID-Z2 = 96KiB / 3 = 32KiB = good
6-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 4 = 32KiB = good
10-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 8 = 16KiB = good
Click to expand...

I'm about to test this theory with the help of some people's new NAS hardware. So i should have some performance numbers soon that can verify this. You can follow this thread to track its progress.
 
This is what I’m looking at right now. I would like to use the Intel dh57jg board with its lower power consumption but I haven’t found anyone using FreeBSD on that one unfortunately. The Zotac board on the other hand is used by several people that I’ve found in different forums.

Any thoughts?

Zotac H55-ITX + Core I3, Idle=53W, load=98W
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2950/2

or

Intel dh57jg + Core I3, Idle=34W, load=88W
http://www.anandtech.com/print/2949


8 pcs (4 now, 4 later) Hitachi 7K2000, Idle=7.6W, full load=9.7W
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/HDD-6Gbit,review-31814-10.html

Enermax Modu87+ 500W 80Plus Gold
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1044-page4.html

LSI SAS3081E-R
Fractal Design Define R3
 
Dre said:
Zotac H55-ITX + Core I3, Idle=53W, load=98W
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2950/2

or

Intel dh57jg + Core I3, Idle=34W, load=88W
http://www.anandtech.com/print/2949
Click to expand...
I was a bit surprised to see the big difference in consumption between those two, but it looks like the testing methodologies differed? In the Intel test it looks like they only tested with the IGP disabled, but the H55 numbers you quoted were from the test with IGP enabled?

Not even sure how one measures system power with no graphics controller. :)
 
Dre said:
Zotac H55-ITX + Core I3, Idle=53W, load=98W
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2950/2

or

Intel dh57jg + Core I3, Idle=34W, load=88W
http://www.anandtech.com/print/2949
Click to expand...

Its IDLE=34W for Zotac H55-ITX, not 53W, and LOAD=76W.

... and its LOAD=88W for dh57jg + Core I3.

Dunno how You looked at these stats.

Dre said:
8 pcs (4 now, 4 later) Hitachi 7K2000, Idle=7.6W, full load=9.7W
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/HDD-6Gbit,review-31814-10.html
Click to expand...

The Hitachi 7K2000 drive has 5 platters, not 4.

Better get Samsung F4 2TB, it has only 3 platters, its best drive, at least for small heat and low power consumption.

Here are some benchmarks:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1547827
 
vermaden said:
but with Radeon 5770 as specified here, it uses 53W idle:
Click to expand...
Oh! I skipped over the text. Thought they somehow managed to test them with all graphics disabled, ie. no graphics controller.
 
aragon said:
Oh! I skipped over the text. Thought they somehow managed to test them with all graphics disabled, ie. no graphics controller.
Click to expand...

They tested them with IGP (integrated in CPU gfx) or with discrete (Radeon) graphics ...
 
If you really want to go low power, consider using PicoPSU; a small power supply that plugs directly on your motherboard's ATX power connector. The advantage here is really low power consumption; as normal PSUs (power supplies) become quite inefficient when going below 40W.

The disadvantage is that you can't use 3,5" disks, or not many anyway. You also need a good 12+VDC converter brick; not many go over 80W DC output. Though some with 110/120 exist; but many are rather expensive.

The Zotac board is nice; you can also go Atom if you don't need alot of CPU power; the SuperMicro atom boards are rather nice, with dual intel gigabit and 6x SATA/300.

Do go IGP; best if the GPU is in the CPU like with Atom D510 and 32nm Core i3/i5. AMD may soon have Ontario to compete against Atom; basically same power consumption but twice the CPU power.
 
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