1st NAS Build

[travisco_nabisco]

My recommendation on a starter system would be:

A Sandy Bridge motherboard, which allows processor upgrade in the future. Motherboard should support (Supermicro, Asus, Gigabyte make one):

At least 32 Gig of memory.
At least six, preferably SATA III (6Gig) ports.
USB 3
Two Gigabit Intel NICs

A Sandy Bridge Celeron or i3 processor

As much memory as you can go, starting at 8gig (memory is performance)

A 32gig SSD system drive

5 non-green consumer grade 2TB HDD (Hitachi or Samsung both good, make sure there is no block size emulation)

I am curious, what motherboards are there that meet the requirements you posted. Just for fun I thought I would price out a DIY NAS, and started with your motherboard feature recommendations. What I found is that if you go with a server motherboard, Supermicro, you can get the full feature set except the SATA ports are all only the 3.0 Gbps ports.

If you switch to a consumer board with those features, you have to pay over $200 - $300 just for the motherboard, which suddenly makes the DIY option a lot less attractive.

Hopefully I am just missing a few good motherboards in my search options.

Thanks.

 

[GregN]

I don't think you are missing anything, the price of the motherboards I looked at were between $250-$350

A board you probably did miss, which I like alot, but doesn't quite hit the requirements is the SuperMicro C7P67, ATX with 8 SATA: 4x6G, 4x3G and the C7Q67 which is 4x3G, 2x6G but with Intel NICS

The ASUS P8B WS almost hits the mark at $217

But you are right, to exactly hit the mark you have to go into $300 range. Note that a good non-raid sas/sata SATA III HBA is over $150, Areca running into the 300s. Of course you can go Syba....

 

[cpotter638]

Re: motherboard - what about:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157231

 

[cpotter638]

If I go with BOTH the hardware RAID & ZFS

I was wrong on this. I went off to research this topic, and found that it is actually strongly recommended that you run ZFS strictly on a SATA or SATA/SAS Host bus adapter ( this includes SATA ports on your Motherboard). Apologize for the confusion.

I agree with your new reasoning. Some good info I found re: this (Item #1 on link):

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...ep-getting-Asked-amp-Answered-about-FreeNAS-8

A 32gig SSD system drive

Unless I'm misunderstanding things, I've read that it is preferable to run FreeNAS ZFS on a compact flash or USB drive. I assume this would make the SSD drive unnecessary? I was planning on running via USB.



Not to beat a dead horse, but re: hard drives:

• I was looking for a reference listing "supported drives" for FreeNAS & ZFS. Have been unable to find this. I found several posts from 2010 stating that the majority of drive manufacturing was headed to "4K technology". I've also had a hard time verifying whether or not a drive is based on 4K technology (even after pulling specs from the manufactures' web sites)
• I'm going to avoid WD drives altogether (given links you sent to me)
• To your knowledge, are all current 2.0TB Samsung, Hitachi, & Seagate drives OK for ZFS? What abot Samsung "EcoGreen" & Seagate "Barracuta Green"? Would you stay away from these as well? On NewEgg, the only 2.0TB Samsung is the "EcoGreen"

 

[GregN]

I agree with your new reasoning. Some good info I found re: this (Item #1 on link):

http://forums.freenas.org/showthrea...ep-getting-Asked-amp-Answered-about-FreeNAS-8

Unless I'm misunderstanding things, I've read that it is preferable to run FreeNAS ZFS on a compact flash or USB drive. I assume this would make the SSD drive unnecessary? I was planning on running via USB.

A lot of folks do, I don't like 'em, thumb drives fail all the time (see other threads about having a dup as standby), and they have to be formatted and setup properly to use as a boot. I prefer SSD for reliability and expansion, and ease of setup. The choice is yours.

Not to beat a dead horse, but re: hard drives:

• I was looking for a reference listing "supported drives" for FreeNAS & ZFS. Have been unable to find this. I found several posts from 2010 stating that the majority of drive manufacturing was headed to "4K technology". I've also had a hard time verifying whether or not a drive is based on 4K technology (even after pulling specs from the manufactures' web sites)
• I'm going to avoid WD drives altogether (given links you sent to me)
• To your knowledge, are all current 2.0TB Samsung, Hitachi, & Seagate drives OK for ZFS? What abot Samsung "EcoGreen" & Seagate "Barracuta Green"? Would you stay away from these as well? On NewEgg, the only 2.0TB Samsung is the "EcoGreen"

I think some green drives are fine, heard the 'cuda greens can be made to work. I'm echoing the moderator over on FreeBSD, "Just avoid the Green-series of drives (regardless of manufacturer), the 4K-series of drives (regardless of manufacturer), and you'll be fine. " from August of last year. Things move, but I tend to be conservative on this sort of thing.

The motherboard you mentioned is fine, but does have realtek and not Intel NICs. Intel will do processing on chip that RealTek offloads to the CPU, and the drivers are not as good.

 

[cpotter638]

Re: motherboards:

Searched Newegg. Cannot find any boards that meet all specs you suggested. I assume you found some external to Newegg? As you mentioned, these would be in the $250-350 range. THis would be option #1

Option #2:
Give up Intel LAN and go with RealTek LAN for $165.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157231

Option #3:
Give up Sata3. Sata2 instead. $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182252

Option #4:
Some (but not 6) Sata3. Such as the ASUS P8B WS you referenced for $217.

If I have to cut costs, Option #2 or Option #3?

 

[cpotter638]

Re: CPU:

Favoring G530 or G540 Sany Bridge Celeron. Let me know your thoughts.

 

[cpotter638]

Re: Hard drives:

Went with the Seagate Barracuda Green 2.0TB. Got 6 of them.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...p=Cat_Hard_Drives-_-Cyber_Monday-_-22-148-681

Hope I don't regret this as they are 4K. Supposedly FreeNAS 8.0.2 supports 4K alignment whereas some previous versions didn't. I think this has to be enabled either via command line or GUI. This is over my head at the moment given that I have not yet installed / played with FreeNAS. Hopefully I can figure this out. But couldn't resist the pricing. Drive prices have skyrocketed.

At least some people have got these drives to work with FreeNAS ZFS:
http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?818-Hardware-Compatability-List-Tell-us-what-you-have/page2

 

[stevech]

This one's working very well for me.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128468&Tpk=gigabyte e350

For HTPC HDMI out @1080i, + terabytes of SATA disks + USB3 disks. No extra CPU to buy. DDR3 RAM. WIndows 7 home premium with simple shares.
80MB/s using SATA or USB3. Small size, low power consumption (15W).

FileZilla server and "HFS" server (web browser access to files/folders).
VNC and Logmein for remote access in addition to FTP (WinSCP).

 

[cpotter638]

Thanks Steve. I will have 6 hard drives. Was looking for a motherboard with 6 Sata3 & Intel LAN that doesn't break the bank.

 

[stevech]

Thanks Steve. I will have 6 hard drives. Was looking for a motherboard with 6 Sata3 & Intel LAN that doesn't break the bank.

I think Zotac has a small mobo with 6 sata ports. Assuming you don't want a drive bay box with a built-in port multiplier.

 

[GregN]

There are several motherboards that support Intel LAN dual NICS, the micro-atx board from SuperMicro and Asus ATX P8B WS are examples.

The real issue is the 6 x SATA III, currently no Intel Chipset supports 6Gbps for all SATA ports (as you've seen), for that MB makers have been supplementing the Intel Chipset with a Marvel controller for 2-4 more SATA III ports.

ASRock, Asus & Gigabyte have all done that, but like you, I've been unable to find the two converging, this has been made tougher by the intro of X79 and Z68 motherboards on New Egg, which moved a bunch of Gigabyte and Asus boards off the search results ( Not listed unless you specifically have a model number).

My apologies, Searching high & low, I've been unable to find the previous boards I mentioned.

 

[cpotter638]

I understand the need for 6 SATA (preferably SATA3) & Intel LAN. But why DUAL LAN?

 

[cpotter638]

There are several motherboards that support Intel LAN dual NICS, the micro-atx board from SuperMicro and Asus ATX P8B WS are examples.

The real issue is the 6 x SATA III, currently no Intel Chipset supports 6Gbps for all SATA ports (as you've seen), for that MB makers have been supplementing the Intel Chipset with a Marvel controller for 2-4 more SATA III ports.

ASRock, Asus & Gigabyte have all done that, but like you, I've been unable to find the two converging, this has been made tougher by the intro of X79 and Z68 motherboards on New Egg, which moved a bunch of Gigabyte and Asus boards off the search results ( Not listed unless you specifically have a model number).

My apologies, Searching high & low, I've been unable to find the previous boards I mentioned.

Looked @ NewEgg and manufacture websites. Certainly no ASUS, Supermicro, Intel, or Gigabyte motherboards available with 6 SATA3 & Intel LAN.

So - what is more important? Intel LAN or 6 Sata3?

 

[travisco_nabisco]

Looked @ NewEgg and manufacture websites. Certainly no ASUS, Supermicro, Intel, or Gigabyte motherboards available with 6 SATA3 & Intel LAN.

So - what is more important? Intel LAN or 6 Sata3?

I would say that the Intel LAN is more important overall as it takes that load off of the CPU.

If you are running RAID 5 or 6, I would imagine going from 3Gbps to Gbps SATA controllers wouldn't make more than a 10% different, this is just a guess, correct me if I am wrong.

 

[GregN]

Travisco is definitely correct.

Intel NICs are a no brainer, Checksum offload, quality of drivers, compatibility and performance are all a win with Intel.

You can get 6 drives with the boards you found on NewEgg, they just can't all be SATA III. You can add a Syba SATA card to supplement the capabilities of the Intel chipset, for not much money.

Dual LAN is not a requirement, it is a nice to have. You have a 24-port switch, and with a managed switch (still going that way? If not, drop to a single LAN port, unless in the future...) you can aggregate your network connections at little cost, and you will get better concurrent access to your NAS.

Have you decided on your Case? Hot Swap or fixed are your choices. The advantage of hot swap is ease of replacing failed drives.

 

[cpotter638]

Trying to wrap my head around SATA ports:

I understand Sata3 is the future. But, currently - is SATA2 ever saturated in a setup such as mine (assuming gigabit switch / router)?

If answer of above question is no, then why is SATA3 important? Just for the future?

Have you decided on your Case? Hot Swap or fixed are your choices. The advantage of hot swap is ease of swapping failed drives.

I've BRIEFLY looked at cases. Main qualifications:

• Cooling
• Reasonable price
• Hard drive space. Certainly need room for 6. Extra room for additional hard drives down the road would be nice.
• Hot swap for 6 current drives would be nice

Questions re: case:

• How many hard drives can you realistically fit in a mid-tower case? Is 12 possible (6 drives now with possiblity of adding 6 down the road)? And is adequate cooling possible with 12 drives?
• Hot swapping - I assume you can buy a case with hot swap capability and / or buy adaptor kits to make drive bays hot swapable?

 

[GregN]

Trying to wrap my head around SATA ports:

I understand Sata3 is the future. But, currently - is SATA2 ever saturated in a setup such as mine (assuming gigabit switch / router)?

There is a tendency to see this in simplistic terms, A 3Gbs drive dealing with a single large file read will block on a 1Gig network connection,

But rarely is it that simple, data is striped across multiple disks, and blocks are smaller than 1Gig, and is written to generally a cache/buffer which dumps to your network. The faster you can get the data off of the disks, the more likely you are not to block anywhere in the I/O chain.

More significantly in most home networks it is generally unusual to saturate a 1G net connection...

Except for getting the speediest, most recent incarnation of solid standard, there is likely no compelling reason...have you seen a SATA I drive for sale recently?

I've BRIEFLY looked at cases. Main qualifications:

• Cooling
• Reasonable price
• Hard drive space. Certainly need room for 6. Extra room for additional hard drives down the road would be nice.
• Hot swap for 6 current drives would be nice

Questions re: case:

• How many hard drives can you realistically fit in a mid-tower case? Is 12 possible (6 drives now with possiblity of adding 6 down the road)? And is adequate cooling possible with 12 drives?
• Hot swapping - I assume you can buy a case with hot swap capability and / or buy adaptor kits to make drive bays hot swapable?

The LIAN LI ARMORSUIT PC-P50 (an example), has 9x5.25 external drive bays and 3x3.25 int. drive bays. You'd need to get sleeves/caddies for hot swap. I was unable to find in a midtower anything larger. If you go 4U rackmount, some bit larger than midtower, you can go up to 24 drives. The rackmounts tend to be noisier, but generally come with 3.5" caddies for ease of swapping.

The cases are generally designed to cool the drives they accommodate, though added fan(s) might be needed, depending on the environment.

 

[cpotter638]

Re: motherboard & Sata3:
Thanks for your comments Greg. I'm trying to maximize Sata3 connections. I've only found a few boards that combine Intel LAN & 4X Sata3. They include:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131771

• Intel LAN x1
• $179

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131704

• Intel LAN x 1
• Realtek LAN x 1
• $194

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131704

• Intel LAN x 2
• $246

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us...boards/desktop-board-dz68bc.html?wapkw=DZ68BC

• Intel LAN x 1
• $218 on Amazon

I know of no others that meet criteria. To strike a balance between LAN & $$, I'm favoring the "P8P67 PRO EVO". This would give me 4X Sata3, Intel LAN, and 2nd Realtek LAN. Let me know your thoughts.




Re: Cases options I'm considering:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112342&Tpk=PC-A70F

1. Great case.
2. Not hot swap, but is tool-less
3. $169

http://rack-supplies.ecrater.com/p/11826227/2u-server-case-12-hotswap-drive

• Lose front panel USB
• Zero documentation. I'm sure I can deal with installation; however, it will take longer being I don't do this everyday
• Hot swap X12
• $288 shipped from Amazon

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219037

• Front panel USB
• Hot swap X10
• $180 from "ExcaliberPC". Don't know anything about ExcaliberPC.
• Would rather have hot swap X12; however, is $100 cheaper than the RPC-2212.

I like the Lian Li PC-P50; however:

• Costs more ($184) than the PC-A70F if not doing hot swap.
• Addition of hot swap sleeves would eclipse the RPC-2212.
• So - this one is out.

 

[stevech]

not interested in a SATA box w/port expander?
Or a PCIe card adding SATA 3 ports?