NAS Choice

[BongoHunter]

I think it will be less stressful if I go with a server board, built-in video.

Definately less stressful - probably need to avoid Ryzen then, only 2ish server orientated boards available right now as far as I know.

X570 should comfortably have a enough lanes for a decent box though as long as its on a board where the primary x16 slot can be split into x8x8 at least

 

[noobftw]

Definately less stressful - probably need to avoid Ryzen then, only 2ish server orientated boards available right now as far as I know.

X570 should comfortably have a enough lanes for a decent box though as long as its on a board where the primary x16 slot can be split into x8x8 at least

Hmm, made me think a bit there, I wonder if the x1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 on the SuperMicro X11SDV-12C-TLN2F can run at 4x4 so I can use an M.2 dual expansion card? Otherwise, i will have to use an HBA or Raid card in it's place, and run a single M.2 drive from the OCuLink port.

 

[BongoHunter]

Could you not have just used a normal graphics card, or am I missing something? i.e. space in the case, other PCI slots taken?

Slots taken - I had to sacrifice 1 PCIe x8 for a 10GB NIC, and another for storage. Only left a few PCIEx1 slots free for anything else needed!

 

[noobftw]

Slots taken - I had to sacrifice 1 PCIe x8 for a 10GB NIC, and another for storage. Only left a few PCIEx1 slots free for anything else needed!

Ahh ok, I wish 'all' boards that came out now had 10GB NICS, it should be standard surely.

 

[BongoHunter]

Hmm, made me think a bit there, I wonder if the x1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 on the SuperMicro X11SDV-12C-TLN2F can run at 4x4 so I can use an M.2 dual expansion card? Otherwise, i will have to use an HBA or Raid card in it's place, and run a single M.2 drive from the OCuLink port.

Some M2 expansion boards handle the lane splitting themselves for boards that don't support bifurcation - though these cost a lot more than the 'dumb' dual and quad m2 boards.

EDIT: This review appears to suggest it supports what you want: https://tinkertry.com/supermicro-superserver-sys-e300-9d-first-look

 

[noobftw]

Some M2 expansion boards handle the lane splitting themselves for boards that don't support bifurcation - though these cost a lot more than the 'dumb' dual and quad m2 boards.

Well, that's good, at least it's not a lost cause .

Would a 4 core 8 thread Intel Xeon processor D-1521 (2.40 GHz base/
2.70 GHz Turbo) be enough power to drive data through 10GB connection without being bottlenecked, might be a stupid question :/

I don't want to overspend on something I don't need, there will be no VM's or anything like that, just for backups, won't even be powered on all the time.

Also, I read that i need a GB of RAM for every TB of HDD space I have, well i will have 112TB, that's without considering a storage (RAID) method though. How much would you recommend I get, bearing in mind the 10GB throughput i require.

 

[BongoHunter]

4c8t should be enough - your not asking for that much work to be done by the CPU for this really unless your getting into some fancy pants dedup or compression config.

The 1GB of RAM per TB is a rough guide provided by things like say Freenas, in my own Freenas box I had 8GB of RAM for a 16 TB of disk (presented as 8TB by ZFS due to redundancy) - this was fine and I had no issues. If I had multiple users then I think 16GB would be required to maintain performance.

I've actually got 32GB of RAM now, and I'd have no worries about 64TB pool based on my experience with it so far at least.

 

[noobftw]

4c8t should be enough - your not asking for that much work to be done by the CPU for this really unless your getting into some fancy pants dedup or compression config.

The 1GB of RAM per TB is a rough guide provided by things like say Freenas, in my own Freenas box I had 8GB of RAM for a 16 TB of disk (presented as 8TB by ZFS due to redundancy) - this was fine and I had no issues. If I had multiple users then I think 16GB would be required to maintain performance.

I've actually got 32GB of RAM now, and I'd have no worries about 64TB pool based on my experience with it so far at least.

Thanks for the reply, if I go with a 2 disk redundancy I will have 84TB to work with. I might go with 64GB RAM and leave it at that, would save me a ton of money. The system will only ever have two max connections backing up, sometimes at the same time.

 

[BongoHunter]

Thanks for the reply, if I go with a 2 disk redundancy I will have 84TB to work with. I might go with 64GB RAM and leave it at that, would save me a ton of money. The system will only ever have two max connections backing up, sometimes at the same time.

What OS is it your actually looking at - I just noticed Freenas have slightly refined their docs to suggest a minimum of 8GB + 1GB extra per drive - so that's in the cheap territory for memory at least.

Edit: Just to add - I don't think you'll hit 10GB throughput using the minimum RAM BTW

 

[noobftw]

What OS is it your actually looking at - I just noticed Freenas have slightly refined their docs to suggest a minimum of 8GB + 1GB extra per drive - so that's in the cheap territory for memory at least.

Edit: Just to add - I don't think you'll hit 10GB throughput using the minimum RAM BTW

Would amount of RAM would you recommend?

 

[BongoHunter]

Would amount of RAM would you recommend?

It depends
Are you starting out with all bays fully populated, or adding any SSDs?

How much do you backup a day? And how frequently?

 

[noobftw]

It depends
Are you starting out with all bays fully populated, or adding any SSDs?

How much do you backup a day? And how frequently?

All bays populated yes. Probably x2 SSD's and an NVME drive. Backup around 1TB a day, sometime more.

 

[BongoHunter]

All bays populated yes. Probably x2 SSD's and an NVME drive. Backup around 1TB a day, sometime more.

And does that 1TB need to be backed up quickly, or is it something that runs at the end of a working day and just needs to complete before the next day?

How often are you going to pull stuff back off the NAS? (if rarely and/or your pulling off 1TB at a time then read cache SSDs might be pretty pointless here)

 

[noobftw]

As quick as possible yes. Content will be pulled off the NAS infrequently. I think I will put the SSD's/NVME storage in a single pool instead of being used as cache.

In terms of motherboard choice, I have narrowed it down to a few, I did want to get an ASRock Rack D1540D4U-2T8R and put it inside a Silverstone CS381. However, I cannot find one in stock or being sold anywhere for that matter, not even on eBay.
So now it's between the ASRock Rack X470D4U2-2T AM4 and something like a Ryzen 3400/3600/3700x in the same case as above, or a Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F mITX Intel Xeon D-1541 8-Core/16-Thread 2.1GHz/3Ghz Turbo DDR4 Motherboard inside a Silverstone DS380.

 

[BongoHunter]

As quick as possible yes. Content will be pulled off the NAS infrequently. I think I will put the SSD's/NVME storage in a single pool instead of being used as cache.

As quickly as possible is expensive and can lead to making choices that cost a bomb for very limited perf gains with your use case. As fast as possible is probably a pure NVME + SSD setup with more RAM than you can shake a stick at and some 40gbps NICs

I think I'd be looking for 32GB minimum to start with and at least 8 decent enterprise type HDD's. I would only increase the RAM if needed - I wouldn't bother with a read cache, and get the biggest drives you can get your hands on as well (as long as not SMR).

I would give the TrueNAS/Freenas forum/wiki a decent search if you looking to do a modern AMD build as I think Freenas can be quite picky about what it will run on compared to Linux based systems (E.G the cheaper 10G Aquantia NICs don't work well if at all without some decent FreeBSD knowledge - and even then you will find you break the driver doing OS updates).

 

[noobftw]

As quickly as possible is expensive and can lead to making choices that cost a bomb for very limited perf gains with your use case. As fast as possible is probably a pure NVME + SSD setup with more RAM than you can shake a stick at and some 40gbps NICs

I think I'd be looking for 32GB minimum to start with and at least 8 decent enterprise type HDD's. I would only increase the RAM if needed - I wouldn't bother with a read cache, and get the biggest drives you can get your hands on as well (as long as not SMR).

I would give the TrueNAS/Freenas forum/wiki a decent search if you looking to do a modern AMD build as I think Freenas can be quite picky about what it will run on compared to Linux based systems (E.G the cheaper 10G Aquantia NICs don't work well if at all without some decent FreeBSD knowledge - and even then you will find you break the driver doing OS updates).

I went with a Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F mITX Intel Xeon D-1541 8-Core/16 Threads 2.1GHz/3GHz Turbo DDR4 Motherboard, got it for a steal, saved £200 over the AM4 alternative.

Are there any HBA cards that come with fans pre-installed on the heat sync?

 

[Avalon]

I went with a Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F mITX Intel Xeon D-1541 8-Core/16 Threads 2.1GHz/3GHz Turbo DDR4 Motherboard, got it for a steal, saved £200 over the AM4 alternative.

Are there any HBA cards that come with fans pre-installed on the heat sync?

Not usually as they tend to be found in desktop/rack mount servers with high airflow. They generally do OK as long as they have modest air flow, a small fan obviously makes a bigger difference.

 

[noobftw]

Times like this I wish I had a 3D printer haha

 

[Avalon]

We live in a world where people without 3D printers can easily order parts printed using available models/templates for very little.

 

[BongoHunter]

I went with a Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F mITX Intel Xeon D-1541 8-Core/16 Threads 2.1GHz/3GHz Turbo DDR4 Motherboard, got it for a steal, saved £200 over the AM4 alternative.

Are there any HBA cards that come with fans pre-installed on the heat sync?

That's a lovely board - should be great for this!

Not sure about HBAs with fans, but mounting a 40mm should be easy enough - probably not needed though as long as some air can flow past the card. I've got a Silverstone ECS04 card in my system - it doesn't appear to produce much if any heat, though I guess some cards might.