hardware for home use large storage

[Dan Langille]

Dan Langille wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking at creating a large home use storage machine.  Budget is a 
> concern, but size and reliability are also a priority.  Noise is also a 
> concern, since this will be at home, in the basement.  That, and cost, 
> pretty much rules out a commercial case, such as a 3U case.  It would be 
> nice, but it greatly inflates the budget.  This pretty much restricts me 
> to a tower case.
> 
> The primary use of this machine will be a backup server[1].  It will do 
> other secondary use will include minor tasks such as samba, CIFS, cvsup, 
> etc.
> 
> I'm thinking of 8x1TB (or larger) SATA drives.  I've found a case[2] 
> with hot-swap bays[3], that seems interesting.  I haven't looked at 
> power supplies, but given that number of drives, I expect something 
> beefy with a decent reputation is called for.
> 
> Whether I use hardware or software RAID is undecided.  I
> 
> I think I am leaning towards software RAID, probably ZFS under FreeBSD 
> 8.x but I'm open to hardware RAID but I think the cost won't justify it 
> given ZFS.
> 
> Given that, what motherboard and RAM configuration would you recommend 
> to work with FreeBSD [and probably ZFS].  The lists seems to indicate 
> that more RAM is better with ZFS.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> [1] - FYI running Bacula, but that's out of scope for this question
> 
> [2] - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058
> 
> [3] - nice to have, especially for a failure.

After creating three different system configurations (Athena, 
Supermicro, and HP), my configuration of choice is this Supermicro setup:

    1. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
    2. SuperMicro 5046A $750 (+$43 shipping)
    3. LSI SAS 3081E-R $235
    4. SATA cables $60
    5. Crucial 3×2G ECC DDR3-1333 $191 (+ $6 shipping)
    6. Xeon W3520 $310

Total price with shipping $1560

Details and links at http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/14/supermicro/

I'll probably start with 5 HDD in the ZFS array, 2x gmirror'd drives for 
the boot, and 1 optical drive (so 8 SATA ports).