hardware for home use large storage

Wes Morgan morganw at chemikals.org
Sun Feb 14 16:43:33 UTC 2010


On Sun, 14 Feb 2010, Dan Langille wrote:

> 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/

Wow um... That's quite a setup. Do you really need the Xeon W3520? You
could get a regular core 2 system for much less and still use the ECC ram
(highly recommended). The case you're looking at only has 6 hot-swap bays
according to the manuals, although the pictures show 8 (???). You could
shave some off the case and cpu, upgrade your 3081E-R to an ARC-1222 for
$200 more and have the hardware raid option.

If I was building a tower system, I'd put together something like this:

Case with 8 hot-swap SATA bays ($250):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192058
Or if you prefer screwless, you can find the case without the 2 hotswap
bays and use an icy dock screwless version.

Intel server board (for ECC support) ($200):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121328

SAS controller ($120):
http://www.buy.com/prod/supermicro-lsi-megaraid-lsisas1068e-8-port-sas-raid-controller-16mb/q/loc/101/207929556.html
Note: You'll need to change or remove the mounting bracket since it is
"backwards". I was able to find a bracket with matching screw holes on an
old nic and secure it to my case. It uses the same chipset as the more
expensive 3081E-R, if I remember correctly.

Quad-core CPU ($190):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131

4x2gb ram sticks (97*2):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139045

same SATA cables for sata to mini-sas, same CD burner. Total cost probably
$400 less, which you can use to buy some of the drives.

For my personal (overkill) setup I have a chenbro 4U chassis with 16
hotswap bays and mini-SAS backplanes, a zippy 2+1 640 watt redundant power
supply (sounds like a freight train). I cannot express the joy I felt in
ripping out all the little SATA cables and snaking a couple fat 8087s
under the fans. 8 of the bays are dedicated to my media array, and the
other 8 are there for swapping in and out of backup drives mostly, but the
time they REALLY come in handy is when you need to upgrade your array. Buy
the replacement drives, pop them in, migrate the pool, and remove the old
drives.

I've been running with this for almost 3 years. If I had to do it over
again, I probably wouldn't get the power supply, it was more expensive
than the chassis and I don't think it has ever "saved" me from anything
(although I can't complain, it runs 24/7 and never had a glitch).

If I could find a good tower case I might consider it, but I've never seen
one I liked with mini-sas backplanes. Really the only thing I'm missing is
a nice 21U rack on casters, then the whole thing disappears into a corner
humming away.


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