Suggestion for hardware for ZFS fileserver

[Rick Macklem]

Sami Halabi wrote:
>Hi,
>I'm planning on building a machine for fileserver using ZFS (still
>considering vanilla FreeBSD VS FreeNAS).
>
>I would like to get recommendation for good and working hardware.
>I have 2 setups I'm interested in getting your help for each.
>1. Heavy load machine with 10G connection.
>2. Light machine with 1G connection.
>
>Both setups will have up to 22 SAS hard drives 2T each + 2 SSD for L2ARC.
>For both setups I would appreciate your help in:
>1. For raidz2 best strip of vdevs for maximum capacity with reasonable
>performance.
>2. Hardware recommendations in terms of:
>CPU
>MEMORY
>HBA
>Sas expander for future connecting Jbod
>Server (aka my own build VS brand one like HP/Dell.. Etc).
You didn't mention net interface. You'll want ones with good FreeBSD driver
support, including good TSO support. I can't suggest specific choices, since
I don't have experience with any of them.

I'll leave the rest to folk that are ZFS savy.

You might want to look at iXsystems offerings, since they test FreeNAS all the time.
(I have and have never worked for iXsystems, nor been a customer. I just know that
 they configure their hardware for FreeNAS.)

Good luck with it, rick
ps: If you choose vanilla FreeBSD, there are a bunch of tunables for the NFS server
      that default to very small values. Post if/when you get to that stage for
      suggestions.