New NAS build

Hardware
,
1

Hi all,

I’m at a crossroad.

Initially, I was going to build a nas with the hardware specs below:

AMD 4600g
64gb ddr4 non-ecc
16 port SATA pcie card
10 18TB exo
2x1TB NVME write cache
10 GB NIC

Then, I realized that I will free up an old server and I can get a DS 4246 for JBOD and the specs are below:

PowerEdge R720
dual E5-2640
192gb ddr3 ram
2xH200E and needed to cross flash it stock LSI and to IT mode.

I’ve read that it is highly recommended to have ECC ram for ZFS. I don’t know which way to go… Also I went ahead to purchase unraid unlimited since it was a cyber Monday special. If I was doing ZFS, would truenas scale be better?

2

Is power consumption a concern? That server with that config will probably idle around 250W all by itself.

ECC is a recommendation but not at all required for ZFS. IMO Having snapshots and backups of data is going to be way more important than just opting for ECC.

3

no, power is not really a concern for me. I know everyone had been there when they build a nas… either unraid or truenas. unofficial zfs unraid support scares me.

4

1.will you be buying drives for this NAS? even if you are going to re-use the R720. this is the first point of separation between NAS styles.

a. use unraid if you will be repurposing x number of old mismatched spec drives but want a reliable NAS.

b. use truenas if you will be getting drives to dedicate to this project and you can spec them similarly.

  1. if truenas, then decide Core OR Scale based on:

a. Core if this will JUST be a NAS and Virtualising other thing is not required of this system. core can do some limited Jails but this will PRIMARILY be a NAS.

b. Scale if you would like this to be a mostly all inclusive box with the capability to be a NAS as well as HOST a full suite of virtual infrastructure servers.

5

the drives, NVME cache and NIC stays the same.

6

i still answered that. but i wanted to be all inclusive in case others were reading this.

7

i already bought 10 18tb exo drives for this project. i’m trying to have same drive even in the future

8

your question:

the part where i go over all these individually:

is there another question?

9

yes, which setup should I use? amd 4600g or R720

10

if you really and truly have no preference one way or the other, i would recommend a coin toss.

some questions to consider might be:
is noise a factor?
is space (do you have a rack?) a factor?
is power a factor?

if you use a PRO series AMD APU you can still use ECC non REG ram.
the R720 probably includes ECC REG RAM so it would need no further hardware.

if i wanted to make a decision for someone after i spent an hour describing what their options are, i would have asked my wife what she wanted for lunch.

11

I’m worried about performance, would the HBA card and BJOD don’t perform as well as sata PCI cards?

12

I m aware that I can get DDR4 ecc ram for amd but it is expensive and I have a lot DDR3 ecc ram here.

13

you should be getting a HBA if performance is your concern. even if you are wanting to run SATA drives.

the H200E is a previous gen controller, but with spinning disks it would still be o.k. you could go to something like a pair of dell HBA330 or a lsi 9300-16i but these are agnostic of rather you use the AMD custom build or the R720 server.

also WHY are you worried about performance? what is your workload? i run a large amount of data and shares with 50 users and on the fly encoding off a 10 yr old opteron with IT flashed dell H330 cards in it and spinning SAS drives.

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