New Build

[MvL]

Hi,

 

I want to build a unRAID Storage Server. I want to use the following parts.

 

Supermicro X10SL7-F http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SL7-F.cfm

Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 http://ark.intel.com/nl/products/75054/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1230-v3-8M-Cache-3_30-GHz

AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.cfm

Memory (not sure what memory to use I think it has to be ECC)

 

I have the following parts left over from a cancelled project.

 

Ri-vier 3U 16bay Storage Chassis (With SGPIO) - RV-3316-01A https://ri-vier.eu/rivier-3u-16bay-storage-chassis-with-sgpio-rv331601a-p-328.html?cPath=1_3_6

Discrete SATA to SFF-8087 Mini SAS Reverse breakout cable. L=100 https://ri-vier.eu/discrete-sata-to-sff8087-mini-sas-reverse-breakout-cable-l100-p-133.html?cPath=18_65

SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Internal Multilane SAS Cable. L=100cm https://ri-vier.eu/sff8087-to-sff8087-internal-multilane-sas-cable-l100cm-p-319.html?cPath=18_65

Seasonic OEM 600W 2U EPS SS-600H 2U 80Plus White - Modular https://ri-vier.eu/seasonic-oem-600w-2u-eps-ss600h-2u-80plus-white-modular-p-282.html?cPath=18_35_52

 

I already have a server running for most services. So i'm not sure at the moment of i going to run containers or virtual machines on this unRAID Storage Server but i rather spent some more money so i can...

 

I have a couple of WD green 1TB, 2TB laying around so i want to start with that. In near future i want to buy WD 6TB drives. Can you advise which to use the Green or Red?

 

Please your help and thoughts!

[garycase]

I'd definitely use the Red series.  A bit more money, but higher reliability, longer warranty, and firmware designed for NAS usage.    The WD Reds and Seagate NAS units are all I use these days.

 

[MvL]

I read somewhere that it makes no differences using greens or reds on systems like unRAID.

 

The important thing is the 3 years warranty. I didn't know! Then it will be reds.

 

I suppose the rest of the hardware is okay?

[garycase]

The rest of the parts look fine.    Be sure you buy unbuffered ECC RAM modules ... I'd install a pair of 8GB modules for a total of 16GB.

 

[SSD]

Also look at the HGST's. They are very reliable (in fact show up atop the reliability chart in every study I have seen) and normally are quite a bit cheaper than the REDS.

 

I think gary gets a commission every time someone buys a WD RED.

[garycase]

I think gary gets a commission every time someone buys a WD RED.

 

I wish 

 

... note that he said "... i want to buy WD 6TB drives" and his question was whether to buy Reds or Greens.    While I have no problem also recommending the HGST units, the only currently shipping HGST 6TB option is their superb Helium-filled unit, which is definitely NOT "... quite a bit cheaper than the REDS."  [it is, however, a VERY nice drive  ]

 

 

 

[MvL]

The rest of the parts look fine.    Be sure you buy unbuffered ECC RAM modules ... I'd install a pair of 8GB modules for a total of 16GB.

 

Okay, my server also has 16GB (2x8GB). If I'm correct it's also ECC RAM Unbuffered. I always let a shop build a system with the parts i want. If they don't have it i order it by a different shop. They have no problem with it. So also 16GB for unRAID.

 

Also look at the HGST's. They are very reliable (in fact show up atop the reliability chart in every study I have seen) and normally are quite a bit cheaper than the REDS.

 

I think gary gets a commission every time someone buys a WD RED.

 

 

Thanks for the suggestion. It's appreciated but if you don't mind I stick with Western Digitals cause i have very good experiences with them...

 

One other question can i use the controllers right away? No flashing?

 

 

 

 

[SSD]

In theory the drives should work. There are no known technical limitations.

 

BUT - obviously there were no 6TB drives around to test with when the controller and firmware were created. So we do not know if there may be bugs. Its very unlikely that the controller would not work at all - if there was a problem it would be more likely some rare edge case. Only time will tell if problems are going to crop up with this size.

 

More worrisome to me is that the 6TB drives are very new. Drive manufacturers have been reporting that they are reaching the limits of the magnetic materials, and a new technology where the magnetic particles are being laid down like overlapping shingles has been invented. It is called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) and the promise is that this technology will take us to much higher drive sizes. The new Seagates are using SMR. The new WDs are not. Instead they are packing data more densely onto the platters, pushing the envelope so to speak. Smaller particles could create reliability issues. Or they could work great. We just don't know.

 

I have been through this time after time - since 500G drives roamed the earth. When the next bigger drive hits the street the price of the prior king of the hill plummets. This is a great bargain seekers time and traditionally unRAIDers take advantage of this. But the new drives do provide denser storage, and it usually doesn't take long for the premium to subside, and unRAIDers transition. It is a complex decision and there is no secret formula - what is right for you, gary, and me may be very different. Each user should decide for himself.

 

I like it when people try new hardware. Would love it if you bought some and have a great experience. Would also be appreciative if you bought some and had massive problems that would act as a warning to others to steer clear. Either way is good for the community. So do what you want that makes sense for you, and report your findings. Just do it because it is the right choice for you, and don't feel any pressure from Gary or anyone else to be an early adopter and drop a couple hundred dollars extra. Remember that Xmas is coming and the these drives may be available for for much less in a couple months.

[garycase]

It's certainly true that 6TB drives will likely be a bit cheaper in a few months ... not, in my opinion, enough so to be worth the bother of waiting or of using a smaller parity drive knowing that you'll want to replace it later.    I think it's unlikely the price will drop below the $250 range anytime soon.  Note that the 3TB and 4TB Reds have been out quite a while now, and they're both still over $40/TB [at today's Newegg prices, the 3TB is $41.67/TB, the 4TB is $43.25/TB].  At $45/TB (a reasonable expectation within 90-120 days) the 6TB units would be $270 ... perhaps $20 or so less when on sale.  A nice savings, but hardly enough to bother waiting to start an upgrade process -- especially for the parity drive.

 

As for reliability ... WD delayed quite a bit before releasing their 5 & 6 TB units (originally promised by last December) -- I interpret that as "getting it right" at their fabs before selling the drives.    There are a lot of folks using the 6TB units now; and if there were any problems with the 1.2TB/platter density of the platters I think that'd be well known by now.

 

I'd have no problem buying the 6TB units ... they'll absolutely be the next drives I buy.

 

[MvL]

In theory the drives should work. There are no known technical limitations.

 

BUT - obviously there were no 6TB drives around to test with when the controller and firmware were created. So we do not know if there may be bugs. Its very unlikely that the controller would not work at all - if there was a problem it would be more likely some rare edge case. Only time will tell if problems are going to crop up with this size.

 

So a firmware update is then required?

 

More worrisome to me is that the 6TB drives are very new. Drive manufacturers have been reporting that they are reaching the limits of the magnetic materials, and a new technology where the magnetic particles are being laid down like overlapping shingles has been invented. It is called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) and the promise is that this technology will take us to much higher drive sizes. The new Seagates are using SMR. The new WDs are not. Instead they are packing data more densely onto the platters, pushing the envelope so to speak. Smaller particles could create reliability issues. Or they could work great. We just don't know.

 

I have been through this time after time - since 500G drives roamed the earth. When the next bigger drive hits the street the price of the prior king of the hill plummets. This is a great bargain seekers time and traditionally unRAIDers take advantage of this. But the new drives do provide denser storage, and it usually doesn't take long for the premium to subside, and unRAIDers transition. It is a complex decision and there is no secret formula - what is right for you, gary, and me may be very different. Each user should decide for himself.

 

I like it when people try new hardware. Would love it if you bought some and have a great experience. Would also be appreciative if you bought some and had massive problems that would act as a warning to others to steer clear. Either way is good for the community. So do what you want that makes sense for you, and report your findings. Just do it because it is the right choice for you, and don't feel any pressure from Gary or anyone else to be an early adopter and drop a couple hundred dollars extra. Remember that Xmas is coming and the these drives may be available for for much less in a couple months.

 

My idea was to wait for a couple of months before a buy a  6TB drive. First I have to pay for the unRAID server. Also before that i want to sell my Synology NAS.

 

The explanation of SMR is very interesting. Thank you for mentioning this. I have one Seagate 3TB drive in my NAS at the moment haven't had any issues but this also applies to the Western Digitals. I have a couple of Hitachi's men they are a disaster. I have the most experience with WD.

 

It's certainly true that 6TB drives will likely be a bit cheaper in a few months ... not, in my opinion, enough so to be worth the bother of waiting or of using a smaller parity drive knowing that you'll want to replace it later.    I think it's unlikely the price will drop below the $250 range anytime soon.  Note that the 3TB and 4TB Reds have been out quite a while now, and they're both still over $40/TB [at today's Newegg prices, the 3TB is $41.67/TB, the 4TB is $43.25/TB].  At $45/TB (a reasonable expectation within 90-120 days) the 6TB units would be $270 ... perhaps $20 or so less when on sale.  A nice savings, but hardly enough to bother waiting to start an upgrade process -- especially for the parity drive.

 

As for reliability ... WD delayed quite a bit before releasing their 5 & 6 TB units (originally promised by last December) -- I interpret that as "getting it right" at their fabs before selling the drives.    There are a lot of folks using the 6TB units now; and if there were any problems with the 1.2TB/platter density of the platters I think that'd be well known by now.

 

I'd have no problem buying the 6TB units ... they'll absolutely be the next drives I buy.

 

Thank you for your opinion! You indeed can ask your self how much will these drives be cheaper but every 10 euro is nice but as you said it's a bit pity your have to rebuild your parity data...

 

A question do one of you know if the controllers allow the disks to go to sleep? Important for power saving!

[garycase]

It's unlikely you'll need any controller firmware updates.  If they support drives > 2TB, they'll work fine with the 6TB units (and beyond).

 

It's unlikely the 3TB Seagate you have uses SMR, as this is only used for their highest capacity drives, and has only been in use since late last year.    Note also that SMR drives actually have worse random write performance than current drives, due to the need to rewrite all the data in overlapping tracks (this would actually require rewriting through the end of the disk if the shingled areas weren't grouped into clusters).    They also don't have the sustained read speeds of the WD 1.2TB/track units ... they're still limited to 1TB/track, even though the overall areal density is improved (due to more tracks in the same area).    SMR drives are a nice improvement in total data storage capability, but are best for applications where there are long, sustained reads or writes and not a lot of random access -- for most UnRAID systems they would indeed be fine, since these are often used to store large media files.

 

Yes, the drives can spindown.

 

... and only you can determine how long you want to wait for a bit of cost savings.  I agree that if you're planning to buy a bunch of new data drives, it's probably worth waiting 2-3 months for the prices to drop a bit.    But when you start the process by upgrading parity, I'd think it's worth a bit extra to not have to later change out the parity drive.

 

 

 

[MvL]

Okay, Thanks!

 

I came across another interesting motherboard. The Asus P9A-I/C2750/SAS/4L.

 

http://www.asus.com/Commercial_Servers_Workstations/P9AIC2550SAS4L/

http://www.asus.com/Commercial_Servers_Workstations/P9AIC2750SAS4L/

 

Looks like a interesting board for storage use. I assume no one tried this board yet. It has 4 x MiniSAS connector(Marvell 88SE9485 x 2) and 4 x GbE LAN + 1 x Mgmt LAN. With this you could trunking your network connections. This board is ideal for my 3U 16 hot swap bays case. It's only not yet available in my country...

[garycase]

The Avoton-based boards are indeed very interesting units that have excellent performance at VERY low power consumption.    Especially the C2750 units.

 

There have been a few builds noted on the forum using Avoton-based boards, but I'm not aware of any using those specific Asus boards.    I suspect they're fine ... but can't confirm it based on any experiences documented here.

 

[MvL]

I think I'm not going to heavily use this system (just for storage) but if needed i can upgrade this system. Better cpu, more memory etc. So I changed the configuration a bit.

 

 

Supermicro X10SL7-F http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SL7-F.cfm

AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.cfm

Intel i3 4350 http://ark.intel.com/nl/products/77491/Intel-Core-i3-4350-Processor-4M-Cache-3_60-GHz

Kingston Technology 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Module / KVR16E11/8

 

this cost me 600 euro.

 

I have the following parts left over from a cancelled project.

 

Ri-vier 3U 16bay Storage Chassis (With SGPIO) - RV-3316-01A https://ri-vier.eu/rivier-3u-16bay-storage-chassis-with-sgpio-rv331601a-p-328.html?cPath=1_3_6

Discrete SATA to SFF-8087 Mini SAS Reverse breakout cable. L=100 https://ri-vier.eu/discrete-sata-to-sff8087-mini-sas-reverse-breakout-cable-l100-p-133.html?cPath=18_65

SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Internal Multilane SAS Cable. L=100cm https://ri-vier.eu/sff8087-to-sff8087-internal-multilane-sas-cable-l100cm-p-319.html?cPath=18_65

Seasonic OEM 600W 2U EPS SS-600H 2U 80Plus White - Modular https://ri-vier.eu/seasonic-oem-600w-2u-eps-ss600h-2u-80plus-white-modular-p-282.html?cPath=18_35_52

 

One question about the motherboard. This motherboard has integrated video?

 

The Avoton-based boards are indeed very interesting units that have excellent performance at VERY low power consumption.    Especially the C2750 units.

 

There have been a few builds noted on the forum using Avoton-based boards, but I'm not aware of any using those specific Asus boards.    I suspect they're fine ... but can't confirm it based on any experiences documented here.

 

 

I did read that those boards are only available for oem builders.

 

 

[garycase]

Supermicro X10SL7-F

...

One question about the motherboard. This motherboard has integrated video?

 

Yes, it has a BMC VGA chip to provide video for IPMI.  It will also "bring out" the on-chip video from your CPU if it's a unit that includes the Intel HD graphics (such as the i3-4350 you listed)

 

[MvL]

So this motherboard has no Graphics onboard only graphics for IPMI?

 

Then I need a cpu with integrated graphics as you say. The i3 has integrated graphics. In my first post I choice a E3-1230v3 this cpu has no integrated graphics. So if I go for the first setup then I need a E3-1234v3...

[Whatever]

I think the right question is... why do you want the integrated graphics?

 

If you plan on using the Server with some kind of HTPC VM plugged into a TV, it won't work as this motherboard has no HDMI (at the moment there's no way of passing through integrated graphics to VM's either... as far as i know), unless you use a dedicated GPU.

 

If you just want to plug it into a monitor then you can use the mobo's VGA.

 

I might be missing something but the X10SL7-F uses the C222 chipset so it can't make use of the CPU's integrated graphics (only C226 chipset can).

[MvL]

I thought that this motherboard had no graphics on board that's the reason why i said i need a cpu with integrated graphics. I don't want to add a graphics card. If this board has graphics this all is not necessary.

 

I have canceled this build cause I'm going to use a Xeon E3-1275 I already have and put it in the 16 hot swap bay case. I'm going to make this a dedicated unRAID, Plex Server. This Xeon was first my SBS server but I going to build a new one with a Supermicro A1SAM-C2750F.

[MvL]

I totally forgot that i had started this topic. So i think it's decent to thank the people responded in this topic. Thank you!

 

I did indeed converted my sbs server in a unRAID server and bought new hardware for the sbs server.