Discussion Forums > Technology
Case with 9+ hard drives & OpenSolaris/ZFS advice
geoffreak:
@kureshii
Thanks for the tips. While I did not know that ZFS didn't offer any kind of expansion feature for RAID-Z, I personally don't mind not having it. My plan is to have the 4x 2TB drives in a RAID-Z array, and the 5x 1TB drives in a RAID-Z2 array, while pooling both arrays together (I assume I can do this and that ZFS can't effectively use drives of different sizes in the same array).
Also, I meant that ZFS (and more specifically RAID-Z) is better for data integrity than BeyondRAID for the simple reason that (short of hardware failure) your data can't become corrupted. The point of going to ZFS for me is to make sure my data is safe, but a bit of a speed boost would be nice (Drobos are slow)
I don't mind getting a couple of cheap RAID cards to compensate lack of motherboard SATA ports. This will reduce costs and power consumption as you said.
halfelite:
I run a 10bay norco case can be found on newegg for 70 bucks http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219030&cm_re=norco-_-11-219-030-_-Product. and I also run a 20bay norco case that is a little more expensive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219030&cm_re=norco-_-11-219-030-_-Product Since you want to go with ZFS you need a nice performing cpu/mobo combo. As all the disc I/O will fall to the cpu.
When I built my first system I went with the
Norco case - 79$
Cheap mobo/cpu combo - $40 on sale at newegg
2 gigs or ram - 30$
Some semi cheap 600watt psu dont remember the price.
areca raid card with 2gb of cache - $600
areca bbu - 100$
9 1tb drives.
and here are the stats it puts out using hdparm Its running raid 6
--- Code: ---
hdparm -tT /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads: 1896 MB in 2.00 seconds = 947.94 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 988 MB in 3.03 seconds = 325.79 MB/sec
--- End code ---
Pentium100:
--- Quote from: geoffreak on October 13, 2010, 03:59:58 AM ---
@Pentium100
Sadly it appears that the case you have specified is no longer sold (at least at NewEgg), but the 4-in-3 module is cheap and should work in any case that has a lot of 5.25" bays. Thanks for the idea!
--- End quote ---
Oh well, I built that PC a log time ago. Anyway, I looked at what NewEgg has to offer (I don't usually go there as I don't live in the USA) and saw this case. This one has 5 3.5" bays and 6 5.25" bays. Add two of those modules and you get 13 hard drives.
As for the speed - gigabit Ethernet limits the transfer rate to 100MB/s in theory. In practice you will get a bit less, but unless you are planning on installing games over network or do a lot of IO intensive work (live video encoding) you should be fine. I have no experience with ZFS, so no advice about that.
rostheferret:
Surely a rack mount server case would work better here? He doesn't need a full case with all the expansion slots and the like, Full Towers are designed more with gaming in mind...
This I spotted with a minutes googling. With that 4-in-3 it'll fit 12 HDDs. Alternatively, you can go with a more reliable brand such as this which can fit 14 HDDs. The key thing here is the size; HDDs generate far less heat than graphics cards, and would be far lass CPU intensive so all the fans aren't neccessary. They're more easily stackable, meaning you can just get another one when this one is full and plonk it on top, and the second one even comes with a specially designed PSU.
Actually, I missed halfelites posts but that one looks pretty good too, though I'm unfamiliar with the brand.
geoffreak:
Thanks for the case suggestions. Anyone have any recommendations for motherboards and CPUs?
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