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From: Christian Hessmann on 3 Feb 2010 09:46
Guys,


I'm looking to replace my Mac Mini with a nice FreeBSD ZFS file server
solution.
The server will be housed in a 4U 19" case, 6 SATA drives (mixture of
WD, Seagate and Samsung GreenPower disks) as tank + 2 SATA drives to
boot and run 24/7.

So far, I'm considering an Intel i3 (probably the 540) with an H55
Express Board (probably the Gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H), 4GB of RAM (maybe
8GB, might depend on my mood to spend money at that date) and one or
more PCIe SATA Controller (Dawicontrol DC-310e probably).

I've not heard a lot about the H55 and FreeBSD besides some problems
with the ICH, which seem to be simple and just a case of missing
identification - correct? An alternative might be an H57 board like
the Asus P7H57D-V Evo, which I've heard a lot of good stuff about, but
it's more than double the price to the Gigabyte and it's only
advantages seem to be RAID (don't need, want ZFS) and FireWire (not
planned for the server, got enough Macs in the house) - you see any
other advantage of the H57 compared to the H55, especially considering
FreeBSD and ZFS?

Now, which SATA controller would you recommend? Do you think it's
better to go for 2 or more double or quadruple SATA controllers or
using the 6 onboard connections plus one additional SATA controller?
From a speed issue, more controllers seem to be a no-brainer, but
would you expect any software or driver issues with simultaneous use
of more than one PCIe SATA controller?

And, general question at the end: If you think I'm doing it wrong and
should consider different hardware, please let me know which and why.

Thanks.


Cheers,
Christian
From: GD on 3 Feb 2010 10:23
Christian Hessmann wrote:
> Guys,
>
>
> I'm looking to replace my Mac Mini with a nice FreeBSD ZFS file server
> solution.
> The server will be housed in a 4U 19" case, 6 SATA drives (mixture of
> WD, Seagate and Samsung GreenPower disks) as tank + 2 SATA drives to
> boot and run 24/7.
>

Don't use Western Digital Green drives for any type of RAID (or anything
else but maybe USB enclosure). Google for more information.

Regards
From: Christian Hessmann on 3 Feb 2010 10:35
On 3 Feb., 16:23, GD <goran99_rem...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:

> Don't use Western Digital Green drives for any type of RAID (or anything
> else but maybe USB enclosure). Google for more information.

Are you referring to the TLER issue or this non-specific "don't seem
to work well together" issue?

I learned the hard way using three Seagates with broken Firmware in
one RAID.Z that I shouldn't use more than one drive of the same type
in one redundant array, so my ZFS pool comprises of two Seagates (one
server disk, one green), two Samsung (both green, but different
arrays), one WD green and one Hitachi (not green, IIRC). The disks
work great, it's the ZFS beta software on OS X and the Firewire cases
that make my life difficult and "force" me to change to BSD and
something internal.

Cheers,
Christian
From: GD on 5 Feb 2010 04:20
Christian Hessmann wrote:
> On 3 Feb., 16:23, GD <goran99_rem...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Don't use Western Digital Green drives for any type of RAID (or anything
>> else but maybe USB enclosure). Google for more information.
>
> Are you referring to the TLER issue or this non-specific "don't seem
> to work well together" issue?
>
> I learned the hard way using three Seagates with broken Firmware in
> one RAID.Z that I shouldn't use more than one drive of the same type
> in one redundant array, so my ZFS pool comprises of two Seagates (one
> server disk, one green), two Samsung (both green, but different
> arrays), one WD green and one Hitachi (not green, IIRC). The disks
> work great, it's the ZFS beta software on OS X and the Firewire cases
> that make my life difficult and "force" me to change to BSD and
> something internal.

I learned the hard way that WD Green drives are useless for RAID. After
I had a problem, I found out that there are many other people with the
same problem (even if those drives are not used in RAID configuration).
I think the problem is caused by "energy saving" features.

http://www.qnap.com/pro_compatibility.asp
http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=151&t=19131
etc...

If they work for you, great :)

Regards
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