A few questions for my future build

[e2g]

I have been reading a little bit and noticed some of these questions got answered but I am still a little confused. I have been playing around with the idea of building a zfs server. I don't think I want a windows solution, or feel comfortable using the older windows home server. I have 2 HTPCs, both running Windows 7. My girlfriend runs Ubuntu (and most likely a Mac in the future). I run Windows7/Ubuntu.

As of right now, I only want two functions:
1) Backup pictures, music, documents weekly or so --rsync solution? DeltaCopy(Windows)
2) stream my music, and 1080p and DVD movies to one and possibly two htpc boxes simultaneously without stuttering issues. This is to give you the performance I am after for a reasonable cost if possible

What I have picked so far is

- Supermicro X8SI6-F-O
- Intel core i3-540 or intel xeon 3440 (wanted to save a few bucks)
- Fractal Design XL (want something temporary and can swap it out later as I want this case anyways for other purposes)
- Kingston 8GB ECC (and buy another 8 GB later is the max I think I can use)
- 650watt Seasonic (already bought)
- X # of 2TB drivers

My current situation?

I have two 2TB WD greens. with those combined, I have 100GB of free space left. yikes.

What I expect from this server?

- Since I am doing HD bitstreaming mainly, I think I need good sequential read speeds (and I guess write speeds)?
- I would like to be able to stream to two boxes at the same time (for future possibilities). I think this depends on having a switch that supports "trunking"?
- I may do some sort of mySQL database later, but it won't be used a lot and again, that's down the road (I had a little project that involves it)
- I am unsure about the whole ESXI thing but I don't think I will be running any other servers besides an rsync daemon, ssh daemon, and something else that will allow me to share data to Windows and non-windows machines

My questions (in addition to above)
- Do I need all these features that the Supermicro board offer? Would it be possible to buy a low powered board/CPU and add an LSI PCI card for expansion.
- I would like the server to be headless, so I am guessing that's the purpose of the IPMI
- In terms of raidz(1,2,3), and the sweet spot for # of drives for performance
- raidz 3,4,5 drives
- raidz2 per sub.mesa recc' --> 6 or 10

I would like to make adding drives to my system a breeze. So I think I want to do 5 at a time. If I see the opportunity, I may get 6, but I know most retailers impose 5 a limit, 1 when there is a coupon and I am still waiting for the samsung to drop to a regular price of $70 as opposed to $80. I read the opensolaris pages (i think) and Gea's remark one time, that raidz is very good for sequential reads/writes. but then here, I see Gea remarks​

best data-security: multiple n-way mirrors or raid-z3
best performance: multiple striped single disks or striped mirrors
best capacity: one pool build from one raid-z vdev

Then someone gave me the idea of doing a raidz (5disks) to one pool, and then adding another vdev (raidz 5 disks) and striping the two. If you are doing any striping, wouldn't you have to rebuild the array regardless. I would like to have a raidz vdev...add some data...a few months, add another to expand...and for performance reasons, stripe the two vdevs....and if I want to play around more with performance, see how the location of one vdev affects the other (separate controller?) Then again, this whole thing about performance for me its headroom. But for my purposes listed above, how much headroom do I really need?

It seems I still have lots of reading to do so, and I apologize Gea if i misunderstood you as I am not trying to twist anyone's words here.

 

[Dangman]

- Since I am doing HD bitstreaming mainly, I think I need good sequential read speeds (and I guess write speeds)?

I'm sorry could you provide a context for that first part? Bitstreaming refers to multiple tech depending on the usage and context.

But assuming that you mean ripping HD content to the hard drive, you need both good read and write speeds.

- I would like to be able to stream to two boxes at the same time (for future possibilities). I think this depends on having a switch that supports "trunking"?

Nope, no need for such an advance feature. You'll be fine streaming to two PCs or even ten PCs at a time as long as you have a solid NIC and solid switch.

My questions (in addition to above)
- Do I need all these features that the Supermicro board offer? Would it be possible to buy a low powered board/CPU and add an LSI PCI card for expansion.

Yes you do want those features. It would be possible to buy low powered board/CPU and add an LSI PCI-E card for expansion but I'm more than willing to bet that it won't as good of a value as that Supermicro mobo. Think about it: That $275 Supermicro mobo comes with a built-in SAS controller that would easily cost $150 by itself. Then factor in the $60 value of the two very solid Intel NICs. Then you have Supermicro quality, IPMI, KVM over IP, Internal USB headers, SFF-8087 to SATA multilane cables, and the rest for the remaining $65.

- I would like the server to be headless, so I am guessing that's the purpose of the IPMI

That and the KVM-over IP feature as well

Can't help you with the ZFS RAID questions.

 

[e2g]

I'm sorry could you provide a context for that first part? Bitstreaming refers to multiple tech depending on the usage and context.

But assuming that you mean ripping HD content to the hard drive, you need both good read and write speeds.

Yes, I meant streaming of my HD movies. I have talked so much about TrueHD/DTSMA bitstreaming and ATI (excuse me) , AMD cards that anything that's related to streaming, automatically say bitstreaming.

Thank you for your replies. The point about the motherboard and the trunking is well received. Hopefully, I can get some answers to my zfs questions now

 

[adi]

Raw blu-ray is ~6MB/s, so a single modern drive that averages >100MB/s sequential should be fine feeding two streaming 1080p streams, even over a 100Mbit network (not to mention gigabit).

 

[Jesse B]

You should have zero issues streaming multiple HD feeds. Even 100Mbit can support multiple streams. If you're transcoding on the fly, it could take a decent toll on your CPU, but as long as you have something semi-powerful it shouldn't be any issue.

 

[edlin303]

I agree that motherboard is worth it. Right now I am looking to add more controllers for my build, and prices are $250 on Amazon for the LSI 2008 cards (6Gbps). The cheapest I can get on Amazon at least is $150 and I will have to mod the card since it is UIO.

For raidz, I have to defer to the experts for optimal use, but what I can point out is if you stripe 2 RAIDzs together, if either loses 2 disks you will lose all of the data. If that is a tolerable risk, then you are probably in good shape. I'll be watching the other feedback to help me decide for my build too.

 

[e2g]

any zfs guys want to chime in about the zfs questions?

 

[e2g]

bump?