Another File Server build..

[Mmichex]

Good morning, I'm trying to build a file server for me and other people using it in my house.
I already have one, it is very basic and has an i5 6500 + 8GB ram and 6 x 2 TB disks controlled by an old LSI 8708EM2 in RAID6.

Now I want to step up things a little bit, maybe including a virtual machine. The system power draw has to be low, even with high cores count, so I avoided old 2-3nd xeons (I tried one, idle power is too damn high) so I bought a ryzen 7 2700, got one for 150 shipped.
I'm going to set up 10Gb fiber between the server and my PC, so the overall performance of the array matters. I've already ordered a DELL perc H310, and i'm going to flash it to IT mode for HDDs passthrough, but I'm really unsure about the OS.

At first I was interested in unRAID, with a large SSD cache for writes, but I've read that read speed is determined by the single drive, so 140MB/s for me, and doesn't increase with disks count, like in a normal RAID. With this scenario I won't take advantage of the 10Gb network, It would be useless.
I've also seen FreeNAS, and another possibility is Windows Server 2016 Datacenter with Storage Spaces Direcs (ant it seems possible using SSDs as cache). So now I'm stuck because I'm unable to choose OS and RAID level. Maybe RAID 10, it doesn't have the drawback of RAID 6, in which write is very slow. So, what should I do now?

 

Edit: I'm planning to add another 2 x 2tb drives.

[WereCatf]

16 minutes ago, Mmichex said:

so the overall performance of the array matters

Will there be lots of random reads and/or small files? RAID, no matter which level you go with, suffers from high latency and is really only good for increasing capacity and sequential reads/writes. If the answer to the question is yes, you might possibly be best served by going for FreeNAS and adding SSDs for read- and write-caching.

[Mmichex]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

Will there be lots of random reads and/or small files? RAID, no matter which level you go with, suffers from high latency and is really only good for increasing capacity and sequential reads/writes. If the answer to the question is yes, you might possibly be best served by going for FreeNAS and adding SSDs for read- and write-caching.

Is that so? However, I will be transferring large files, backups and videos. Also small files, but not so many.

[Olaf6541]

48 minutes ago, Mmichex said:

Is that so?

If you use a RAID array where data is stored accross multiple drives and you want to access some data the drives have to wait until they're all ready (read/write head into position, platter at the right position, etc). But realistically with only a couple of people using the server I dont really think it will be an issue. In theory the sequential speed of a raid array should scale with the number of drives (minus parity drives) and thus gets better the more drives you add (since data is written/read in parallel).

[Mmichex]

Ok, so the best setup for me is FreeNAS with RAID 10 or Zfs with ssd caching, and a virtual machine with Windows Server for network management (with pcie passthrough).
Is it feasible?

[Olaf6541]

1 hour ago, Mmichex said:

Ok, so the best setup for me is FreeNAS with RAID 10 or Zfs with ssd caching, and a virtual machine with Windows Server for network management (with pcie passthrough).
Is it feasible?

Well you can use FreeNAS with a RAID array (and optionally toss in a ssd) and use the hypervisor of FreeNAS called Bhyve, but Bhyve isnt the best hypervisor around. I use it for a Pfsense vm to host an OpenVPN server and it works, but I don't know how a Windows Server vm would perform.

 

What OS are you currently running on your i5 6500 system? Are you only planning on one Windows Server vm or more? You could set up FreeNAS with a Windows Server vm on your new ryzen system to see how well it performs, or run a type 1 hypervisor with a FreeNAS vm and a Windows Server vm and see which virtualised OS works best for you.

[Mmichex]

6 minutes ago, Olaf6541 said:

What OS are you currently running on your i5 6500 system? Are you only planning on one Windows Server vm or more?

I'm using Windows Server 2016. So from what I've read here I'm planning to use, in my new ryzen system, FreeNAS as main os, with only one vm (with W. Server 2016) and manage the raid with FreeNAS. I'll let freenas manage the raid, not the controller itself. Correct? Then use a pair of SSD as write/read cache, if possible (I don't know very well freenas yet).

[Olaf6541]

8 minutes ago, Mmichex said:

I'm using Windows Server 2016. So from what I've read here I'm planning to use, in my new ryzen system, FreeNAS as main os, with only one vm (with W. Server 2016) and manage the raid with FreeNAS. I'll let freenas manage the raid, not by the controller itself. Correct? Then use a pair of SSD as write/read cache, if possible (I don't know very well freenas yet).

Correct, thats fine. I dont use caching myself (i have so little data i use sdd's for the array itself) but it should work. I would just try to set up a Windows Server vm and see how well it performs.

[Mmichex]

2 minutes ago, Olaf6541 said:

Correct, thats fine. I dont use caching myself (i have so little data i use sdd's for the array itself) but it should work. I would just try to set up a Windows Server vm and see how well it performs.

Thank you! Really helpful. Now I'm transferring all the data from the array to some disks, the old LSI 8702 doesn't work on the ryzen system, probably too old (Pcie 1.0, SATA II, max 2tb disks, not uefi support..) and then switch to the dell h310 after firmware mod. I'll let you know and try the vm!