Unraid/FreeNAS/ZFS/storage spaces on desktop

[wild_dog]

Hi everyone, i have a question for an unusual build i am planning on making.

 

I'm building a new desktop, and I want to run windows on it.

I also have a RAID card which could drive up to 28 SATA drives, and a case that could house at least as many 2.5" SSDs.

I'm planning to use those to get the cheapest SSD's (per GB) that i can find, hook hem up in JBOD, and use some kind of software RAID solution to make a single big, redundant storage.

While this is nothing new for a NAS, I want to do this in my primary (gaming) desktop PC, which as i stated i want to run windows on.

 

So my main question is, what would the best setup be for this?

I've condidered running some form of FreeNAS/ProxMox to use ZFS and windows in a VM on top, but I have heard bad things about potential performance impacts within Windows for doing so.
I'm also contemplating using storage spaces under Windows 10 , but I'm not sure of the capabilities (tierd sotrage, write to most free drive first), and have also heard that write performance with parity on can be bad.

If any of you tech wizzes have some insight, that would be much appriciated.

 

EDIT: since it was asked, I inted to use 16+ 1TB SSD's. QLC SSD's of 1-2 TB are currently the cheapst per GB where I live.

[Aragorn-]

what are you trying to achieve?

You'd be far better off buying a small number of actually decent larger SSD's, than trying to connect up 28 shit ones and applying software raid to them.

[Nick7]

You didn't mention one important thing - what capacity you intend to have?

[wild_dog]

I intend to use 16+ 1TB ssd's

[wild_dog]

49 minutes ago, Aragorn- said:

what are you trying to achieve?

You'd be far better off buying a small number of actually decent larger SSD's, than trying to connect up 28 shit ones and applying software raid to them.

Large (16+TB) of very fast storage (due to the ability to read from multiple disks simultaniously).

Redundancy for data loss protection (I know, propper backups, I want to use both.)

Avoiding the extreme slowdown when the new QLC SSD's start to become full (I'm curently already using 5+TB of storage across 3 disks, and prices per GB for SSD's tend to go up past 2TB, besides the fact that using single, larger SSD's mean all my data is potentially impacted by a single drive failure.)

The ability to increase storage space by adding new SSD's to the array, withouth having to manage data across multiple drive (letters).

[Nick7]

Silly question, but why do you need so much capacity only on SSD's on a gaming PC?

[wild_dog]

Full HD, possibly 1440/4k, gameplay recording, video editing, and having my entire steam library of games be able to load fast.

 

Also, with the current prices of SSD's bing much closer to HDDs in terms of €/GB (only 4x in stead of 10x from a few years back), once I already have the array set up and I have the funds, why not treat myself and go all the way with it?

[Aragorn-]

It wont really get any faster. NVMe is already 5-10x faster than SATA, and the differences in reads are barely noticeable.

 

Dont buy QLC SSD's if you want to avoid that issue.

 

If its games, does it really matter if you lose an SSD? They'll just redownload. Important stuff should be backed up. RAID is not backup, RAID is there to limit downtime in production environments.

 

If you want to "play", a proper NAS type setup (ZFS etc) on a seperate box, exporting a zvol over iSCSI on 10Gbit ethernet could be interesting. Wether its actually fast though? who knows.

[Windows7ge]

3 hours ago, wild_dog said:

Hi everyone, i have a question for an unusual build i am planning on making.

 

I'm building a new desktop, and I want to run windows on it.

I also have a RAID card which could drive up to 28 SATA drives, and a case that could house at least as many 2.5" SSDs.

I'm planning to use those to get the cheapest SSD's (per GB) that i can find, hook hem up in JBOD, and use some kind of software RAID solution to make a single big, redundant storage.

While this is nothing new for a NAS, I want to do this in my primary (gaming) desktop PC, which as i stated i want to run windows on.

 

So my main question is, what would the best setup be for this?

I've condidered running some form of FreeNAS/ProxMox to use ZFS and windows in a VM on top, but I have heard bad things about potential performance impacts within Windows for doing so.
I'm also contemplating using storage spaces under Windows 10 , but I'm not sure of the capabilities (tierd sotrage, write to most free drive first), and have also heard that write performance with parity on can be bad.

If any of you tech wizzes have some insight, that would be much appriciated.

 

EDIT: since it was asked, I inted to use 16+ 1TB SSD's. QLC SSD's of 1-2 TB are currently the cheapst per GB where I live.

Depending on cost I think you would be better off investing in a high capacity NVMe SSD.

 

If you went the SATA SSD route though you'll get the greatest performance out of storage spaces if you use RAID10. It does cost you 50% of your usable storage though.

 

I would also recommend not using the cheapest SSDs you can find. You end up with drives that are only good for small bursts of writes or don't have a SLC cache at all and this could have serious performance implications. Look into something like the Intel DC/D3 series.

[wild_dog]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Depending on cost I think you would be better off investing in a high capacity NVMe SSD.

 

If you went the SATA SSD route though you'll get the greatest performance out of storage spaces if you use RAID10. It does cost you 50% of your usable storage though.

 

I would also recommend not using the cheapest SSDs you can find. You end up with drives that are only good for small bursts of writes or don't have a SLC cache at all and this could have serious performance implications. Look into something like the Intel DC/D3 series.

That's not an option really. The biggest NVME SSD i can get is 8TB, and costs €1300. Given that i'm planning to go 16TB+, and with 1TB QVO SSDs being available for around €85, that would put me around €1300-1500. I hope you can see why I would prefer to go the multiple SSD's route.

 

Is parity or 2 parity (which i assume is a RAID 5/6 equivalent in storage spaces) that much worse, performance wise?
Does storage spaces support tiered storage? I have 4 250GB SSD's of dubious life expectancy that i could potentially use as a cache if it does, and it would also mittigate the logner write slowdown you mentioned.

[Aragorn-]

with 16-18 drives, RAID5 and even 6 is of dubious protection. I certainly wouldnt go that wide on something actually critical. But then this rig perhaps isnt actually that critical?

 

Alternatively, you could split the storage, with the game store (easily redownloadable) on a subset of drives in say single parity, and the more important stuff on a subset in double parity or stripe-mirror.

[Electronics Wizardy]

34 minutes ago, wild_dog said:

That's not an option really. The biggest NVME SSD i can get is 8TB, and costs €1300. Given that i'm planning to go 16TB+, and with 1TB QVO SSDs being available for around €85, that would put me around €1300-1500. I hope you can see why I would prefer to go the multiple SSD's route.

 

Is parity or 2 parity (which i assume is a RAID 5/6 equivalent in storage spaces) that much worse, performance wise?
Does storage spaces support tiered storage? I have 4 250GB SSD's of dubious life expectancy that i could potentially use as a cache if it does, and it would also mittigate the logner write slowdown you mentioned.

Have you look at used data center grade drives? You can get then normally for about $100 per 1Tb, and there much higher speed and quality than the consumer grade drives. 

 

 

Storage spaces supports tiering, and thats what id use there, id probalby just use a few tb as a faster tier, with a few big hdds for mass slow storage.

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, wild_dog said:

Is parity or 2 parity (which i assume is a RAID 5/6 equivalent in storage spaces) that much worse, performance wise?
Does storage spaces support tiered storage? I have 4 250GB SSD's of dubious life expectancy that i could potentially use as a cache if it does, and it would also mittigate the logner write slowdown you mentioned.

According to what I've been told it has improved over the years but I've not been given reason to believe it's at the performance level of other parity RAID alternatives like ZFS or a hardware controller.

 

Overall I think what you want to do here is excessive if it's just for games. I also think if you go through with your plan of using the cheapest highest capacity drives you can find that the overall performance won't be satisfactory.

 

If you need 16TB of storage I'd opt for better quality higher capacity drives like the Intel D3 S4510 3.84TB and use RAID5. See how it handles.