Opinions on this fileserver spec

[BongoHunter]

Hi Guys

The file server I've been using for what feels like forever has just died and I need to get something up and running ASAP, I dont have a great budget to work with right now - but do need to consider future expandability, requirements are:

- Expandable (Mobo below has plenty of options in this regard)
- At least 4 TB of storage
- ECC Memory (thinking about changing below selection to 1x16GB stick so I could get to 64GB in system further down the line.)
- I'll be using Linux with OpenZFS
- Drives below will be Raid 1

I'm thinking about going for this setup:

2 x 4TB Toshiba N300, 3.5", SATA III - 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 128MB Cache
1 x ASRock AB350 Pro4, AMD B350, S AM4, DDR4, SATA3, M.2 (PCIe/SATA), Realtek LAN, USB 3.0 A+C, ATX
1 x AMD Athlon X4950, S AM4, Quad Core, 4 Thread, 3.5GHz, 3.8GHz Turbo, 2MB Cache, 65W
2 x 8GB Crucial DDR4 Server Memory, PC4-19200 (2400), ECC, Unbuffered, CL 17, 1.2V

The above will be added to some stuff I have on the shelf:
-Intel PCIE dual Gigabit NIC
-2.5" SATA3 SSD boot drive (60GB)
-Antec 650W TruePower PSU
-Antec Midi Tower (6x3.5")
+ the lowest powered video card I can find in the house.

Any serious issues with the above spec? Would 16GB of ram be overkill? Server will be running a couple of smb / nfs shares, nginx (low load), prometheus (lowish load) + a tiny elastic search index.

I can do the above for £466 delivered with 8GB of memory, will be about another £60 to make it 16GB.

Is this mad - should I be looking at something else? I like this option as with a full ATX board I can add a better SATA controller, or a 1TB of Nvme, or 10GB ethernet etc etc, as and when I choose (or even a better AM4 chip once prices comedown).
Most of the Dell/HP/Lenovo stuff I've been looking at (cheap servers) are severly limited in the expandability department, lots of propriaty form factors (mobo/psu/case), limited drive expandability, not a lot of PCIE slots, and unsurprisingly ECC is not shipped in a lot of basic servers (though many support it).


Any advice appreciated! Dont really want to spend more than around £500ish

Ta

 

[Steveocee]

That CPU doesn't support ECC memory so pointless in speccing it.

You'd probably be better with either a HP microserver or a Dell T20, they can at least use ECC should you want it.

 

[BongoHunter]

That CPU doesn't support ECC memory so pointless in speccing it.

You'd probably be better with either a HP microserver or a Dell T20, they can at least use ECC should you want it.

Ah - good catch, I thought all AM4 CPUs support ECC - but its just Ryzen! :/
Hmmm - that will add £50 to my bill if I stick with the rest of the parts on my list and get a Ryzen 3 chip

EDIT: This is what im basing Ryzen 3 ECC support on: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/def6vs2/
But also finding conflicting info online - I know that ECC support works on that Asrock board with Ryzen 5 1500X

 

[BongoHunter]

So if I go:
- Ryzen 5 1400 (4c/8t)
- ASRock AB350 Pro4, AMD B350, S AM4, DDR4, SATA3, M.2 (PCIe/SATA), Realtek LAN, USB 3.0 A+C, ATX
- 2 x 8GB Crucial DDR4 Server Memory, PC4-19200 (2400), ECC, Unbuffered, CL 17, 1.2V
- 2 x 4TB Toshiba N300, 3.5", SATA III - 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 128MB Cache

Total bill comes to £560 - which was a little more than I was looking to spend, but!

If I go for a HP Gen8/9/10 Microserver and add 16GB of RAM and 2 disks it will:
- Still be about £500 (including cashback)
- No where near the perfomance of the AMD option
- Severly limited expansion options

Seem to get a similar result when speccing up Dell T20/30 or HP ML10/30 - but these boxes at least have slightly better expansion options.

Self build seems to offer better value - having some existing bits lying around certainly helps a bit in my case (case/psu/nic/basic gpu).

 

[neil_g]

Ryzen seems ridiculous overkill to me.

Running an older n40l microserver here with windows server, 4x2tb, 16gb ECC, quad port nic. Runs storage for the the back of Adobe lightroom brilliantly over gig lan.

 

[Avalon]

Your spec and stated requirements don't match, what exactly are you trying to do as file saving doesn't need anything like that.

A microserver is massive overkill for a basic NAS, it's also £100 after cash back, yes ZFS (you really, really need to think carefully before going ZFS) creates a higher workload, but not massively so.

 

[BongoHunter]

Your spec and stated requirements don't match, what exactly are you trying to do as file saving doesn't need anything like that.

A microserver is massive overkill for a basic NAS, it's also £100 after cash back, yes ZFS (you really, really need to think carefully before going ZFS) creates a higher workload, but not massively so.

With ZFS I normally allow a gig of memory per TB of storage (this is not a hard and fast rule IMO - but a good starting point) - so if I only go for 8GB of RAM I suspect that things could get marginal once elastic, and prometheus are running, possible though.

The box that was doing this until yesterday was a Xeon X5460, 6GB memory, 1.5TB zfs pool (6x500GB SATA2) - this averaged 40% CPU utilization, and 50% memory utilization when i wasn't moving files too and from it, heavy access to lots of small files would max the CPU, but pulling a big single file wasn't quite as severe, the whole thing was also noisy and a powerhog, but performance was good for file transfers.

Might be worth saying - this isn't a system that will be serving media and storing my epic collection of cat pictures, its for storing the output of some data analysis that runs on a massive but aging workstation - which is high on performance(12c\24t, 144GB Ram) - but low on storage capacity with 1 TB of high performance but non-redundant SSDs (again on zfs). Only transient data lives on my workstation, but its still ECC as the data analysis piece only runs when I've got the whole dataset into memory, and the output files are binaries :/

My Google fu is weak - I can find no cashback deals on the g10 microserver (very nice looking bit of kit!) - seems to be about £210 for a 2 core Opteron and 8GB of ECC memory, so this one will cost an additional £312 to add the disks and memory, so total of about £520.

The g8 micro - I can find £70 cashback on, but only 4GB of memory and a G1610T cpu, this one will cost £337 to add the disks and memory, so only £467 after cashback.

Both are cheaper than the DIY system, smaller, and more energy efficient - and the modern CPU's should be at least comparable to the Xeon they replace as its ancient in architecture terms - still not sure what to do, more research needed, I really wanted a microserver, and fully expected to get one, they are good value, but a few quid more gets so much more power - though thats always the way when buying computer bits!