Worklog: Xeon-D 10 Bay (Hot-Swap) mITX NAS

[mgrobins]

Hi,

I don't post on here a lot but have been inhabiting the forum here a bit more. I thought I'd link up a worklog I have been writing up for a recent NAS I built. Still putting the webpage together so it's a bit basic at the moment....

www.quasinerdo.weebly.com

My hardware was built around compatibility with Xpenology and FreeNAS with little need to mess around with compiling new drivers etc.

Feel free to check out the other pages I have for projects.... I'll be adding one shortly showing a custom rack I built for a small cupboard using 19" rack shelving and parts from local hardware and ebay.

 

[sfx2000]

Looks like a fun build...

FreeNAS should run nicely there...

The SuperMicro X10SDV-4C-TLN2F is a really nice board - have you leveraged into the SATA disk-on-module - InnoDisk has 32/64/256GB, and they're reasonably priced... these plug into the orange SATA slot on the supermicro board..

Drop in a hypervisor like ESXi or Xen, put the file store into ZFS perhaps with FreeNAS driving the bus from a VM...

Hows the ILO/BMC on that - Supermicro has been spotty in the past, but I've heard good things with the current crop of board...

 

[sfx2000]

SATADOM's are cool - just don't use them for caching or heavy write operations...

Nice review here on servethehome

https://www.servethehome.com/innodisk-satadom-sl-3me3-v2-64gb-benchmarks-and-review/

 

[System Error Message]

how many rack units is that? My NAS is 2U but i can fit 9 drives, on the case with 3 being hot swappable. Although there are 2U cases with even more drive slots all hotswappable but i went for the budget option as i dont think i'll be hot swapping drives often.

 

[mgrobins]

My case is smaller than a rack case. I don't have the width or depth which is why I specifically went with an mITX case. THis is the only mITX case I know of that can hold this many drives (10 hot swap and a few internal if I really want to). Lian Li had one with 10 internal but that is no longer available.

As for the DOM I do not use it. Xpenology is only the bootloader so it runs off USB and the OS is on all of the HDDs in your array. There is no benefit to having a DOM. I will have 2 USB flash drives and mirror them. Boot order set so one is present as a backup in case of the first failing.
FreeNAS I can see the benefit of using one

THe BMC on the SM board has been reliable so far. I am disappointed by the lack of flexibility in cooling options and some of the hard wired levels (eg min fan speed of 500RPM) which interfere with fine tuning and require a script to be run to alter settings on boot.
I am very happy with the MB overall.

Considering what its specs are I think it is good value for the price I paid. I could have bought a cheap ATX board with a CPU, ECC RAM and a 10GBe NIC for less if I went on ebay but for a small enclosure the options are limited in the market.

I'm still learning about VMs with regard to using them in my home setup. Currently I have a discrete setup router/gateway and NAS etc. I had a pfsense install for a bit to play with but until I find a VPN provider I'm happy with in regard to throughput to Australia for torrenting I will just use my current setup.