2013-02-08, 23:06
One thought - the CPU for this looks to be overkill. Have you considered running ESX? I have ESX running on very similar hardware (same case, same SAS cards, same CPU, etc.). Under ESX I have at least 6 VMs, one of those is unRAID with 2x M1015 passed thru to run unRAID and the third M1015 is passed thru for FreeNAS - it could as easily have been some other OS. The unRAID boots from a USB that's passed thru after first booting a mini OS in a VM using a Plop boot to hit the USB. The FreeNAS VM comes off of an SSD and once it's up I have additional storage for ESX VMs via an NFS mount. I have a bit more RAM than you, 32Gig, but am not hurting for memory - your use of ZFS though is likely using it more heavily than any of my VMs so you might want more if you went virtual. I also see about 125W idle, about 200W with everything spinning - good to see our numbers jive!
Just a thought anyway, depending upon your needs and how much this is hitting the CPU you might find that you can get more work out of the hardware than for just storage by going virtual or adding virtualization. I chose unRAID for my own reasons (30TB off of 16ports) but I also have FreeNAS running (it can do ZFS too if I wanted) and may fire up some flavor of x86 Solaris to play with ZFS also.
P.S. It's not that unRAID users ignore ZFS it's that most of us don't see the data for dollar as being worthwhile not to mention the hassle. There are some unRAID users who have ZFS volumes underlying their unRAID and I may create something similar for a cache drive for my unRAID. Once you virtualize the options open up a great deal and I, like most unRAID users, haven't lost data so I'm good with it. Note that I've been running unRAID for at LEAST 6 years or so, I was one of the early adopters. <shrug> It's not been overlooked, many of us did careful consideration before going the way we did. Virtualizing, especially with nice 24bay cases, really opens up possibilities too!
Just a thought anyway, depending upon your needs and how much this is hitting the CPU you might find that you can get more work out of the hardware than for just storage by going virtual or adding virtualization. I chose unRAID for my own reasons (30TB off of 16ports) but I also have FreeNAS running (it can do ZFS too if I wanted) and may fire up some flavor of x86 Solaris to play with ZFS also.
P.S. It's not that unRAID users ignore ZFS it's that most of us don't see the data for dollar as being worthwhile not to mention the hassle. There are some unRAID users who have ZFS volumes underlying their unRAID and I may create something similar for a cache drive for my unRAID. Once you virtualize the options open up a great deal and I, like most unRAID users, haven't lost data so I'm good with it. Note that I've been running unRAID for at LEAST 6 years or so, I was one of the early adopters. <shrug> It's not been overlooked, many of us did careful consideration before going the way we did. Virtualizing, especially with nice 24bay cases, really opens up possibilities too!
