So I have the system built, any tips before I begin?

[hellokevin11]

This is going to be my first non windows box, and it's also my first non raid6 box.

The array is composed of 12, 1TB drives total

8 drives on an IBM BR10i in IT mode
2 x SATA 6 Gbps (Chipset)
2 x SATA 6 Gbps (ASMedia ASM1061)

OS will be from a USB 2.0 flash device on the internal USB header.

I am looking at doing RAID-Z3 with final capacity of 9000GB (9TB)


System is:
Asrock am1b-itx
Athlon 5350 (aes-ni)
4GB DDR3-1600

Let me know if you have any advice for me.

[kenZ71]

What are your backup plans?

Case cooling? Thats a lot of drives.

[crowi]

Asrock am1b-itx
4GB DDR3-1600

First the board does not support ECC RAM which is strongly (!) recommended when using ZFS
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... zfs.15449/
https://pthree.org/2013/12/10/zfs-admin ... e-ecc-ram/

Second 4GB RAM is way to less for a 9 TB pool, you need at least 1GB (ECC) RAM per 1 TB disk space plus some overhead, so 12 or 16 GB would be recommended:
http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2010/04/ ... rmance#ram

[hellokevin11]

Asrock am1b-itx
4GB DDR3-1600

First the board does not support ECC RAM which is strongly (!) recommended when using ZFS
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?thr ... zfs.15449/
https://pthree.org/2013/12/10/zfs-admin ... e-ecc-ram/

Second 4GB RAM is way to less for a 9 TB pool, you need at least 1GB (ECC) RAM per 1 TB disk space plus some overhead, so 12 or 16 GB would be recommended:
http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2010/04/ ... rmance#ram

I have been unable to find a low power chip that has aes-ni, I run encryption so it is required.

The only option for ecc would be xeon or opteron, so from $70 cpu/board I would now be faced with hundreds of dollars more in costs.

I could do some am3 asus board with ecc, and a cpu but the lowest power am3 is athlon ii x4, or sempron 145.

If I use a4, or FX chip, then cpu demand will be 65-120 watts 24/7 !

16Gb of ECC nonbuffered will cost me $200

So to have ecc will require $500 in parts

Do you have any other suggestions?

[hellokevin11]

What are your backup plans?

Case cooling? Thats a lot of drives.

I have no backup possible at the moment, I have duplicates of critical data, but the majority of the data is video and not backed up yet, and is expendable I suppose.

I am building this so I can move my data from my old array which is 8x 2tb drives. Then once data is moved I can rebuild the old machine with new hardware.

The machine I am building (12x 1tb) will be the mission critical only backup of the new machine (Hopefully 12x 2tb)

Cooling is not a problem at all, I have 3x drive cages each has a 120mm fan

[crowi]

Do you have any other suggestions?

No, as you want to build a RAIDZ3 it seems your data is pretty important to you, so you shouldn't sacrifice it with crappy hardware.
I 'll make some suggestions in your other thread:
viewtopic.php?f=60&t=6876

[hellokevin11]

I wound up pulling the AM1 setup, and using an ASUS M5A78L-M LX Plus

It supports 16GB ddr3 ecc unbuffered. I got it for $44 on sale with a $10 rebate.
I have an FX-4130 that supports aes NI and ECC

So all total I have a cpu and mb with ecc support for $73. I'll probably clock limit the cpu to opteron 3350HE settings to save some power. (from 3.8GHZ to 2.8GHZ)