System board for ZFS NAS

I'm thinking about creating a home storage server, like many, and I want it to be performant enough to host work spaces for compilation over NFS, and efficient enough to reduce my current power consumption somewhat.

I'm thinking of a new Intel D510 system board, and looking at several, I found a board from Supermicro that looks ideally suited to the task. Does anyone else have experience with this board? It looks like its all stock Intel parts, so it should Just Work.

I'm thinking that with 4 or more SATA drives combined with RAIDZ, and dual Intel 82574 gigabit Ethernet (which I could use in an Ethernet link aggregation), I should be able to get excellent performance. (I might even set up jumbo frames, to further bump NFS performance -- if they really are 82574's then they support up to 9K MTU).

Comments

Karl said…
I had a look at that motherboard as well, but I never got around to buying it. Looking forward to hearing more about it...
February 2, 2010 at 2:06 PM
Paul said…
http://timsfoster.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/my-home-mini-nas/
might help you?
February 2, 2010 at 7:57 PM
Unknown said…
Actually Tim's post is what got me thinking to look again. I'm convinced from what I've seen that this Supermicro board, *if* it performs as I believe it should, will be significantly superior for a 4 or 5 disk (5 disks for RAID 1+0 with a hot spare) to the solution Tim built. I have higher performance needs (specifically hosting workspaces for compilation) than Tim does for his home needs, and I'm willing to pay a bit more for it.
February 2, 2010 at 9:24 PM
Unknown said…
Hi,
Please follow those threads on the indiana-discuss:

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017475.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017476.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017481.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017482.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017483.html

--
best
Michal Pryc
February 3, 2010 at 3:44 AM
Unknown said…
Hi,
Please follow those threads on the indiana-discuss:

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017475.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017476.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017481.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017482.html

http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/indiana-discuss/2010-January/017483.html

--
best
Michal Pryc
February 3, 2010 at 3:45 AM
Unknown said…
What about the Zotac NM10-DTX Wifi (http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=210&category_id=96&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1)?

At least it's far cheaper, uses "standard" DIMM (not SO-DIMM), and I suspect it would draw less power (because it doesn't ship an additional Matrox GPU).
March 21, 2010 at 2:54 PM
Unknown said…
The board I'm looking at from SuperMicro doesn't have the Matrox GPU. It also has two ethernets and 6 SATA slots, but no wifi. For my NAS server, the SuperMicro looks like the better solution, though I've not compared prices.
March 22, 2010 at 8:10 AM
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