Need Motherboard/Case/PSU

[blueberryjudy]

Hi All.

I am trying to build a mini-NFS box. I want two of these: http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-2-5-In.../dp/B00BQ8RGL6

and a 3rd smaller SSD for the boot drive. I will be running linux NFS. I need a case/PSU/motherboard/CPU etc... What do you recommend?

Thanks.

 

[Cerb]

Your boot data will take so little space, I don't see a reason not to include it in the other SSDs, unless you're doing something special, like virtualizing.

Can you maybe describe a bit of what you're doing, storage needs, and budget? FI, if you're stuck needing NFS, SSDs would be nice, but CIFS over GbE makes HDD RAID a much more cost-effective option, since local and remote caching, and async mounting and file writing, are both generally assumed, and the network further limits the performance gains from SSDs.

 

[mfenn]

Your boot data will take so little space, I don't see a reason not to include it in the other SSDs, unless you're doing something special, like virtualizing.

Can you maybe describe a bit of what you're doing, storage needs, and budget? FI, if you're stuck needing NFS, SSDs would be nice, but CIFS over GbE makes HDD RAID a much more cost-effective option, since local and remote caching, and async mounting and file writing, are both generally assumed, and the network further limits the performance gains from SSDs.

+1 on the request for more info. We need to know more about your workload, budget, and environment (distro restrictions, etc) to even begin to determine what makes sense for you.

Add NFSv4 to the list of network shares that can take advantage of client caching.

 

[blueberryjudy]

+1 on the request for more info. We need to know more about your workload, budget, and environment (distro restrictions, etc) to even begin to determine what makes sense for you.

Add NFSv4 to the list of network shares that can take advantage of client caching.

Budget is 1k-ish (excluding the SSDs). Time is more important than budget. Reason for SSD, random IO perf and reliability. Distro restrictions is Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Environment is research lab. I haven't bought a rotational drive in the last 3 years and I want to keep it that way.

 

[mfenn]

You're not really making a convincing case for a terabyte of SSDs here. Reliability comes from keeping good backups, not from spending a ton of money on primary storage. Certainly "not wanting to buy HDDs" isn't a great reason to overspend. Budget is clearly very much a factor since you're looking to build your own versus getting a Tier1 OEM solution.

Performance drives the need for spending money on primary storage. I'm trying to think of a workload that needs network storage, but only a very small amount (1TB), and needs huge performance. Normally things that need high random performance will be working on local disk so that they can take advantage of the buffer cache. NFS does get cached, but very poorly compared to local filesystems.

Can you tell us a little more about your actual workload?

<---- HPC admin at his day job

 

[blueberryjudy]

You're not really making a convincing case for a terabyte of SSDs here. Reliability comes from keeping good backups, not from spending a ton of money on primary storage. Certainly "not wanting to buy HDDs" isn't a great reason to overspend. Budget is clearly very much a factor since you're looking to build your own versus getting a Tier1 OEM solution.

Performance drives the need for spending money on primary storage. I'm trying to think of a workload that needs network storage, but only a very small amount (1TB), and needs huge performance. Normally things that need high random performance will be working on local disk so that they can take advantage of the buffer cache. NFS does get cached, but very poorly compared to local filesystems.

Can you tell us a little more about your actual workload?

<---- HPC admin at his day job

FYI, purchased on amazon.com an Intel NUC D54250WYKH. 1x Crucial 960GB SSD, and 1x Crucial 128GB SSD, 16 GB RAM. I'm happy for now... just waiting for parts to arrive. Total cost is around $1/GB but I'm happy