Trying to determine what drives would best for the system. I’ll be running pvr/pbr on it. o/s drives seem simple with a couple of fast 256 ssd, but need 20-30tb of storage for the actual data. since it’s going to used primarly for pbr storage with the occasional DR testing in which i’d spin up the machines I’m not sure that ssd for storage is a good medium.
does anybody have any suggestions on drive configuration?
thanks.
What is PBR?
Are you looking for recommendations of specific drive models, or of storage pool layout such as RAID 1, RAID 6, etc?
You’d probably have to provide more info on your system requirements (how many concurrent users, reading vs writing, are the media files 720p or 4K, are you using 1G or 10G networking, etc.) for anyone to provide help.
Is 30 TB before or after including parity or mirrors for redundancy? At 30TB you’re not pushing any capacity limits of drives or of the HL15, so I’d just get whatever drives you can get cheapest per TB, say 8x 8TB drives as long as they don’t have huge failure rates.
If you are looking for recommendations for specific HDD models, you can take a look at the Backblaze reliability data;
I’m glad I’m not the only one wondering what PBR stood for. 
I’m pretty confident it’s not the beer. Maybe Personal Broadcast Recorder?
I’m positive PVR means Personal Video Recorder as it is an standard definition. No clue what PBR stands for though. 
Apologies to all in the misleading info earlier as I had said pvr - when I meant to say ‘PBS’ or Proxmox Backup System.
The system will be configured as the ‘target’ system for replicated backups from another PVE system. It’s sole purpose will be to ‘pull’ the data from the remote side and occasionally be used as a DR solution if needed - hence the PVE side of the equation. I currently have a ‘combo’ unit running PVE/PBR on it but I had to config the data, in a nested configuration - and it’s not really usable in the long term.
Regarding the drives and config, I was thinking of getting the HL15 with the ‘middle’ config and upgrading the memory to 128. I know I need 2 fast drives for the O/S and then ‘storage’ drives. For storage I’m looking to, within reason - utilize the capacity the most efficient as possible. I don’t have users ‘hammering’ the system and believe ‘rust-drives’ will work. Enterprise SSD drives would be good, but don’t know the costing differences as related to say - 14 or 20TB drives. Yes, the config will be ZFS. I’m also unsure about the ‘drive connectors’ for the system. I believe a SATA drive will just ‘pop/slide’ into the chassis but am unsure if other ‘pieces’ are needed - and if so, for what size of drives. Proxmox does recommend SSD for storage unless you utilize a special ‘zfs pool’ consisting of another 2 drives, but don’t think I need that for this solution.
Total drive storage, in it’s ‘usable’ state would be 20Tb. If the drives are size correctly then I should be able to add drives later if needed and either expand the zfs pool - or create another one and utilize it in that manner.
thanks,
So - I think I’ve narrowed down the selection and purchase.
Since this is primary going to be a backup repository, I’ve chosen these options:
Xeon 4216 16/32 cpu
64GB ram
noctura fans
i found this on their site - 6Bay SSD Bracket Kit but don’t see how to order it as part of the ‘kit’ and there’s also a question about the power supply not being large enough.
2xsamsung 860 ssd drives (to fit into that bracket kit listed above) for the O/S
6x8gb seagate SR8000nm0055 drives. utilizing zfs-2 should provide me with about 32TB of user storage.
Thoughts or suggestions about the config? Anybody using the bracket kit mentioned above with the noctura fans to know if the power supply will be large enough to ‘feed’ those 2 drive inside the chassis?
thanks,
mark
So, it’s a backup server that might be pressed into service as a VM host in a DR situation? In that case I’d agree with a CPU upgrade of some kind. 4216 seems like it might be overkill, but I don’t know anything about your main VMs and SLAs during a DR event.
Why do you need the 6Bay SSD Bracket Kit if you only are filling 6 of the 15 drive bays and only have 2x SSD? Why not just put the 2x SSDs in the drive cage? There are official expensive caddies and cheaper hacker ones for that. Do you have significant plans for expansion? You didn’t mention that in the original req.
The 750W PSU will power what you spec’d (2xSSD, 6xHDD). If you load out the whole thing (6xSSD, 15xHDD) then you will need to upgrade the PSU. There are four SATA power ports on the 750W PSU that in the OEM configuration all power the backplane. If you use the bracket in your 2xSSD, 6xHDD configuration you will need to power the drives in the bracket off of one of the four PSU SATA ports. All the ports connect to the same rail, so the drives in the backplane would still work from the three other SATA power ports on the PSU.
Sales is pretty helpful, so if you want a 6x bracket included and it’s not on the configurator, just contact them after you place your order and they should be able to include one with your order and just charge you for the item and no additional shipping. info@45homelab.com.
Correct - it’s a backup server and would be utilized as such. I have another machine which is currently utilized with both roles, PVE/PBR but the ‘backup’ side is problematic and I want to just add another solution there so it’s stable. Nothing like having the virtual nested drive hosting 6TB of data suddenly crash and have to start over with replication. I haven’t addressed moving the (existing) replicated over from it’s current location to the new one but think I can just ‘ssh’ it over there and perform verification’s against the data.
I wasn’t sure how to get the 2 ssd o/s drives to mount or which ‘caddy’ that I needed to utilize it in the ‘normal’ 3.5" slot but that might be a better solution as I’d only be using 8 out of the 15slot with room for expansion later if needed. I’d tried reaching their sales a month or so ago and didn’t get any responses back from them. I’ll have to inquire with them directly to determine the correct caddy needed before I order I guess.
Wish 45homelab would offer drives also as I could just make this a 1-stop shop since my config is pretty basic.
This is the list of everything in the store;
On the left hand side TOC select “SSD Caddies”. You would order the 15mm or 7mm caddy depending on the height of your SSDs, probably 7mm. I think $30 is obnoxiously pricey though, even by 45Drives standards. If you have a 3D printer you can print your own. I have a few low rent solutions here Convert Drive Cage to 2.5" Drives - #8 by DigitalGarden and here HL 15 - Workstation & Shared Data storage - #11 by DigitalGarden.
And on the TOC navigator at the bottom is “Enterprise Drives”. Select that and you will see the drives they have for sale. Again, though, they’re not going to be competing on price. If you want everything to show up in one box or from one source for warranty issues I guess that is a thing (I think 45HL do provide concierge RMA help with no questions asked as part of the drives they sell, but maybe that’s just on the enterprise side). But for me, used drives off of ebay or one of the used server parts retailers involved in decommisisioning data centers has worked out fine for RAID. There may still be a lot of inventory from chia miners. Just look for anything sus in the SMART data, but most drives are going to fail in the first few weeks or near end of expected life, not usually in between from random failures or abuse.
I’m not sure why sales didn’t respond to you. Since the drives would ship separately from the chassis, you might not get any shipping discount trying to combine that explicitly with the HL15 order. Just place two separate orders.