NexentaStor Project - Expansion of existing 5.5TB build to support 20TB+ - NexentaStor Project

Expansion of existing 5.5TB build to support 20TB+

I am currently (and have quite happily been) running Nexenta CE 3.1.3 (since December) with 26 disks as my primary NAS with a usable space of about 5.5TB. It is supporting an expanding VMware deployment.

Current build:
Dell PowerEdge c2100
Dual Intel Xeon 5 (Westmere 2.4GHz)
144GB RAM @ 1333MHz (14x4)
Dual Intel x520-DA2 (for 4x 10GbE ports)
Mezzanine LSI SAS controller
2x OCZ Agility 3 240GB (L2ARC)
2x OCZ Deneva 2 SSD (ZIL)
22x Seagate 500GB Constellation drives

Thankfully, things are growing and fast so I need to expand it. We've got one PCI Slot available, which I'm thinking to put an LSI 9200-8e on and add a 72 bay SuperMicro JBOD (Supermicro SuperChassis 417E16-R1400UB) and populate the chassis gradually with either 1TB or 500GB 7200 RPM Constellations, adding RAID-5 zPools as needed (or when disks are too cheap to say no).

Front:

Rear:

Any objections, enhancements, or modifications to such a build? Ultimately, I intend to have 2 of these units in different geographic locations and replicate from A to B with a smallish appliance at each site taking backups of the data on each unit.

Replies

RE: Expansion of existing 5.5TB build to support 20TB+ - Added by Bee Gee 10 months ago

Bump for some kind of insight on this build.

Thanks in advance.

RE: Expansion of existing 5.5TB build to support 20TB+ - Added by Chris Parsons 10 months ago

We added a similar idea for our backup server. However, an IBM Server connected with a 16 Disk Promise JBOD via a LSI 9200-8e and SAS.

Works extremely well. We are expecting to have to expand our Active SAN (Currently a Supermicro server and chassis) in a similar manner within the next 12 months.