Since I wanna get a jetson tx1 for some other stuff, I was wondering how do you guys think it will do as a NAS.

I'm thinking I could connect 4 SATA HDDs to the PCIe2.0 4-lanes connector using something like http://www.ebay.com/itm/Marvell-9230-PCIe-To-4-SATA3-0-Raid-Card-PCI-Express-4Ports-SATA-6Gbps-Raid-Card/201168267815 (Marvell 9320) or http://www.ebay.com/itm/Free-Mouse-Pad-New-PCIe-x4-slot-Card-HyperDuo-4-port-SATA-III-SATA-3-4-port/381891976760 (Marvell 88SE9230) or http://www.ebay.com/itm/HighPoint-RocketRAID-640L-6Gb-s-SATA-RAID-Host-Adapter-Serial-ATA-600-PCI/332262844972 (please suggest others you think it would work, I just looked for x4 size PCIe cards that have 4 SATA ports to maximize bw, there are some 2x cards too but i suppose you can get max 250MB/s which would still be OK with HDDs i gues...)

I'm also thinking this board could use ZFS RAID5 (64-bit A57). Maybe even use the SATA port for a SSD for L2ARC...

Thoughts?

We tested 4 port Marvell SATA adapters behind a single PCIe 2.x lane already: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/4845-marvell-based-4-ports-mpci-sata-30/ (fast enough for spinning rust anyway)

 

If I would have to decide whether to spend the same amount of money on a TX1 or on a HP Microserver I would always choose the latter since everything there to operate a couple of HDDs already (enclosure and properly dimensioned PSU) and more importantly ECC memory for data integrity.

 

Well, in my case I don't have to decide between TX1 or something else, and the only extra amount of money I have to decide spending is for the SATA adapter (to get one or not; and if I do, which model).

So you think that even a 2-lane card should be OK for 4 spinning drives, and any Marvell should be OK? (the prices for the 2-lane cards are smaller, and also I would prefer a short card, since a long one would extend above the native SATA port...) Or is there a chip you would recommend? Thanks.

19 minutes ago, memeka said:

So you think that even a 2-lane card should be OK for 4 spinning drives, and any Marvell should be OK?

 

I would say so (since you're bottlenecked by Gigabit Ethernet anyway). My tests were made with this 88SE9215 card and based on results it should be possible to combine 4 HDDs in whatever mode to saturate the GbE connection between a client and the NAS.