[TriLUG] High performance NFS server - which OS and RAID is best?

[Ron Kelley via TriLUG]

I am building a new high-performance NFS server for virtualization storage and am looking at the best combination of RAID and OS.  Hoping someone from the TriLUG alias has some opinions.


Components and Requirements:
----------------------------
  * 8-10TB of usable capacity using Samsung 2TB 860 SSDs
  * XFS or EXT4 support (no need for snapshots or compression)
  * 1RU server with Intel 2600-v2 CPU, 10x 2.5” HDD bays, 16G RAM
  * 1x dual-port 10G Intel DA-520 NIC configured for LACP to separate Cisco switches (running “vpc”)
  * Support 8-12 virtualization servers via NFS for shared storage.  Probably running 200 VMs at any given time.
  * 80/20 read/write performance
  * Ability to replace failed drives without server outage


I was thinking of using FreeBSD 11, CentOS 7, Debian 9.5, or a turn-key appliance tool like FreeNAS.  On the CentOS side, it seems RedHat recommends against using RAID-5 with SSDs due to performance issues (lack of trim): https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/451908/centos-7-raid-1-and-degraded-performance-with-ssds

While RAID-10 (striped mirror) is a good choice, it will use twice as many SSDs as RAID-5.  Cost is a factor.

I am curious what the group thinks which OS and RAID technology would be best in this case.  Does Debian have a faster NFS server than CentOS (or FreeBSD for that matter)?  I don’t want to purchase a “vendor” box because I already have the server parts in hand.


Thanks.


-Ron