SuperMicro X10SL7-F

[grep137]

Thanks. I didn't see many votes in cyberjocks thread, "How do you do NAS backups?", for replication so I was curious how you did it. Would you happen to know if it's possible to use replication if you have different sized pools?

I almost got a G3220 for my X10SL7, however, Newegg had a motherboard CPU bundle which made the Xeon E3-1220 only $50 more -- it was just too tempting.

 

[Sir.Robin]

The G3220 is dirt cheap, supports ECC and got more power than i need for the secondary so... :)

Yes u can replicate between different sized pools. No problem.
But the destination will offcourse grow full before the source, so pay attention.
Mine is for now different sized. See signature...


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[grep137]

Thank you Sir.Robin. Not sure where I read this, but I heard that the single threaded performance of the G3220 is almost the same as AMD's fastest offering -- amazing what you can get for $50. BTW, what kind of a cooler did you put on your G3220? I put together an inexpensive HTPC using a G3220 and the clips on the ends of the posts which attach the stock heatsink to motherboard seem like they could come out of the holes in the motherboard very easily.

 

[Sir.Robin]

Not a big fan of the bundled stock coolers.
I used an coolermaster 212 "something" tower cooler i had on the shelf. :)


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[Apollo]

Hi there,

Just placed an order last week end for the following:

X10Sl7-F : that is supposed to come next week most likely.
2x8GB from Crucial : CT2KIT102472BA160B. : that is supposed to come next week most likely.
XEON E3-1241-V3 : Already here.
4x4TB WD RED WD40EFRX. : Supposed to arrive tomorrow.

My current system is an Athlon XII with 2GB RAM and RAIDZ2 on 6x 1.5TB Seagate Baracuda. I have about 4 TB of data to transfer and I have been experimenting with local replication to another pool.
I will be experimenting replicating from the old pool to the new 4x4TB in RAIDZ2 pool. With a XEON E3-1241 V3, what limit should I expect from the system?
Currently I can do local ZFS send ... | ZFS recv ... at up to 109MB/s to a WD GREEN single disk. It seems both cores are being used, each one about 27-30%.
Each disk from the old pool are at about average of 20MB/s ish to max 25MB/s max read.
Doing simultaneous replication over LAN to another computer I was able to hit max throughput of 500Mb/s. Limiting factor being SSH.
Is it conceivable to max out either one of the RAIDZ2 pool during local replication from one pool to the other?

 

[grep137]

Not a big fan of the bundled stock coolers.
I used an coolermaster 212 "something" tower cooler i had on the shelf. :)

Thanks Sir.Robin. I feel less guilty now about spending some money to purchase a better one.

Also, a word of waring to anyone out there who is as clumsy as I am (not sure if that's possible, though): While I was removing a DIMM yesterday my finger slipped off the retention clip and landed right on one of the fan headers; I didn't think much of it and continued working, a short time later I noticed little red drips all over my motherboard...

 

[Apollo]

Hi There,

Got all the parts I ordered as of last night and I have been replicating the entire 6 drive RAIDZ2 volume to the new 4 WD RED RAIDZ2.
I won't get too much into the details yet, but I have mixed feeling about my new built.
Using the following command on Freenas 9.2.1.6:

zfs send -vR vol_source@recursive_latest | zfs recv -Fd vol_destination

vol_source being the 6 RAIDZ2 array and vol_destination the 4 RED RAIDZ2 array, I am able to transfer about 5.3TB of data in about 9-10hrs. or at top speed about 100MB/s per drive.
This is a local transfert with no SSH. I have tested the 4TB WD RED and achieved throughput of about 150MB/s. on Windows 7.

Network connection is not better either. I cannot reach 100% Gbe speed, just a mere 80% peak.
I need to perform more stringent test to validate my build.
Plex seems very responsive though.

CPU Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 @ 3.5GHz
MBD-X10SL7-F IT mode.
16GB ECC RAM Crucial 1.5V 2*8GB
all 10 drives using the onboard SATA connectors.
Using 1 of the 1Gbe Intel NIC.

I welcome any thoughts, suggestions on my current build pointing to potential bottleneck issue.

 

[cyberjock]

Well 80% is generally considered saturation.....

 

[Apollo]

I have been able to increase the troughput across the lan and here is what I have discovered:

- I had VirtualBox installed on both my Windows 7 desktop and Windows 8 laptop. Even though I was not using Virtualbox at the time, it seems the LAN bridge adapter it uses is interfering with the transfers. Disable it or uninstall VirtualBox and you should see maybe a 30% increase in troughput.

- When I migrated to the new system, I didn't change the config on the USB key. I couldn't understand why the RAM would not be used above 2GB or so. I decided then to re-install FREENAS on the key and start from scratch. The system became more responsive right away. I think, the issue was related to Sysctls Autotune parameters not being updated with the new hardware. So now FREENAS makes use pretty much all the RAM there is.

- I updated the NIC driver on my desktop, it may or may not have improved anything.

I was able to setup my previous 6 drive into RAID0 but I still hit about 83MB/s write to FREENAS.
I was able to maxout Gigabit speed with sustained transfer of about 114MB/s on read.

I will have to conduct more testing, but I need to read on Sysctls parameters. I think there is room to tweak FREENAS a bit.

By the way, I was curious to see if I could achieve similar transfer rate with a non Intel NIC. I have a PCIe Gb ethernet from Ultra I think and I do get similar performance than the Intel NIC. I need to pursue this further.

 

[Pooh]

Going to buy a X10SL7-F but want to make sure i am doing the right thing.
Might move the NAS to a friends house with 300/100mbit connection but he said vpn a must and that make the cpu choice harder from my uninformed perspective.(we split electricity)


1. X10SL7-F bulk or retail? its 10 dollars difference but is there 10dollars in cable ect?
2. 2x8gb samsung ram 1.5V or 1.35v? same price (M391B1G73QH0-CK0 vs M391B1G73QH0-YK0)
3. Cpu is the hard part. going to be used with 2-4 users, plex, transmission and open vpn.
im currently looking at Pentium G3220 vs i3 4130. About double the price and guessing higher wattage

Things i own.
HDD: 4x3TB will upgrade later.
Chassi: fractal design define r4
PSU: 650w seasonic gold (to much but its free)

 

[Ericloewe]

Going to buy a X10SL7-F but want to make sure i am doing the right thing.
Might move the NAS to a friends house with 300/100mbit connection but he said vpn a must and that make the cpu choice harder from my uninformed perspective.(we split electricity)


1. X10SL7-F bulk or retail? its 10 dollars difference but is there 10dollars in cable ect?
2. 2x8gb samsung ram 1.5V or 1.35v? same price (M391B1G73QH0-CK0 vs M391B1G73QH0-YK0)
3. Cpu is the hard part. going to be used with 2-4 users, plex, transmission and open vpn.
im currently looking at Pentium G3220 vs i3 4130. About double the price and guessing higher wattage

Things i own.
HDD: 4x3TB will upgrade later.
Chassi: fractal design define r4
PSU: 650w seasonic gold (to much but its free)

1. The bulk packaging is somewhat crummy. Two sheets of molded foam with the motherboard wrapped in an anti-static bag sandwiched in between. Two average, non-locking SATA cables were included with my X10SLM+-F. Retail packaging should be more convenient, especially if you end up having to RMA or store it for some reason.
2. Preferably, whatever is listed in the Hardware Compatibility List. If both are, 1.35V will save a tiny amount of power.
3. Better CPUs will only use more power when doing something. At idle, consumption will be (almost, if we're comparing dual core and quad core and iGPU and no iGPU) the same. The G3220 would be tight and does not support AES-NI, so VPN performance would suffer a lot - I recommend at least an i3 4330 (4MB L3 cache instead of 3MB on the 4130, IIRC)

 

[Pooh]

wow that was fast!
Thank you so much ericloewe.
I will be eating noodles for a month but if the watts are about the same ill go with a i3 4330.

 

[Sir.Robin]

The retail comes with 6x SATA cables.

For your use i would also recommend the i3 over the Pentium. That said, the Xeon E3-1220 is not much more than an i3...

 

[danb35]

AES-NI will only matter for VPN performance if the VPN is being run on the FreeNAS server. If it's on a separate router (pfsense or otherwise), not a factor.

 

[Pooh]

The retail comes with 6x SATA cables.

For your use i would also recommend the i3 over the Pentium. That said, the Xeon E3-1220 is not much more than an i3...

6x SATA cables meh.
The only way to stretch the budget to xeon is to drop one stick ram and upgrade that later.
Could i limp by on 8gb for about 2weeks? (during this time no vpn and max 2users)
Are the other advantages then just the cpu power from the xeon?
Thank you Sir.Robin

AES-NI will only matter for VPN performance if the VPN is being run on the FreeNAS server. If it's on a separate router (pfsense or otherwise), not a factor.

Currently running a pfsense router myself and it would be awesome to have one at my friends location but his wife said no.
So random router he got from his ISP will have to do.
Thank you danb35

 

[Sir.Robin]

The Xeon has VT-d support. That matters if you will be running some cind of hypervizor and the FreeNAS as VM.

Just qurious... why would hes wife mind what firewall hes using? lol

 

[Ericloewe]

The Xeon has VT-d support. That matters if you will be running some cind of hypervizor and the FreeNAS as VM.

Just qurious... why would hes wife mind what firewall hes using? lol

I'm guessing the objection was to the presence of "yet another stupid computer".

 

[Pooh]

The Xeon has VT-d support. That matters if you will be running some cind of hypervizor and the FreeNAS as VM.

Just qurious... why would hes wife mind what firewall hes using? lol

Money and what Ericloewe said.
I shouldn't complain as i get the "crap" she throws out :D

 

[Sir.Robin]

Well then... if you go for the xeon... you could always virtualize FreeNAS and pfSense on the same box ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

Good news on the topic of RAM:

The 8GB 1.35V DIMMs recommended by Crucial for Supermicro X10-series motherboards exactly match the Micron part number tested by Supermicro, as listed in their memory compatibility list.

For reference, the part numbers are:

Crucial (2 x 8GB): CT2KIT102472BD160B or CT4486353 (both are the same product)
Crucial (1 x 8GB): CR102472BD160Bor CT4486347

Micron (single DIMM, as reported by memtest86+ and listed at Supermicro's website): MT18KSF1G72AZ-1G6E1

No issues so far (except memtest86+'s finicky behavior when SMT is enabled - single-threaded mode is going fine for now).