BUILD Another Avoton build critique

[anRossi]

Hello folks. Apparently, I'm joining what appears to be a wave of folks building FreeNAS boxen with the new server-oriented Atom CPUs. Since I haven't seen a whole lot of negativity surrounding these, I assume my build is fairly "safe", but I'd like to share in case there's something I'm doing wrong.

My goals with this build are two: quietude and small size. I only use FreeNAS as my backup solution, so I want something that doesn't pump out heat (and need more fans as a result), and can be on 24/7 and therefore must be quiet. In case of emergency, I want something small enough I can pick up and carry away. Hardware is replaceable, data isn't. I'm probably going to put my most recent snapshot on an external drive weekly for the really quick emergencies (e.g. house on fire).

Without further ado, my specs, for your comment and consideration:

Case: The quite popular Fractal Design Node 304 FD-CA-NODE-304-BL Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352027

Power supply: Seasonic SS-560KM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151098
Scavenged this from my desktop since I am upgrading it to something else.

Motherboard/CPU: ASRock C2750D4I
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157475
Looks good to me, and if I want to add more drives, I can.

Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600 (Model CT2KIT102472BD160B)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148770
Through careful dissection of the QVL memory list, I have discerned that this kit is (probably) compatible with this board. (102472BD160B is the module name)
I would love to be able to put 2x 16GB sticks in, so I can upgrade to 64 later, if ever. But those are hard (read: impossible) to find, so I'm just sticking with this. For a 4TB NAS I think that's probably plenty.

Drives: 4x 1TB WD Reds I bought back in January when I made my first FreeNAS build. (I shut it off when I learned I need ECC RAM)


I picked this for the low heat output of the CPU (and fanless nature of it), and because it has AES-NI and ECC, so it can do everything I want. (Rsync over SSH and encrypted disks).

 

[ClassicGOD]

I'm running 2 ASrock server boards right now C2750D4I as my pfSense box and E3C226D2I in my NAS (in Node 304 case so it has perfect amount of SATA ports - 6 ). Both of the boards are stable themselves but IPMI likes to crap out from time to time if you run IPMI module in FreeNAS (C2750D4I recently got an update so maybe it's fine now). My NAS runs about 18h/day my pfSense box runs 24h/day and other than the occasional IPMI problem they have been working great. Just remember that while the C2750D4I is fanless it needs airflow but if you don't plan to remove the fans from Node 304 it will be fine.

 

[panz]

I'm running 2 ASrock server boards right now C2750D4I as my pfSense box... [cut]

I think that the C2750D4I is overkill for a pfSense setup...

 

[ClassicGOD]

I think that the C2750D4I is overkill for a pfSense setup...

Yest it is. But I wanted something quiet (I use single 92x14mm Noctua Fan running at 600rpm to cool it - it's inaudible from 30cm), with 2 Intel NICs and ability to easily push 1Gbps (right now I'm on 250/20 but there is a company that will be installing fiber in my building in not too distant future) and C2550D4I was out of stock. Also I'm planning on running few services on it (ModSecurity, Reverse Proxy maybe Squid at some point etc) so all of the cores will have something to do. I wanted a modern hardware to cut down on power and heat so using something older was not an option.

 

[cyberjock]

Atoms and other super low power CPUs are definitely the way to go. My pfsense box (Intel D2500CCE board and CPU) uses 8w typical at the wall. It can do just under 400Mb/sec throughput from WAN to LAN and back on my own internal testing. If you use an old system or something that is horribly overpowered you're going to find your power usage is excessive. In this scenario I'd say any Avoton is probably overpowered. But as it's power usage is extremely low you are probably better off using it long term than building a system with a Celeron or Pentium, even if its a haswell.

I had a spare i3 system I used when I was learning pfsense, but doing the math the cost of my Atom build was low enough that the power savings would pay for themselves in about 3 years. I'm at 1.5 years right now. ;)

The crappy thing... my internet in the last 18 months has gone from 20Mb/sec to 150Mb/sec. There's a real chance that at the 3 year mark I'll need to upgrade my hardware just because my bottleneck will be my pfsense box. :(

 

[panz]

@cyberjock Your board is great, I tested it last year and was easy to setup and it did a great build.

I think that the limitation is the RAM: even if pfSense specs say that the firewall itself could run with little amount of RAM, if you plan to use some serious software like VPN, pfBlocker and SNORT you'll find that 2GB are definitely not a suitable amount of memory.

 

[cyberjock]

True, but you can put 4GB on the box with the 32bit and 8GB on the 64-bit. Both of those limits are pretty reasonable for home users. ;)

 

[anRossi]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I bought the parts and can't wait for them to arrive.
Now to just stay focused at work until they arrive. hah!

 

[ClassicGOD]

Atoms and other super low power CPUs are definitely the way to go. My pfsense box (Intel D2500CCE board and CPU) uses 8w typical at the wall. It can do just under 400Mb/sec throughput from WAN to LAN and back on my own internal testing. If you use an old system or something that is horribly overpowered you're going to find your power usage is excessive. In this scenario I'd say any Avoton is probably overpowered. But as it's power usage is extremely low you are probably better off using it long term than building a system with a Celeron or Pentium, even if its a haswell.

I had a spare i3 system I used when I was learning pfsense, but doing the math the cost of my Atom build was low enough that the power savings would pay for themselves in about 3 years. I'm at 1.5 years right now. ;)

The crappy thing... my internet in the last 18 months has gone from 20Mb/sec to 150Mb/sec. There's a real chance that at the 3 year mark I'll need to upgrade my hardware just because my bottleneck will be my pfsense box. :(

I was considering the same exact board and if I wasn't going for full Gbit i would go with it. My pfSense box is pulling around 940-960mbit/s TCP in my internal testing after I tweaked some settings (like TCP segmentation offload etc, I'm running pfSense 2.2 snapshot - they are very stable). With SSD and 4GB ECC Ram my typical power consumption at the wall is 19w.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I bought the parts and can't wait for them to arrive.
Now to just stay focused at work until they arrive. hah!

Sorry for unwillingly derailing the thread ;)

 

[anRossi]

Oh no worries. It happens all the time :)

 

[smartidiot]

Speaking of de railing. I am looking at this board for my build as well. I think I know the answer, but I just want confirmation. Given this board does not have any audio. does that affect the streaming even with transcoding? It just a file transfer and the receiving device is the only one that needs audio support is what I am thinking.

 

[panz]

Speaking of de railing. I am looking at this board for my build as well. I think I know the answer, but I just want confirmation. Given this board does not have any audio. does that affect the streaming even with transcoding? It just a file transfer and the receiving device is the only one that needs audio support is what I am thinking.

You don't need any audio or video on the FreeNAS board. The system will stream whatever video or audio to your clients.