Atom C2558 + A1SRM-2558F FreeNAS Compatibility

[vlad1966]

MDKRUSH, thanks for all your great info.
I'm not really a server noob - I've always built FreeNAS boards with consumer mobos, but now I'll be getting one of the Avoton boards with ECC RAM.
Anyway, I've heard of IPMI but never actually had a board with it, and I've heard you can turn the system on/off with it?
How do you access IPMI? Is is through a web interface with one of the client PC's?

Thanks again!

 

[MDKRUSH]

There is a separate nic just for IPMI, it gets it own IP address it can do a lot more things than what I use it for... http://screencast.com/t/Umcegf54VvW
107 is the IPMI and 109 is my FreeNAS...

 

[MDKRUSH]

Oh and yes you can power it on from being completely off. When the PC is off I am still able to access IPMI and do everything. I even disconnected my power switch, reset, etc. and use only IPMI to power it on. It is cool.

 

[vlad1966]

That is freakin' awesome
Thanks for that IPMI video. Can't wait to get my hands on this mobo, though I might go for the 4-core version of the Avaton.
Makes me wish every motherboard had IPMI.

Couple more questions. I saw you upgraded from 8GB RAM to 16GB. Do you think 8GB is enough for Plex and other plugins also? Can you "feel" a performance difference going to 16GB?
Also, for IPMI, did you have to enable any other settings in the BIOS like Wake On Lan?

 

[MDKRUSH]

I only have about 8 tb of raw space so I could possibly be okay with 8gb, but I went to 16 and have 16 more on the way (I figure I will get it all now the same brand and type etc. (plus I got wife approval so I spend it now while I have the okay because it doesn't come around too often!)) There was not really any noticeable differences, however I didn't do much testing stuff after upgrading. I haven't used Plex so I am not sure... IPMI I just plugged in the cable and looked it my router to look for the IP address and there it was. I did have to upgrade the motherboard BIOS and also upgrade the IPMI to a newer version (two separate upgrades). IPMI was showing a warning in the sensors sections and after upgrading it went away... Both the BIOS and IPMI upgrades are in the support downloads section for ASRock for this board. If I were you, I would spend a little extra and get the 8 core board, you are only paying a little more and getting double the cores...

 

[MDKRUSH]

I post then I remember something... doh... There is something about the Java code that ASRock uses is not signed (?), so I had to go lower the java security's to get the remote to work. It was a real pain and I always have to check that box that comes up twice, once when the little display works and once when I launch the remote software...

 

[DataMover]

Glad to see this thread.

I did order my Supermicro A1SRi-2758F yesterday and today I read your posts. Of course, I should have done the other way round, but ...

The difference between our boards mirrors their target market. They say the A1SRi-2758F is build for the telco market; it has 4 Gb/s NICs (plus IPMI;-)), but fewer onboard SATA ports. I feel fine with 6 SATA ports, even if 4 of them are "old" 3 Gb/s. I get a 7-year-product-cycle and USB 3.0 ports in exchange. That's pretty nice - of course I hope that USB 3 will be working in a not too distant future.

I expect all parts to arrive by the end of the week, so i can give FreeNAS a try after assembling. The board will be put it into a rack mount chassis (although it's for home fun) together with 6 3TB disks (planned is a 6 disk RAIDZ2) and 16 GB of low voltage ECC RAM - my setup will be very green with an 80+ Gold power supply ;-). The chassis leaves 6 more empty disk trays, but using them requires somethings like a LSI controller in the future. In the meantime I can use my old external 5 x 2TB disk enclosure via USB 3 as a second tier.

One interesting aspect I will look for: what's the transfer rate to and from the disks (for the RAID will span the 3Gb/s SATA ports) and can I saturate one Gb/s link, which is questioned in another thread with regards to this type of CPU/chipset/board. But your test proofs it should be possible.
Alas I could not hope to test saturation of more than one LAN port with my setup - I believe.

Regards,
DataMover

 

[MDKRUSH]

DataMover, let me know how your setup works out and what kind of performance you get.

Thanks.

 

[hungarianhc]

FYI I just ordered the ASRock board with the max amount of RAM ~ can't wait to build my FreeNAS box with this board!

 

[MDKRUSH]

Everything still running great here! I'm running ownCloud and Transmission as well...

 

[hungarianhc]

My board arrives this week ~ question about updating the BIOS. How do you do it? Is there a tool that you boot into?

 

[MDKRUSH]

I used a thumb drive and did the process remotely through IPMI. You will also need to update the IPMI.

 

[hungarianhc]

I used a thumb drive and did the process remotely through IPMI. You will also need to update the IPMI.

Good to know - thanks. Is this process documented somewhere?

 

[MDKRUSH]

I just followed the instructions from the ASRock website.

 

[taalas]

I just recently built a FreeNAS server as well using the board DataMover suggested: Supermicro A1SRi-2758F

The installation worked flawlessly, I created an encrypted volume with default parameters (which had lz4 compression turned on) and a dataset which i share via CIFS.

This seems to work although the speed is not as good as expected. Copying a big file in Windows to the share (from a local disk) gives me transfer rates around 50MB/s (after disabling the compression altogether)...not bad, but I expected it to be faster.

Do you have any ideas what could be wrong?

 

[MDKRUSH]

taalas,

My CIFS performance is reduced now, I am still getting around 70mb/s but when using the older freeNAS version 9.2.0 I was consistently getting 90+ (sometimes maxing GB out (around 3gb files)). Not sure if it was a SAMBA update or something but I do notice a difference. However, it is not enough loss for me to look into it... I am very happy with my setup and don't want to mess with it. :)

 

[hungarianhc]

FYI... Until this: https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?t=45197 issue is figured out, I would stick to just the Intel SATA ports...

 

[Gaucho]

Hello MDKRUSH, I was reading this thread and became curious about the Atom potential. But I could not find Atoms in Newegg, Amazon and other popular sites. Do you know where can I find them?

Regards,

 

[Ericloewe]

Hello MDKRUSH, I was reading this thread and became curious about the Atom potential. But I could not find Atoms in Newegg, Amazon and other popular sites. Do you know where can I find them?

Regards,

Are you sure?

have you searched for C2750 or C2550?

 

[MDKRUSH]

Here is the one I got from newegg... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157475