BUILD Build Critique Please

[Kingr_]

looking to get my build "critiqued". I've surfed the forums gathering what I can so far, hopefully I haven't missed something completely, and I'm on the right track.

NAS Purpose: Basic home use for multiple PC's / media server (Regular backups will be taken to a off site drive)

HDD Setup - ZFS RaidZ1 - 3 x 3TB drives WD30EFRX

Case - full custom oak + plexi-glass (There will be LOTS of airflow, and its going to look fricken awesome!!!)

Motherboard - Supermicro MBD-X9SCL+-F or MBD-X9SCL-F-O (Can someone tell me the difference between these two boards / which one to get?)

CPU - Here is where I'm having trouble deciding where to go, I've seen recommendations for the Pentium G2020 ($75) or is it worth it ($10-$20) for the G2120 OR the huge price jump to a Xenon 1220/1230 ($215 / $240 approx)

Ignoring the AES, will the jump to the xenon be noticeable for home use? I'm a little unsure what the extra $170 gets me - Intel Compare

RAM - Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G 16 GB ECC memory

PSU/UPS - 450 watt Rosewill

Question: Obviously a power outage/PSU failure is never a good thing but with FreeNAS/ZFS what are the consequences? in what situations is the file system toast? (noob question I know) this will drive the need for the UPS, again for home use, but want to ensure I don't have to spend hours rebuilding because of a bad storm/poor shut down. Again backups will be taken regularly but I want to avoid rebuilding.

Thanks All

Rob

 

[cyberjock]

Looks okay. The g2020 is the only CPU aside from Xeons that will use ECC RAM. I'm an advocate of overbuilding so you aren't regretting having an underpowered CPU later if you start using lots of plugins/etc.

As for the power failure, its not supposed to hurt ZFS. But plenty of people without UPSes have had a loss of power at work, come home to find that their data is lost forever. So don't skimp and try to go without the UPS.

 

[Dusan]

Motherboard - Supermicro MBD-X9SCL+-F or MBD-X9SCL-F-O (Can someone tell me the difference between these two boards / which one to get?)

Basically the only difference is that the gigabit NICs on X9SCL-F are Intel 82579LM and Intel 82574L, the X9SCL+-F has two Intel 82574Ls. Both NICs work great with FreeNAS, so get the cheaper one. If the price is same then I would go for X9SCL+-F (dual Intel 82574L).

The g2020 is the only CPU aside from Xeons that will use ECC RAM.

There are 25 other non Xeon FCLGA1155 CPUs that support ECC: http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&Sockets=FCLGA1155&ECCMemory=true
(for example, I tried i3-3225 with X9SCL and ECC was enabled.)

 

[cyberjock]

There are 25 other non Xeon FCLGA1155 CPUs that support ECC: http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&Sockets=FCLGA1155&ECCMemory=true
(for example, I tried i3-3225 with X9SCL and ECC was enabled.)

But there was a support ticket from Supermicro that gave a cryptic response regarding if they were supported and actually used ECC. Their answer was something to the effect of "this is untested and not supported". Some people asked if that meant that ECC wasn't supported or if the manufacturer simply wasn't acknowledging if the CPU would work and use ECC. Someone asked for clarification and none was given. Hence the whole ecc_check thing came up at http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1693051 and spilled over to http://forums.freenas.org/threads/s...d-hardware-feedback-and-some-questions.14484/

One thing I'd really like to see because ECC is so important for ZFS and ECC is confusing for newbies that immediately assume Xeon and much more $ than the non-ECC parts that there was a surefire way to prove that you actually were using the ECC feature of your RAM. It seems that at current the only way I think we can conclusively prove that ECC worked would be to deliberately corrupt some bit of RAM and see of an ECC error was logged in the BIOS/OS/whatever. I've been looking to see if there was a way to corrupt a bit of RAM, then read it back so the system would identify the error, but I don't think its possible. All searches I made in Google turned up no program to do such things.

The ecc_check.py seems to work for some CPUs, others are marked as "reserved" but reasonably expected to work, but there is no "run this command and you'll have a 100% certainty of whether ECC is being used" for your setup. I have 2 systems that seem to run with both ECC and non-ECC RAM. The manufacturers claims that with my CPU and board that ECC is supported and used if available, but I have no way to validate that(they're both socket 1366 boards). I haven't tried to extensively to see if anything says that ECC is enabled when using only ECC RAM, but I don't remember seeing anything mentioning it for the 2 years I used the systems.

 

[Dusan]

I provided most of the information in the thread you linked (dmidecode, Intel spec sheets, ...), I cautioned you to not blindly trust ecc-check on a random system, so there's no need to explain it back to me ;). I know what I'm doing and I'm pretty sure ECC worked with i3-3225.
The i3s mentioned in the hardforum thread are Ivy Bridge and Intel did not officially list ECC support in the 2nd gen i3 spec sheets, i3-3225 is Sandy Bridge and does officially support ECC.
However, I also do not see anything cryptic about these three Supermicro responses regarding X9SCx +Ivy Bridge i3s + ECC:
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=11336
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=12335
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=12745
Before you complain that they only mention i3-21xx CPUs please notice that the FAQs are from 2011, Sandy Bridge was not available back then. There are no Sandy Bridge Supermicro FAQs, but as Intel officially states ECC is supported, probably no one felt the need to ask Supermicro about 3rd gen i3s.

As for corrupting a bit in a memory to test ECC. Of course there is no program to do it. ECC is done in the memory controller, a program never gets access to the raw 72 bits -- you always work only with the 64 data bits. The 8 ECC bits are computed and stored by the memory controller. But! there is a way, you just need to do it in hardware. You need to cover/block a data pin (not an address pin!) on the module. See: http://bluesmoke.sourceforge.net/testing.html -- I already did this once to verify ECC. Some people use heat guns (http://bluesmoke.sourceforge.net/heat_gun.html), but I feel there's a much higher chance you damage something.

 

[Kingr_]

Basically the only difference is that the gigabit NICs on X9SCL-F are Intel 82579LM and Intel 82574L, the X9SCL+-F has two Intel 82574Ls. Both NICs work great with FreeNAS, so get the cheaper one. If the price is same then I would go for X9SCL+-F (dual Intel 82574L)

got it thanks!

As for the power failure, its not supposed to hurt ZFS. But plenty of people without UPSes have had a loss of power at work, come home to find that their data is lost forever. So don't skimp and try to go without the UPS.

Noted, UPS worth it. I have ZERO experience with them. I know they will send a power down command should the power fail, but as far as requirements for the UPS what wattage is needed, I know this is along the lines of power supply requirements. do I just match the wattage of the PSU?

Thanks

 

[cyberjock]

I provided most of the information in the thread you linked (dmidecode, Intel spec sheets, ...), I cautioned you to not blindly trust ecc-check on a random system, so there's no need to explain it back to me ;). I know what I'm doing and I'm pretty sure ECC worked with i3-3225.

Oops. Sorry about that. ;)

The i3s mentioned in the hardforum thread are Ivy Bridge and Intel did not officially list ECC support in the 2nd gen i3 spec sheets, i3-3225 is Sandy Bridge and does officially support ECC.
However, I also do not see anything cryptic about these three Supermicro responses regarding X9SCx +Ivy Bridge i3s + ECC:
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=11336
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=12335
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=12745
Before you complain that they only mention i3-21xx CPUs please notice that the FAQs are from 2011, Sandy Bridge was not available back then. There are no Sandy Bridge Supermicro FAQs, but as Intel officially states ECC is supported, probably no one felt the need to ask Supermicro about 3rd gen i3s.

The cryptic answer was not in the FAQ but was an email question to support. I'll see if I can find it in a little bit. :)

As for corrupting a bit in a memory to test ECC. Of course there is no program to do it. ECC is done in the memory controller, a program never gets access to the raw 72 bits -- you always work only with the 64 data bits. The 8 ECC bits are computed and stored by the memory controller. But! there is a way, you just need to do it in hardware. You need to cover/block a data pin (not an address pin!) on the module. See: http://bluesmoke.sourceforge.net/testing.html -- I already did this once to verify ECC. Some people use heat guns (http://bluesmoke.sourceforge.net/heat_gun.html), but I feel there's a much higher chance you damage something.

That's kind of what I was afraid of. I figured a program couldn't do it since it was a hardware based feature. As for the bluesmoke link, that's interesting. I had thought about doing something like that but I didn't want to do the research to figure out if it really was safe(the EE in me thought it would be fine). It's just not been an issue that I felt I needed to validate ECC support was functioning on my systems. I do have some spare 1GB ECC Dimms that I could probably test it with if I really wanted to go that far. Hmm....

 

[Dusan]

Noted, UPS worth it. I have ZERO experience with them. I know they will send a power down command should the power fail, but as far as requirements for the UPS what wattage is needed, I know this is along the lines of power supply requirements. do I just match the wattage of the PSU?

Yes, the default FreeNAS configuration is to shutdown the server 30 seconds after UPS reports switching to battery.
UPSs are rated in VA, not in W. Most vendors have online calculator to help you choose the right capacity.
However, as I do not expect your build to use more than 50W idle and it should never consume more than 100W even running at full tilt, I guess you can get away with almost any UPS. A bigger UPS will able to power your server longer.
For illustration, my Eaton Ellipse ECO 650 can power X9SCL+E3-1230v2+2 memory sticks+5 WD REDs+gigabit switch+ wifi router for about 30 minutes.
It is important to choose an UPS that is supported by NUT (http://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html). FreeNAS uses NUT to communicate with the UPS (I selected Eaton, as they actively contribute to the NUT open source project). Also, get an UPS that you will be actually able to connect (i.e., do not get one that communicates via RS232 if your board has only USB ports).