CPU upgrade, any setup or config considerations before doing

[stuartsjg]

Hello,

Ill be upgrading my CPU next week from quad core to hex core CPU.

I'm simply thinking i can shutdown the server (currently on 112+ days uptime), change out the CPU and power on the server.

Will FreeNas be upset at all in some way by seeing more cores than was present at install? I would think not but i don't want to upset it by not doing something i'm perhaps supposed to do to prepare it.

Any advise would be appreciated.

____

More info:

I'm replacing a W3520 with a W3680 Xeon the which is the second most powerful my motherboard can take. That would be the W3690 which is not easy to get in the UK/EU without paying £300+ for "new" stock and the slight extra performance just inst worth that to me.

The extra power will be useful for transcoding in Emby. Some of the heaviest things i have to transcode need 2-3 cores / 4-6 threads of the existing W3520 to keep up so a second similar stream causes jumpy playback when their peak transcode periods coincide. The W3680 with the higher clock and core count will hopefully nearly double the performance, or let me limit threads per stream.

I have had a W3680 running in the system as i borrowed the CPU from my main PC for a while although after all my development, for setting up the final server i started fresh with the hardware ive had running for the last few months to ensure my mistakes and setup experiments were not going to come back and bite.

At this moment i cant justify changing the motherboard/ram/CPU for a complete new generation of server grade kit hence the CPU change however in a few months i may add more memory although ive never had any memory issues.

 

[BigDave]

Will FreeNas be upset at all in some way by seeing more cores than was present at install? I would think not but i don't want to upset it by not doing something i'm perhaps supposed to do to prepare it.

When ever I make any changes of hardware/config settings etc. I always save my configuration off on to my desktop machine.
FreeNAS will detect the CPU during boot up, and the only way you'll notice, is if you're staring at the console log and catch it scrolling by ;)

 

[stuartsjg]

Perfect, thanks. I had forgot about the config backup button which has just been pressed, although i had to stop myself saving it to a network drive which would be a "Doh!" moment should i come i need it...

Ill probably plug in a monitor to check for any error messages which may appear (as a blur), else ill know from the system screen the correct CPU has been detected then from the CPU usage during a Transcode if its picked up the extra cores.

Incidentally, after posting my comment about seeking more RAM, i glanced at eBay and spotted somebody selling the exact same type i already have so that's another 12Gb heading my way to max out the board. Will likely fit the RAM first to check that's all good with the current known good CPU then leave it a few days before fitting the new CPU. Or ill be impatient and do both together.

 

[Darren Myers]

Perfect, thanks. I had forgot about the config backup button which has just been pressed, although i had to stop myself saving it to a network drive which would be a "Doh!" moment should i come i need it...

Ill probably plug in a monitor to check for any error messages which may appear (as a blur), else ill know from the system screen the correct CPU has been detected then from the CPU usage during a Transcode if its picked up the extra cores.

Incidentally, after posting my comment about seeking more RAM, i glanced at eBay and spotted somebody selling the exact same type i already have so that's another 12Gb heading my way to max out the board. Will likely fit the RAM first to check that's all good with the current known good CPU then leave it a few days before fitting the new CPU. Or ill be impatient and do both together.

With new RAM do a memtest for a day or 4, make sure you dont run into errors later.

 

[Black Ninja]

With new RAM do a memtest for a day or 4, make sure you dont run into errors later.

Do you use memtest86 v4 in BIOS mode , or you ise memtest86 v 6.3 in UEFI mode ?

 

[Darren Myers]

Do you use memtest86 v4 in BIOS mode , or you ise memtest86 v 6.3 in UEFI mode ?

Im using a supermicro X8 board, so just a regular memtest x86 disc from there site did the trick.

 

[Arwen]

Perfect, thanks. I had forgot about the config backup button which has just been pressed, although i had to stop myself saving it to a network drive which would be a "Doh!" moment should i come i need it...
...

Do both. I save a copy of the configuration to my desk top, and the main ZPool in my backup dataset.
This has the advantage that when I perform a backup of my FreeNAS, a copy of the configuration
goes with the backup disks. So if a tornado hits my home, (yes, I am in tornado alley), the off-site
backup disk will have a copy of the configuration.

 

[joeschmuck]

Do you use memtest86 v4 in BIOS mode , or you ise memtest86 v 6.3 in UEFI mode ?

I like the graphics of the UEFI mode.

But when changing components like the CPU, I'd still run some testing, and RAM Testing with all the CPUs running in parallel would sounds reasonable. But when booting up it should not have any issues when changing our the CPU itself.

 

[Black Ninja]

I did purchase memtest86 and it seems BIOS version v4 is different from UEFI version v6.
I was looking to find which version has ECC error injection test and ask Passmark guys if it's the same program and this is what they told me in responce:

"Short answer is No, they are not the same program. Test have changed and added since V4.

Long answer is: We are not the original developers of the MemTest86. Development on the program was pretty much nonexistent and was stagnant on V4. We reached out to the original developer of the software and purchased it from him. We did a complete rewrite of his code to develop a new version that would run on UEFI. The outcome was V5 and now V6. NO code was ported backwards to V4. While we will fix obvious bugs in V4, no new features or active development is in progress."

Hope this will be helpfully to everybody to know. If someone know more about it , please share.

 

[joeschmuck]

I am too cheap to pay for MemTest86 Pro but if you purchased it then you should have ECC Error Injection (see Features List) and while V4 and V6 are not the same program, they are the same bootable code, meaning that if you set your system to boot "Legacy" then it will boot V4, if you set it to boot "UEFI" it will boot V6. for my new X11 motherboard I have been able to boot both versions based on how I setup my BIOS for Legacy or UEFI, but wish I had the paid version to test out the ECC Error Injection but that is the only benefit I could take away, unless I were a business then all those other paid features would come in handy.

 

[Black Ninja]

I understand the cheapness of your heart Joeschmuck:) (but don't share it), but this time it might save you from wasting money. Because the injection I also desire and a main reason to go for purchased version it seems is available only on limited number of motherboards. My X9 series was not one of them.

You are absolutely correct that depends how you boot - what version will start. I just didn't want to do this testing twice with each version considering how time consuming is.I was hoping to find that one of them will be enough.

 

[joeschmuck]

I like the V6 because it's easy to use all CPU cores and runs the through the RAM much faster. I think it would be nice to test ECC RAM errors but I don't think it's required to test to see if ECC works, hopefully the BIOS has that all figured out.

 

[Black Ninja]

I like the V6 because it's easy to use all CPU cores and runs the through the RAM much faster. I think it would be nice to test ECC RAM errors but I don't think it's required to test to see if ECC works, hopefully the BIOS has that all figured out.

I never touched the defaults in v4 or v6vos I didnt know about the cpu cores. I notice v6 complete test and then stop, while v4 was keep testing in perpetual mode.

 

[joeschmuck]

V6 by default I think is set for 4 passes and then stop. I configured mine to test using all CPU cores and 50 tests which will feel like it will run forever but after a few days I just manually stop it. I wish there was a selection to test for xx hours as well.

 

[Black Ninja]

Honestly I am not sure that I understand the benefits of changing the defaults ?! Is it using only 0ne core if you don't change it , which way is better ?!

This is what mine looks like , without touching the defaults.

 

[joeschmuck]

When you use more cores, you are actually using more bandwidth, well for my system at least. This puts the RAM and CPU through more stress than a single core and completes a full test cycle much quicker. There is a specific test (10 I think) which specifically checks timing for how long a memory cell retains data, or something like that which is counted in seconds, but everything else runs very fast.

Honestly, I'm not sure if there is any real benefit other than just maxing out the bandwidth but it's an option that can be used. There is more info about this on the internet somewhere.

 

[Black Ninja]

Maybe is not beneficial at all, it could be even negative to use all cores in parallel. Look the pic.

 

[joeschmuck]

Here are some of the screenshots from my system. Note that there are no warnings about false positives and I believe that is due to the updated code.

 

[Black Ninja]

I guess new V6 dosn't have that warning. I'll do the same this like you setting it up on all cores.

P.S. Boy you L1, L2 cache is much faster than mine. But I have "ECC Enabled: YES (ECC)" not unknown !?

 

[joeschmuck]

But I have "ECC Enabled: YES (ECC)" not unknown !?

Because you have the paid version. Wish I knew which part of the exe file to alter to trick it to thinking its the paid version. I only want to test it out completely but like I said, I'm a tight wad, I don't need this tool for that much money. Maybe I'll contact the developer to see if they wouldn't mind selling me a home use version for less money.