Dell Precision T7400 build

[rvassar]

I need to look at the CPU model to see if it is new enough to have integrated encryption.

Too old. That's a LGA 771 Harpertown Xeon, based on Penryn. You don't get the AES-NI instruction support until Westmere / Gulftown LGA 1366 procs. Even then, not all socket 1366 processors support it.

@HammerJ - Any chance you have a T7500 laying around?

On edit... Scratch that, not required.

 

[HammerJ]

So, I took the time to chase links all the way through Supermicro's website and find all the separate components for a system:


Case: $359.97
Motherboard: $282.07
CPU: $293.99
CPU Cooler: $79.90
RAM: $699.99

$1715.92

You guys are saying that a t7400 just won't work, and basically I have to buy $1700 worth of new stuff instead (before even buying the drives). You guys aren't on commission somehow, are you? :D

 

[Chris Moore]

The data would be encrypted before it ever got to the Freenas box, and stay encrypted long after it left the Freenas box, to and from many switches and routers, heh.

...so actually, the answer to your previous question is "No, the data does not need to be encrypted", because it already will be, long before and long after it has anything to do with the Freenas box.

Well, there is good and bad to that. Encrypting it outside of FreeNAS saves you from the possibility of loosing the pool because of some encryption related fault, but it makes the data virtually impossible to compress. Not being able to compress the data means you will need more storage and the storage will not perform quite as well. Part of the performance of FreeNAS is based on the fact that it compresses the data first, then writes it to disk. This can make the amount of data that needs to transition the disk interface less and save disk time.

I would suggest that you use RAIDz2 because of the capacity of the drives. We have been saying that using RAIDz1 with drives larger than 1TB is just asking for a drive fault to destroy your data for at least 6 or 7 years now and with your plan being to use 10 TB drives, I would say that is as true as ever.
I ran the numbers and to get 30 TB usable, you will need 6 drives at 10 TB each. This will give you a raw capacity of 54 TiB because 10 TB drives are actually only 9.09 TiB. After accounting for the overhead of RAIDz2, you would have 42 TiB but with ZFS you are supposed to reserve 20% of space because it is copy on write. That would leave you with about 33.5 TiB of usable space.
You can fit 6 drives in the front of a Dell Precision T7400 by using these adapters:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3ZZX76/ref=psdc_160354011_t2_B0047BTX4W

 

[Chris Moore]

You guys are saying that a t7400 just won't work, and basically I have to buy $1700 worth of new stuff instead (before even buying the drives). You guys aren't on commission somehow, are you? :D

No. You can use the T7400, or some other used gear. I will be happy to point you at something. I have helped a lot of people on a tight budget find hardware for under $1000.

 

[Chris Moore]

 

[HammerJ]

You can fit 6 drives in the front of a Dell Precision T7400 by using these adapters:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B3ZZX76/ref=psdc_160354011_t2_B0047BTX4W

That's great, but to quote from this forum section: "Will it FreeNAS?" @rvassar says it won't.

 

[HammerJ]

No. You can use the T7400, or some other used gear. I will be happy to point you at something. I have helped a lot of people on a tight budget find hardware for under $1000.

Assuming the t7400 will actually work, would the equipment I listed in my OP (with a different/better NIC), plus the 6-drive adapter set you posted above (to fit six 10tb drives in the t7400), be all I required?

Edit: Regarding that NIC you posted...a $24 Mellanox card would really work??

 

[Chris Moore]

That's great, but to quote from this forum section: "Will it FreeNAS?" @rvassar says it won't.

It is old and you might run into unexpected problems with it, but I think the thing he was answering was about the integrated support (in the CPU) for encryption. The newer CPUs have integrated encryption, but the T7400 does not.

Regarding that NIC you posted...a $24 Mellanox card would really work??

I use a Mellanox card in my FreeNAS and another in my Windows workstation. It works for me. It is an a SFP+ port, so you will need a switch that is able to accept that kind of connector and the appropriate interconnects.

This is all an "on the cheap" solution and I would say it could be done better but that would take more money.

So, if you have a budget to work with, we can do it better. Just let me know how much you want to spend. I am in the 'solicitation for bids' phase of contracting to purchase a new storage server where I work that is expected to cost around $40k. I can throw some ideas your way if you want.

 

[HammerJ]

This is all an "on the cheap" solution and I would say it could be done better but that would take more money. So, if you have a budget to work with, we can do it better. Just let me know how much you want to spend.

If I knew that, you'd know it, heh. The man with the money says: "Let me know how much it would cost to do x", and then if it's too much, he says "Can you figure out a cheaper way?", forcing me to do the same research multiple times until I get a $ amount that he'll accept.

If that's annoying to you, think of how I feel.

 

[rvassar]

That's great, but to quote from this forum section: "Will it FreeNAS?" @rvassar says it won't.

All I said was that CPU doesn't support the AES-NI encryption instruction set.

The chassis & cpu will likely run FreeNAS. I have a Dell SC1430 of similar vintage, same LGA 771 sockets, sitting here burning in a second X5355 CPU as we speak... 2 x 4 core chips @ 120 watts TDP each... The kernel will complain about some missing features, but it does run for me.

Code:

Jun 25 17:57:38 freenas Trying to mount root from zfs:freenas-boot/ROOT/11.1-U5 []...											  
Jun 25 17:57:38 freenas vmx_init: processor does not support desired primary processor-based controls							  
Jun 25 17:57:38 freenas module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vmm, 0xffffffff8281e400, 0) error 22

Not quite sure what to make of that error.

I would not want to pay California electricity prices on this thing. It's raised the temps in my home office 4 deg/F in the last 3 hours... :(

 

[Chris Moore]

If I knew that, you'd know it, heh. The man with the money says: "Let me know how much it would cost to do x", and then if it's too much, he says "Can you figure out a cheaper way?", forcing me to do the same research multiple times until I get a $ amount that he'll accept.

If that's annoying to you, think of how I feel.

I have been through that many times over the years. If you can build a system on the super cheap, they will just want you to do it again. Also, when the hardware breaks, and it always breaks, what will the repair budget be.
You need to get them to commit to this, not only the initial purchase but the life-cycle support.

 

[HammerJ]

I wouldn't want want to pay California electricity prices on this thing. It's raised the temps in my home office 4 deg/F in the last 3 hours... :(

I've got a room *full* of t7400s in the desert northeast of LA, and we just got the (normal, office-quality) air conditioning fixed last week. The room is never even uncomfortable much less hot, and our electric bills are pretty low. The biggest power issue is getting Edison to give us *more* power.

 

[HammerJ]

You need to get them to commit to this, not only the initial purchase but the life-cycle support.

Indeed. Maybe I'll try speccing out a Chenbro 48 and finding a good deal on smaller HDDs. The main reason for going with the 10TB WDReds was because the t7400 had limited bays.

 

[JustinClift]

Since you have a bunch of these T7400's, it sounds like you'll be fine.

As a data point, a few months ago I put together my personal NAS system using an ancient SuperMicro motherboard from Ebay (very cheap at the time), an ancient E8600 cpu I already had, case and power supply (decent quality) I already had too. Had to buy the 8GB of ECC RAM (max the board will take ;>)), but it wasn't overly expensive.

That box uses about 100W when idling, though I only really power the thing on when I need to do something with the data on it - not all that often. I'm also using a cheapo Mellanox card (Ebay) with it, which is working fine. Data transfer speed is limited by the 4TB drives in the box, so it only does a couple hundred MB/s. Perfectly ok for my needs.

With your potential setup, if you're really keen to go with the "use existing equipment" approach... maybe see what it would cost you for 2 of all the bits you'll need (eg 2 x network cards, 2 x the disk drives, etc). That's just from the "it sounds like you're storing important data" perspective, so having a 2nd running box that gets everything automatically replicated to it would be a safety factor. And it gives you a direct hardware backup you can fall back to if the first box dies for any reason. :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Maybe I'll try speccing out a Chenbro 48 and finding a good deal on smaller HDDs.

I got a fantastic deal on my 48 bay Chenbro case. I paid $350 for it because it is a discontinued model and they were trying to clear out the warehouse. It was still in the original factory packing with the cling wrap still on it. I dropped my system board, SAS controller and drives in and it has been perfect. It gave me the room I needed to add 16 more drives in mirror sets to make an iSCSI pool. I wish I had bought a second one at the time, but they are sold out now. It is a fantastic chassis and I still have 12 bays available for adding more drives.

 

[rvassar]

What are you connecting to with this? Should it be a SFP+ NIC?
Something like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/MNPA19-XTR...8-10Gbe-SFP-NETWORK-CARD-W-CABLE/282378633999

Chris,

Quick question: The 10GbE guide suggests Chelsio cards are what iX supports. What's the word on the Mellanox support? The ConnectX-2 cards are the low price option at the moment.

-Rob

 

[Chris Moore]

Chris,

Quick question: The 10GbE guide suggests Chelsio cards are what iX supports. What's the word on the Mellanox support? The ConnectX-2 cards are the low price option at the moment.

-Rob

If I recall correctly, at the time that guide was written, there was no driver support for the Mellanox cards. Pretty much the only game in town was either Intel or Chelsio. I can't say if one is better than the other, but iXsystems selected Chelsio as their 'go to' card for 10Gig and I am not sure if that will change any time soon.
I believe that we have had two version upgrades to BSD (9 to 10 and 10 to 11) in the time since the guide was written and the Mellanox cards are working now. I have a Mellanox card in both my FreeNAS and in the Windows system that I mainly access the NAS from.
In the home brew switch that I build I have two dual port Chelsio cards and two quad port Intel cards.

Here are links to exactly what I used:

MELLANOX CONNECTX-2 PCIe X8 10Gbe SFP+ NETWORK CARD W/CABLE
https://www.ebay.com/itm/282378633999

Chelsio 110-1106-30 Dual Port 10GB Adapter SFP+
https://www.ebay.com/itm/263771776389

Intel 1GB Quad Port NIC 1000VT PCI Express
https://www.ebay.com/itm/232809611135

I already had the system board, processor, ram and a case laying about doing nothing, so the whole solution for me to build a 10Gig switch that has 4 SFP+ ports and 10 ports of regular 1Gig was only about $120, not counting the cards to go in the end points which was another $80. Around $200 got me four systems on 10Gig and 10 ports of 1Gig to connect other devices.

Sorry, I think I got off on a tangent. Did I answer the question?

 

[rvassar]

Sorry, I think I got off on a tangent. Did I answer the question?

Yes, but I'd love a link to the 10GbE/1GbE switch build...

Nevermind... Found it. :)

 

[Chris Moore]

never mind... Found it. :)

What did you find? Is it the same one I found?

 

[rvassar]

What did you find? Is it the same one I found?

Well... I have no way of knowing that actually... But it's part of a popular 3-part Home 10GbE series on YouTube.

Part 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p39mFz7ORco

Might be a good use for my Optiplex 790, once I do my NAS chassis swap. Though I think I'd only get 2x 10GbE & 4 x 1GbE out of the deal on account of limited PCIe slots.