FreeNAS, Ryzen, Virtualization

[J_Darnley]

I have been looking at building a programming server and a NAS server. I want a Ryzen for the first part and I think I want to use FreeNAS for the second part. After seeing the release of FreeNAS 11 and its virtualization feature Bhyve I wondered: Would it be a good idea to combine them? Have one computer running FreeNAS with a virtual machine running Linux. This would be my first use of FreeNAS, FreeBSD and BSD in general.

Is using FreeNAS on a Ryzen a good idea? I don't know what the hardware support is like, ECC in particular. Does FreeNAS/Bhyve support AMD's virtualization features?

I haven't settled on any specific hardware yet other than the CPU (AMD Ryzen 7 1700) and maybe the motherboard (ASUS Prime B350 Plus). Other than that: 32 or 64 GB unbuffered ECC DDR4 RAM, NVMe boot disk, 4 maybe more 3.5 inch storage drives depending on total cost, quality power supply.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Arwen]

The AMD Ryzen is a bit too new for us to really give good feedback. And yes, many things I have read say the new AMD processors, including Ryzen support ECC. (It's up to the mother board manufacturers to implement ECC, they don't have to.)

Basically we are conservative, (we want our data to live!).

In regards to the Asus Prime B350 Plus motherboard you have listed, it's generally not a good idea to use workstation or desktop hardware with server OSes. (Desktop & Workstation boards will have useless things for a server function, like audio, PS/2 ports, extra video ports... and then lack BMC/IPMI.)

Please note that if you do install FreeNAS as the host OS, it does not really allow use of the video, keyboard, mouse and audio for a client OS. Meaning if you want a true desktop experience, you can't really use FreeNAS. That said, you can use ZVols off of the FreeNAS for your boot devices of a desktop. And of course use any amount of Samba/CIFS or NFS shares from the FreeNAS.

 

[davidgreystahl]

I have been also looking at building a computer server. I like MB of Super micro X10SDV-TLN4F with Cpu Intel D 1541 Xeon Processor included. Planning on Memory 32GB 2400 RDIMM ECC memory. This would get me 8 4GB VM's with a fair amount of processing power - 1 core with 2 threads. Or 4 8GB VMs with 2 Cores (4 total threads). The CPU seems to perform pretty well - the system is designed for low power which I like.

 

[SweetAndLow]

I would avoid amd because supportability might not be there yet. I also hate their motherboards, they are just so cheap and don't have the features needed.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[joeschmuck]

Well I have to jump in because of my FreeNAS AMD roots. I went against the grain when I joined FreeNAS, everyone told me that AMD was no good. I did my research and found out that AMD was very well supported by FreeBSD. AMD supported motherboards were not all great and finding one that supports ECC RAM was a risk but I found one. The only true downside was the NIC eventually needed to be upgraded to an INTEL NIC. Otherwise that AMD system ran perfectly fine.

With all that said, if you want to use an AMD processor then you are still taking a risk because there are few if any people running this platform so you won't know what bugs there are lurking. However FreeBSD does support AMD and even bhyve supports AMD CPUs now (it didn't originally).

Not to address virtualization... This is just me but if you have serious plans to virtualize different OS's then I would recommend you run ESXi and virtualize FreeNAS and your other VMs using ESXi. It is a product made exclusively for virtualization. If you plan to run just a few small VMs and feel FreeNAS will do that for you, well you sure can do that in bhyve. The one thing you need to understand is that when you virtualize your systems, if there are any dependancies on them then you need to ensure they start up in the proper order and shutdown in the proper order or things will not work so well.

 

[J_Darnley]

Thank you for you input so far. I should clear up a couple of things.

In regards to the Asus Prime B350 Plus motherboard you have listed, it's generally not a good idea to use workstation or desktop hardware with server OSes. (Desktop & Workstation boards will have useless things for a server function, like audio, PS/2 ports, extra video ports... and then lack BMC/IPMI.)

Please note that if you do install FreeNAS as the host OS, it does not really allow use of the video, keyboard, mouse and audio for a client OS. Meaning if you want a true desktop experience, you can't really use FreeNAS. That said, you can use ZVols off of the FreeNAS for your boot devices of a desktop. And of course use any amount of Samba/CIFS or NFS shares from the FreeNAS.

I would not be using this as a desktop. I would be connecting to the guest Linux OS through SSH. (I think guest is the right term here.) I know the desktop features of the motherboard would be going to waste but I don't think there are any server-class boards with server-class features for Ryzen processors. I expect those to be reserved for the slightly more professional Zen based processors. I'm already wasting these feature on an old desktop which is running Linux that I use remotely.

Not to address virtualization... This is just me but if you have serious plans to virtualize different OS's then I would recommend you run ESXi and virtualize FreeNAS and your other VMs using ESXi. It is a product made exclusively for virtualization. If you plan to run just a few small VMs and feel FreeNAS will do that for you, well you sure can do that in bhyve. The one thing you need to understand is that when you virtualize your systems, if there are any dependancies on them then you need to ensure they start up in the proper order and shutdown in the proper order or things will not work so well.

I was only planning this 1 VM as a replacement for the Linux install I mentioned above.

It seems like advice so far is "proceed at your own peril".

 

[diedrichg]

It seems like advice so far is "proceed at your own peril".

Yes, but I know a bunch of us are curious if a Ryzen machine would be compatible, we're just waiting on someone to do the testing.

 

[joeschmuck]

Oh go ahead, jump in with both feet and take good notes. Let us know how it goes. Ensure your motherboard supports ECC RAM and has been qualified with ECC RAM, ensure you have an Intel NIC. Take photos! :)

 

[gpsguy]

In a post on r/freenas several months ago, @Kris Moore mentioned he was considering a Ryzen system.

If he did, I'm sure the users here, would like to know how it's working.