Hardware Recommendations Guide Discussion Thread Rev 2a) 2021-01-24

[Ericloewe]

From the watchdog timer issue, perhaps. I think they're still dropping dead from the failure of the voltage sensors though.

Same root cause.

 

[FreeNASBob]

Are you sure. The replacement board they gave me they reported was brand new from the factory and 1/3 of the voltage sensors don't work, or at least they don't report in IPMI server health.

 

[Ericloewe]

Are you sure. The replacement board they gave me they reported was brand new from the factory and 1/3 of the voltage sensors don't work, or at least they don't report in IPMI server health.

Hm, just one third of them? Well, that's not a widespread issue. Might even be fixable with a mixture of resets and reflashes. Worked for me on my X10SLM+-F.

 

[FreeNASBob]

I can't flash because the board doesn't even post. It literally does nothing. The LEDs light up and that's it.

 

[JustinClift]

Although fiber channel and infiniband do work (I believe) they are very far from the mainstream.

As a data point, Infiniband definitely doesn't work with official FreeNAS (yet). ;)

It can be made to work, if people want to build FreeNAS themselves with the Infiniband driver pieces added, or use the (now fairly old) ISO in my GitHub repo.

I'll probably start looking back into adding Infiniband drivers to FreeNAS (officially) in the next few weeks. If I can get the bits all working nicely together, I'll open a PR on GitHub to make this happen. (which hopefully gets accepted :>)

 

[Stux]

Just had a re-read of this excellent document :)

Few points for Eric for the next update

1) Really need to mention the E3-1230v3/4/5 either as E3-1230/1240 or instead of or as well as the 1240. For most people the 1230 is the sweet spot if you want quad core with hyperthreading. 1240 is circa 10% more expensive, for 4% more performance.

2) It might be worth while describing the 1220 as roughy equivalent to two Pentiums. and the 1230 as roughly equivalent to 2 i3s. Because its roughly true ;)

3)

ATX

Larger motherboards are frequently needed due to memory requirements that cannot be met in a microATX form factor, either due to platform limitations (LGA 115x boards) or cost (Xeon-D). Compute is rarely the driving force behind the move to Xeon E5 platforms.

You make a jump here from ATX -> Xeon E5. Might want to preface with something about ATX normally means an E5 2011/2011-3 platform. And then explain why its necessary/not necessary etc.

E5 platforms do have additional power requirements. There is more stuff. I think its circa 20W.

4) "Pressing Hardware into service". This is under the "Advice what not to do" section. Its actually advice on what to do... Perhaps a slightly expanded section by itself, perhaps a "now that I've got the hardware..." ;)

I would suggest a few key links for this section, definately,

HD Burnin Testing: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-hard-drive-burn-in-testing.21451/
And a link to system testing, and perhaps thermal testing.

And finally it might be a good idea to pop in a link to additional scripts:
Useful Scripts

SMART, Config Backups, Swap Control, Fan Control, etc. Worth pointing out that after the hardware is built tested then some scripting can help.

I know its a hardware recommendation guide, but it reads almost like a "everything you needed to know to install freenas" correctly.

I guess a link to that awesome document on initially configuring freenas... I think from @DrKK

Maybe that should be in a "What's Next?" section :)

 

[Ericloewe]

1) Really need to mention the E3-1230v3/4/5 either as E3-1230/1240 or instead of or as well as the 1240. For most people the 1230 is the sweet spot if you want quad core with hyperthreading. 1240 is circa 10% more expensive, for 4% more performance.

I'll take a look at it, don't remember what I recommended, exactly. The original version was indeed rushed.

) It might be worth while describing the 1220 as roughy equivalent to two Pentiums. and the 1230 as roughly equivalent to 2 i3s. Because its roughly true ;)

It's probably best to compare them to i5s/i7s, since that's what people who do not love their data use for servers and transcoding and stuff. :p

3) You make a jump here from ATX -> Xeon E5. Might want to preface with something about ATX normally means an E5 2011/2011-3 platform. And then explain why its necessary/not necessary etc.

I might want to make it a bit clearer. I'll have to look at it.

4) "Pressing Hardware into service". This is under the "Advice what not to do" section. Its actually advice on what to do... Perhaps a slightly expanded section by itself, perhaps a "now that I've got the hardware..." ;)

I'm not too worried about strictly following section titles. As for expanded sections, that's probably something I'd like to avoid...

I know its a hardware recommendation guide, but it reads almost like a "everything you needed to know to install freenas" correctly.

...because this would make it take up even more of my time. If I can get help, I will definitely consider making a more comprehensive guide, sort of like the pfSense book without the absurd price model. It is not something I can do on my own, though. Hell, if iX thinks that they want something like that, I'd be glad to help if I could share the load with someone else.
Another concern is keeping this independent of FreeNAS 9.x or 10. It's clear that the software has massive differences, but the hardware is going to be the same, so it's good practice to keep this separate.

 

[Ericloewe]

Might as well update everybody on the current scheduling:

I expect to have R2 ready on 2017-02-17. Unless Intel surprises us with a larger Atom C3000 release, no new hardware of particular note will be included, it'll be just a bunch of fixes and tweaks, along with a glossary and a revised layout.

 

[John Doe]

The hardware recommendation guide is locked behind the requirement of registration.
In my opinion it would be better to also offer it for those, that are not registered on the forum.

 

[Ericloewe]

The hardware recommendation guide is locked behind the requirement of registration.
In my opinion it would be better to also offer it for those, that are not registered on the forum.

It is? I had no idea.

@JoshDW19 - any objections to allowing guests to view resources normally? Can it be easily (by xenforo standards anyway) changed?

 

[JoshDW19]

Sure it can be done. I just don't know how safe it is, or how it would affect server loads (i.e. if it would make us an easier target for different types of DOS attacks). Let me talk to the IT guys about it, and do some research.

 

[JustinClift]

Hmmm, for this one specific doc (hardware recommendations guide), it should be pretty trivial to mirror it to a static file serving location (eg capable of high load without impacting the forum), and provide the link for that in the post.

This already has doc stuff, so it might be a good choice:

http://download.freenas.org/documentation/

Another possibility:

https://www.ixsystems.com/docs/

 

[Arvi LEFEVRE]

Hi, I was looking in the forum but couldn't find anything about it, but no one should use atom cxxx anymore: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/07/intel_atom_failures_go_back_18_months/

 

[JustinClift]

... no one should use atom cxxx anymore

Isn't that an overkill approach? From the discussion around it on various sites, Intel fixed the problem and released an updated version.

So, it should be more a matter of making sure a person gets the new+improved version, not the older busted ones.

In theory anyway. :)

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi, I was looking in the forum but couldn't find anything about it, but no one should use atom cxxx anymore: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/07/intel_atom_failures_go_back_18_months/

Clearly you didn't look hard enough.

The discussion is ongoing, and I'm still evaluating what to do in the guide.

 

[JustinClift]

@Arvi LEFEVRE: This seems to be the thread you were looking for: :)

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...s-system-fault-may-lead-to-dead-system.50314/

 

[Ericloewe]

The hardware recommendation guide is locked behind the requirement of registration.
In my opinion it would be better to also offer it for those, that are not registered on the forum.

Ok, the issue has been examined and guests should now be able to download the files.

 

[Ericloewe]

Given the recent C2000 developments, I've decided to do the following:

• Postpone the new major version for a while (around a month, tops)
• Add a quick and dirty warning to the document and to the resource page

The next major version will be be substantially the same as previously planned.

 

[Andrii Stesin]

Just a small note. The guide tells us: " Most FreeNAS servers would not benefit from a second CPU." The first word here seems to be misplaced. If you want to use FreeNAS for media server of Docker container carrier, multiple CPUs will bring you great benefit in performance. Maybe this statement needs to be expanded into 2 small paragraphs for 2 different usage patterns (one is simple NAS with minimal additional functionality, and second is i.e. Docker container carrier or host system for multiple VMs).

 

[SweetAndLow]

Just a small note. The guide tells us: " Most FreeNAS servers would not benefit from a second CPU." The first word here seems to be misplaced. If you want to use FreeNAS for media server of Docker container carrier, multiple CPUs will bring you great benefit in performance. Maybe this statement needs to be expanded into 2 small paragraphs for 2 different usage patterns (one is simple NAS with minimal additional functionality, and second is i.e. Docker container carrier or host system for multiple VMs).

I disagree, a 8+ core CPU is great for VM workflows. No need to increase your power consumption by adding another. Now if you want 10vms running then maybe you need something bigger but at that point you should have a server just for vms.

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