Hello from Cleveland + New build!

[Happymanny1986]

Hello Everyone, my name is Manny, and I'm joining the team from Cleveland, OH. I'm a long time lurker, but first time poster. I've been contemplating a FreeNAS home server for a while and I've finally pulled the trigger and started buying parts for it. Here's what I have so far:

Processor: Intel Xeon E3-1276v3
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SLA-F-O
RAM: Crucial 32GB ECC UDIMM
CPUCooler: Included with Xeon
Case: Supermicro SC846
PSU: Included with Case
HDDs: 4TB Toshiba 7200 RPM 128MB Cache - Qty: 6
Cables: SFF-8087 (mSAS) cable

I still need a HBA which I will kindly ask for your help on but that's a topic for another thread.

Thanks for having me and I'm looking forward to good times with you all in the future.

-Manny

 

[Spearfoot]

Hi, Manny! Welcome to the funhouse!

The IBM M1015 is a good choice for a disk controller and can be had for around $100 on ebay.

 

[Happymanny1986]

Thanks for the reply Spearfoot, I literally just bought a LSI 9211-8i about 5 minutes before your reply. I found that both the LSI 9211-8i and the IBM m1015 can be found for roughly the same price.

The question I was going to ask before was: Assuming that both cards were the same price/condition, which would you get - the LSI 9211-8i, or an IBM m1015? I went with the LSI card in the end, because the impression I got was that flashing to the correct firmware/mode was a bit more straightforward. Let me know what you think, it's not too late to change my mind.

 

[Spearfoot]

Ha! Great minds think alike!

AFAIK, the LSI-9211 and IBM M1015 are pretty much identical... gory details here:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/confused-about-that-lsi-card-join-the-crowd.11901/
http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

 

[Ericloewe]

The question I was going to ask before was: Assuming that both cards were the same price/condition, which would you get - the LSI 9211-8i, or an IBM m1015?

The one whose SFF-8087 sockets are better positioned for the destination chassis. :p

Motherboard: Supermicro X10SLA-F-O

Why did you get a motherboard with a crapload of PCI slots? For modern workloads, an X10SLL+-F would have been better suited, since it spreads out the 16 CPU PCI-e lanes across two slots, with the 4 PCH lanes on a third PCI-e slot (and no conventional PCI).

 

[Happymanny1986]

Why did you get a motherboard with a crapload of PCI slots? For modern workloads, an X10SLL+-F would have been better suited, since it spreads out the 16 CPU PCI-e lanes across two slots, with the 4 PCH lanes on a third PCI-e slot (and no conventional PCI).

I went with that motherboard because I got it stupid cheap. It was an open box return from Micro Center with about a dozen price reduction tags on it because it sat on the shelf for so long. (Micro Center periodically reduces the price of open box items that aren't selling until they do sell) On top of that Micro Center was having an open box/clearance event with an additional 30% off of select open box/clearance tag items. At the end of the day, I ended up getting this motherboard for around $40 + tax. I think it was money well spent assuming it works. I should be assembling and booting it up Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. If it doesn't work, I'll return it and get something more suitable, but I think for the money it should suit my needs well enough. I only plan on running one HBA at the moment.

 

[DrKK]

I went with that motherboard because I got it stupid cheap. It was an open box return from Micro Center with about a dozen price reduction tags on it because it sat on the shelf for so long. (Micro Center periodically reduces the price of open box items that aren't selling until they do sell) On top of that Micro Center was having an open box/clearance event with an additional 30% off of select open box/clearance tag items. At the end of the day, I ended up getting this motherboard for around $40 + tax. I think it was money well spent assuming it works. I should be assembling and booting it up Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. If it doesn't work, I'll return it and get something more suitable, but I think for the money it should suit my needs well enough. I only plan on running one HBA at the moment.

Surprised your Micro Center even had this capitated in their inventory model. Our Micro Center (Baltimore/Towson) only has the occasional X10SLL, and not much else.

 

[Happymanny1986]

Surprised your Micro Center even had this capitated in their inventory model. Our Micro Center (Baltimore/Towson) only has the occasional X10SLL, and not much else.

I thought it was strange too. They carry hundreds of different motherboard models, but this is only one of 2 server specific motherboards they carry at my store. Considering what it is, it really is kind of a strange choice of server motherboard to stock. How many people come in the store looking for motherboards with a ton of PCI (rather than PCIe) slots? It definitely wasn't my first choice, but the price was certainly right, and it should certainly meet/exceed the needs of everything I need it to do.

I plan to put the M1015 in the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, and saving the PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for an SFP+ 10Gb card someday. Let me know if this is incorrect, but the logic i'm following is that the PCIe 2.0 x4 slot can support roughly 2000 MB/s transfer which is more than enough to saturate a 10Gb connection which should theoretically cap around 1200 MB/s transfer. The case I purchased has 24 ports on its backplane, and assuming each drive is capable of around 150 MB/s transfer, then I would need a lane that can support up to 3600 MB/s at any given time to fully saturate all 24 drives at any given time. I'm currently only going to run 6 drives, so most of this is a moot point (especially once you consider that the sas expander only uses 1 SFF-8087 port capping throughput to ~3000MB/s), but I will expand in the future as my funds allow and as the necessity arises. This is purely theoretical and none of this takes into account the performans of the various ZFS RAID levels, or any other factors for that matter.

tl;dr: This motherboard should suit my needs for a while. The network connection will be the bottleneck even with 10Gb.

 

[Happymanny1986]

As luck would have it I couldn't use the motherboard after all. When I popped the cover off to install the CPU, i was presented with no less than 3 visibly bent pins, so I returned it.

I knew the price was too good to be true.... oh well. I replaced it with a X10SLL-F.