Is Asus H87i-PLUS motherboard working?

[ksp]

Hi!
I'm looking into upgrading my somewhat dated FreeNAS 0.7.2. running on Atom MB. The ASUS H87i-PLUS with Haswell chipset and Intel i217 NIC seems to be a good choice for me, but I can't find any success stories on the freeNAS site, just bug reports. Is anybody running it successfully?

 

[XXXwsdf]

No luck here :-(

I have the Asus H871-plus with the intel G3220 CPU, 4x 4TB WD Red HDD.

FreeNAS 9.1.1 keeps hanging on boot:

Code:

F1  FreeBSD
F2  FreeBSD
F5  Drive 1
 
F6 PXE
Boot: F1
\

I've tried the previous version (8.3.2) and got further. FreeNAS booted, but it does not recognize the built in Intel i217 network interface :-(

 

[XXXwsdf]

OK, got it going.

I reverting back to the idiot-proof CD installation, to install onto the USB drive.
Booted the USB drive, it did its job.

Then new problem... the boot stops at "mountroot".

After digging around, you need to disable xHCI from the BIOS.

Now, I'm configuring the server via the web interface as we speak.

 

[gabureiru]

OK, got it going.

I reverting back to the idiot-proof CD installation, to install onto the USB drive.
Booted the USB drive, it did its job.

Then new problem... the boot stops at "mountroot".

After digging around, you need to disable xHCI from the BIOS.

Now, I'm configuring the server via the web interface as we speak.

What version is the one that worked with your method?

 

[tropic]

... after digging around, you need to disable xHCI from the BIOS.

Heh. Took me half an hour to figure that out, too.

 

[enemy85]

Just a question,
your board doesn't support ecc ram, right?

 

[engmsf]

The Asus H87I-Plus does not support ECC ram. It does have 6 SATA connections and is a great affordable FreeNAS board for combining with old parts and as a Plex Media Server. If you use FreeNAS as main storage and have data that is vital, then maybe you would want a server class board with ECC ram.

 

[cyberjock]

I wouldn't call it a "great affordable board".

Compare it to the Supermicro X9SCM-F at about $40 more.

- Asus' board has audio chipset(will consume power forever)
- Asus' board is limited to 16GB of RAM(limited upgrade potential)
- Asus' board uses non-ECC(not really recommended for ZFS for obvious reasons)
- Asus' board has only 1 upgrade slot(very limited upgrade potential)

 

[engmsf]

I wouldn't be surprise if the original poster is looking at another ITX motherboard. Large computers are old school and just don't look cool at home anymore. It has been 4-5 years since I last bought an atx or matx. Even my gaming beast is ITX in a Node 304 case. Some of us get an ITX itch and just can't go back to those large boxes.

 

[BrandonS]

So would you recommend against using ZFS with this board due to the non-ECC RAM?

Basically that would limit it to the 5TB maximum recommendation for UFS volumes (I think this is usable, not RAW). With 6 SATA connections available that means you would either use <=1TB drvies in a RAID6 setup or >=3TB 3-way mirroring. It's kind of a weird pool design conundrum with all those SATA connections and non-ECC RAM.

I am starting to wish I wouldn't have purchased this board now if this is all true.

 

[Knowltey]

With a fileserver in general you shouldn't be using non-ECC RAM, but especially so with ZFS. Anything that does checksumming and then will fix data if the checksum is wrong means that a bad bit in ram can snowball the entire filesystem with garbage, simply because a checksum system like that expects that RAM is correct, it's designed with ECC in mind.

 

[cyberjock]

So would you recommend against using ZFS with this board due to the non-ECC RAM?

Yes. I'd never use that board with ZFS.

I am starting to wish I wouldn't have purchased this board now if this is all true.

I agree. And I see this crap so frequently because I tell people to do their homework, but it's an uphill battle. FreeNAS is not your standard Windows Desktop. And far too many people wrong assume that what's good enough for Windows is good enough for everything. The reality is that Windows sets the bar VERY low.

 

[BrandonS]

My driving factor for this board was using a Mini-ITX case. When it comes down to it, there are hardly any Mini-ITX boards that should be used with ZFS. I guess I will be redesigning my setup to use this board.

Lesson learned: if you plan using ZFS, it will most likely need to be in a Micro-ATX case or bigger based on motherboard availability.

Thank you.

 

[Knowltey]

My driving factor for this board was using a Mini-ITX case. When it comes down to it, there are hardly any Mini-ITX boards that should be used with ZFS. I guess I will be redesigning my setup to use this board.

Lesson learned: if you plan using ZFS, it will most likely need to be in a Micro-ATX case or bigger based on motherboard availability.

Thank you.

No, plenty of our users use Mini-ITX cases for their FreeNAS builds.

 

[cyberjock]

No, plenty of our users use Mini-ITX cases for their FreeNAS builds.

What you "can" use, what you "should" use, and what "many users" use are different subsets. There is an ASROCK board that is mini-itx that iXsystems is testing. It's an Intel Atom(newer one with MAJOR performance increase) that is everything you'd want from a FreeNAS server.. 12 SATA ports, ECC RAM, Intel NIC, etc.

Personally, if someone wants to go mini-itx and they are forgoing ECC RAM, they should have just gone with a Windows server in my opinion.

 

[Knowltey]

What you "can" use, what you "should" use, and what "many users" use are different subsets. There is an ASROCK board that is mini-itx that iXsystems is testing. It's an Intel Atom(newer one with MAJOR performance increase) that is everything you'd want from a FreeNAS server.. 12 SATA ports, ECC RAM, Intel NIC, etc.

Personally, if someone wants to go mini-itx and they are forgoing ECC RAM, they should have just gone with a Windows server in my opinion.

You can easily find a Mini-ITX that supports ECC and isn't restricted to using an Atom processor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...57466&ef_id=UpA9ZAAABWfXA6w7:20131204001417:s

and this thread here about a mini-itx build that uses an i3 and ECC: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/mini-itx-c226-haswell-build.15371/

 

[Dusan]

You can easily find a Mini-ITX that supports ECC and isn't restricted to using an Atom processor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?gclid=COaR6dmklbsCFTRo7AodUyMAfA&Item=N82E16813157466&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Server Motherboards-_-N82E16813157466&ef_id=UpA9ZAAABWfXA6w7:20131204001417:s

and this thread here about a mini-itx build that uses an i3 and ECC: http://forums.freenas.org/threads/mini-itx-c226-haswell-build.15371/

That's probably the only currently available mITX board that makes sense for a FreeNAS build (6 SATA ports, Intel NIC, IPMI, ECC). It only became available recently (Haswell) and is still very hard to get in many parts of the world. Few months ago there was no such board available, so I really doubt there are "plenty" of users with mITX & ECC (of which you seem to be a huge supporter).

 

[cyberjock]

LOL @Knowley

You found the one board out there that has ECC and is mini-ITX. We've had some people that go with some AMD solutions, but they instantly get the whole system shoved up their butts when they realize that either the NIC isn't compatible with FreeNAS, the SATA ports aren't compatible with FreeNAS, the darn thing won't boot FreeNAS, or a combination of all 3. Then, to make matters worse you only have 1 PCIe slot available, so what do you do if your NIC won't work and you need 8 SATA ports? Suddenly you have a nonviable system that's brank spanking new.

That board didn't exist 2 months ago, and it's only available in a few countries. There's lots of rumors of it never being available in some countries, but nobody is 100% sure of how much distribution the board will see. I used to use AsRock years ago, but I haven't lately. Honestly, I'm a little nervous about going to them for server grade parts. But, many people value a system that is mini-itx over everything else, so will happily buy it even if its deemed to be failure prone or have some other problem that makes it a poor choice for long term stability. I'm not saying this will happen, but I think it's something that should be considered for a company that has always been in the desktop world and suddenly is going into the server world.

 

[Knowltey]

Perhaps I'm actually thinking of MicroATX then since that miniITX seems to be smaller than I was thinking in my head when I looked at it.

 

[cyberjock]

Mini-ITX has 1 "slot" for expansion(hopefully PCIe). MicroATX has up to 4 slots.