Is this hardware acceptable or should I swap out the MB / CPU / RAM ?? Super Micro -- Is this ECC?

[antsrealm]

Hi guys, I'm in the process of assembling the proper hardware to upgrade my FreeNas server up to reliable / recommended hardware.

I just purchased the following from ebay...

View: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/321538213931?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com.au%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_sacat%3D0%26_from%3DR40%26_nkw%3D321538213931%26_rdc%3D1


It consists of the following:-

Supermicro SuperChassis CSE-836BA Storage chassis
X7DBI+ motherboard w/ 1X E5240 + 8gb RAM

I will buy more ram probably 32gb but I was all set on getting ECC ram. Now this just happens to come with a motherboard, cpu and RAM. What I'm wondering is can I use this hardware and have a reliable system or should I throw those components out, use the chassis and buy a new MB, CPU and RAM ??

Thanks,
Tony.

 

[Ericloewe]

It'll work, but it may be slower than you'd think. Stuff that old is bottlenecked by the FSB, through which everything must pass. I suggest you benchmark it a bit and then decide whether it meets your needs. Keep in mind newer stuff will definitely use a lot less power.

 

[antsrealm]

Thanks, that was what I was afraid of. I'll keep the chassis then and ditch the internals.

Is the stuff Cyber posted back in 2011 still the best choice?

I was looking at getting a Xeon E3-1230v2 and a Supermicro X9SCM with 32gb ECC ram.

I'll be running two groups of drives consisting of 8 x 3TB in z2. All up 16 drives.


Surely there is better hardware choices now then what was posted back in 2011?

Thanks.
Tony.

 

[Ericloewe]

Check the new hardware suggestions sticky. The old choices are still reasonable, but the newer stuff is proven by now, so it's a slightly better choice, all else being equal.

 

[jgreco]

The older X9 stuff is fine and you might find a deal on it, the newer X10 stuff might be fractionally better but you won't be as likely to find a deal on it. It may be slightly more efficient.

I am not running out replacing Sandy E3-1230's with newer CPU's (though I have been giving some serious thought to selling them and getting some nice E5 stuff).

 

[antsrealm]

Yeah my current system that's been running the last few years has an AMD Sempron 145 processor and to be perfectly honest it has performed fine. I don't run any encryption and at this point in time no jails. The main issues I need to address right now is vulnerability in lack of ECC ram and my volume is at 81% and also Z1. So probably power consumption is more of a real issue for me over absolute performance. That said I'd like to know there is no bottlenecks.

Cash is a bit tight at the moment but still happy to spend where I need to, but I'd like to feel like I don't have to worry about it for the next couple of years again after this.

So I've bought that super micro chassis in my OP and now I just need a feel for what MB / CPU and RAM I need to suit the HDD arrangement I mentioned above.

And is the general consensus that the MB, CPU & RAM I currently have in the chassis is not going to cut it ? I always planned to ditch it for new stuff but if it will be fine then it could save me a few dollars. But most importantly I want the peace of mind knowing the RAM etc is up to scratch being ECC.

Current Gear Purchased on Ebay for a good price:-
Supermicro SuperChassis CSE-836BA Storage chassis
X7DBI+ motherboard w/ 1X E5240 + 8gb RAM

 

[antsrealm]

I'm new to the supermicro line of gear and stepping up from conventional gaming PC hardware.

Just realised that MB is a X7 series. So that must be quite old then. As suggested by Eric above.

 

[danb35]

In terms of power consumption, SuperMicro specs a minimum of a 700 watt power supply just for the board. The board and CPU support ECC, and SuperMicro's page on the board (http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000P/X7DBi_.cfm) makes it sound like ECC is required, so you should be covered in that regard. However, new trustworthy RAM for that board is going to be expensive, and won't work with a new board and CPU. Newegg lists 4 GB fully-buffered DIMMs at about $35 each, but if you want any brand name, it's over $100/stick. Assuming your board already have 2 x 4 GB sticks installed, you're looking at $600 minimum to bring the memory up to 32 GB.

What you've got should work and be safe. If the level of performance isn't acceptable, though, I'd probably plan on replacing the motherboard and CPU rather than upgrading the RAM in what you have.

 

[mjws00]

There is a new hardware sticky with current recommendations. Heh, I'd look for the same deal on ram as you got on the case. Sometimes you can find batches of the stuff being dumped. Typically doesn't have the highest density... but you have 16 slots. I agree with danb35 and wouldn't spend much on the upgrade. But even 8GB more would certainly warrant a solid benchmark and test as a stopgap. You'll probably be tempted to get the shiny new board, to match the case and drives ;). Remember this was a great choice in 09. I've certainly got servers much older that still show up every day.

Nice catch on the case. I'm sure you'll love it.

 

[antsrealm]

Yeah it looks like I could track down some extra ram for that current setup. That would by far be the cheapest option and provide a reliable system. Considering I'm currently running on the AMD sempron single core this will surely be a step up. So the only issue now is as Eric mentioned the speed of the RAM. It says the following, "Supports up to 64 GB 667 / 533MHz DDR2 " Lets say I fill it right up with 16 x 4gb sticks and get the full 64gb how do you think it will preform? Where would I see any issues relating to the ram speed?

I really only use it for file sharing in a home environment. Mainly for media files and no encoding or transcoding is being preformed on the FreeNas box just simply data storage.

It also needs to support 2 x M1015 cards to connect the 16 drives via the ssf-8087 connectors to the backplane.

Thanks,
Tony.

 

[mjws00]

I'll let someone else do that math. Spinny rust, and network cards are still MUCH slower than that ram, imho. The old gear burns power and now we have much higher memory density. But for your use case, maxing 1GBe should be simple. :) Of course anything can happen on a rainy day.... but I'm guessing you'll be happy, and the whine of the turbines will give you something to smile about.

 

[antsrealm]

Power consumption is definitely something I'm interested in keeping down. I'm an electrician myself and the power bill is already horrendous. So I'd like to minimize cost there if possible. I'm not worried about a few watts here and there but if I can save 50 - 100 watts then I'd stop and take notice. I believe my current setup with the AMD and 6 drives pulls on average 90 Watts.

Just needs to be a value for money purchase. If It makes sense to spend money upfront to save on the power bill then I'm happy to do it. But if it's not that big of a difference then I wont spend the $1000 or so dollars I'll be looking at to get a new MB / CPU / RAM over here in Australia.

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah it looks like I could track down some extra ram for that current setup. That would by far be the cheapest option and provide a reliable system. Considering I'm currently running on the AMD sempron single core this will surely be a step up. So the only issue now is as Eric mentioned the speed of the RAM. It says the following, "Supports up to 64 GB 667 / 533MHz DDR2 " Lets say I fill it right up with 16 x 4gb sticks and get the full 64gb how do you think it will preform? Where would I see any issues relating to the ram speed?

I really only use it for file sharing in a home environment. Mainly for media files and no encoding or transcoding is being preformed on the FreeNas box just simply data storage.

Thanks,
Tony.

It's difficult to be sure without seeing it do what it'll be doing. The problem is more or less as follows:

The CPU architecture is not much slower than Nehalem, which is still more than enough for a server of this scale (particularly a Xeon). The problem is that the FSB, which is painfully slow, carries everything, including data to/from the memory controller. Since ZFS is rather memory-intensive (lots of data gets read, relatively simple calculations are performed, and data is written back if necessary), you can quickly end up bottlenecked.

Faster RAM may help if you're lucky, but it's unlikely to put a dent in the bottleneck, as it's not in the memory controller.

Of course, the bottleneck may end up being wide enough to allow you to get reasonable speeds, but that's something you'd have to test. I recommend you test it first with 8GB of RAM, to get a feeling of its performance. If it feels like an additional 8GB will help, stick with that option.

In your case, it helps that everything supports the fastest FSB, so it's not a hopeless cause.


Regarding power consumption, let's just say that, at idle, my server (see signature), a pfSense router with an old Core 2-era Pentium and a basic 8 port Gigabit switch together draw less than 100W, with 7 HDDs between them. Expect a drop of a few tens of watts at idle. For similar loads, newer processors will use less power by finishing first (this is harder to attribute a specific number to) and 1.35V DDR3 will easily cut 30% from the memory's power consumption, but this is lower to begin with.

 

[antsrealm]

Ok thanks Eric. Sounds like this will be close to the line and ultimately I want to do an upgrade that will give me something that I can comfortably say will be fine for a while. Say I bought exactly what you have the X10 SLM+-F with the i3, it has a max RAM capacity of 32GB and I will be installing 16 x 3TB drives in this system. Will 32GB be enough or would I need to go above that as I'm suspecting will be the case.

 

[Ericloewe]

Ok thanks Eric. Sounds like this will be close to the line and ultimately I want to do an upgrade that will give me something that I can comfortably say will be fine for a while. Say I bought exactly what you have the X10 SLM+-F with the i3, it has a max RAM capacity of 32GB and I will be installing 16 x 3TB drives in this system. Will 32GB be enough or would I need to go above that as I'm suspecting will be the case.

32GB should be enough, especially if you stick to basic file serving. Future expansion is somewhat limited, unfortunately. If you feel you'd like to reach 64GB or more, there might be some good deals on Ivy Bridge-E stuff, since Haswell-E was just released.

 

[antsrealm]

Ok thanks Eric. Prices over here in Australia are steep and it's hard to track down some of the supermicro boards you guys are using so I'm going to order it all over from the states. This is what I'm looking at going with:-

MB:- Super Micro X10SLM+-F
CPU:- Intel Xeon E3-1220V3 Haswell 3.1GHz BX80646E31220V3
RAM:- Crucial 16GB (2x8GB) CT2KIT102472BD160B --- Going to get two of these kits to get the 32GB

Now I don't see the Crucial ram on the tested memory list for that MB but it looks like people on the forums are using it. Is that selection ok ?

This system will be running with two vdevs (I think that's correct term) that consist of 8 x 3TB drives each in Z2. That totals 16 x 3TB drives in total. Usage will be basic file serving maximum two clients.

What do you guys think?

Thanks
Tony

 

[Ericloewe]

Here's an explanation that'll answer your RAM question.

If you'll be doing basic file server duties, an i3 is more than enough. Xeons are for the people who want to do heavy stuff on their servers, like transcoding or running lots of jails (or virtualize, but that's best avoided in the first place).

Other than that, sounds good. Do you have the HBA yet? If not, the X10SL7-F is better value, as it already includes an LSI SAS 2308 controller for a lot less cash than a separate HBA plus regular motherboard. You'd still be two drives short, but you can get a second HBA (like an M1015) or an SAS expander.

 

[antsrealm]

Ok, I'll look into the I3 then. Yeah I currently have an M1015 but I'd need a second one. The reason I didn't consider that board was it looked like it only had Sata connections no SFF-8087 connectors for the backplanes in my chassis. I was going to get a second M1015 as part of this upgrade.

On the topic of the i3 that has to be a particular model with the 'e' on the end of the part number to support the ECC ram. Is that correct ?

Could you possibly post a link to a suitable i3 for me?

Thanks,

 

[jgreco]

You can use a reverse SFF8087 breakout cable (note that this is different than a regular SFF8087 breakout) to transform four of the X10SL7-F's 2308 ports to SFF8087. You can of course do that twice to get two SFF8087's off the mainboard ports.

 

[Starpulkka]

I recommend to buy these http://akkayatrading.com/uploads/3/2/5/7/3257781/4240614_orig.jpg
also x7 speed is low, if you truely wanna use that case put a new mb+cpu+memory in it. But its kindof silly try heavily modify that case, because you can get so much better stuff. Only good thing looks like you did get a ipmi card with it. =)
speed
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/notes-on-performance-benchmarks-and-cache.981/page-4
on second thouth that x7 has ecc logs and allkind of logs witch is exellent , but its gonna use way more Kwh than you ever have imagined.