Microserver Gen10+ G5420 or Xeon E-2224 ?

[jradley]

Hi,

I'm planning to build a new 48TB freenas server based around an HPE Microserver Gen10+. I'm using this platform because of the small form factor and it will fit well with the one I already have (running VMWare ESXi and various hosts).

I don't know whether to go for the very pricey E-2224 or the bit less pricey G5420. I don't intend to run many services on the NAS - possibly Plex but probably nothing else. Day-to-day usage would not be particularly I/O intensive (apart from the initial loading copying from my older freenas boxes and taking backups). The G5420 comes with 8GB memory and the E-2224 with 16GB. If I were to get an extra 8GB for the G5420 to make it equal the cost difference between the platforms is about £120.

In a real world home environment am I likely to see any difference between the 2 CPU's ? Are there services or situations that are CPU intensive that I may not have thought about that would warrant the higher end model ?

Many thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Cheers,

John

 

[blanchet]

The Pentium G5420 may fit your current needs but you will hit its limits sooner, therefore

• I would recommend the Pentium G5420 only for people who are discovering FreeNAS for the first time, and that want to invest as less money as possible in their project.
• For seasoned users, who are skilled enough to use jails and VM, the Xeon E2224 is a better deal.

The Xeon E-2224

• is twice more powerful
• runs memory at 2666 MHz instead of 2400 MHz
• comes with a single 16 GB DDR4 DIMM, so you can expand later to 32 GB

You should also purchase the iLO Enablement Kit (HPE part number P13788-B21). It is expensive but very useful.

Reference

• https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-plus-review-this-is-super/
• https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-plus-ultimate-customization-guide/

 

[Evertb1]

possibly Plex

If your FreeNAS box is just for storage the Pentium is plenty. FreeNAS itself is not CPU intensive. If you want to do more with, it like running Plex (especially if you wan to do transcoding for example) the Xeon would be a much better choise.

 

[jradley]

Many thanks for your replies.

My thinking was to go for the Xeon, but it's good to get some experienced feedback. I'm not new to freenas - I have 6 of them already dating back to 2011, spread across N36L, Gen 8 and Gen10 microservers. I don't consider myself a power user though - I set them up, shove data on them and let them do their own thing. My plan for the new box is to consolidate the older boxes into one and then use them as backups only rather than serving live data - at 9 years old it's something of a miracle they haven't gone tilt yet.

Just looking at the cost of the server itself the increment in cost for Xeon looks quite hefty. However, thinking about it, once I've stuffed 4x 12TB drives in it and bumped the memory to 16GB the cost of the lot will be over £2k. At that point it seems a bit silly to quibble over £100 and miss out on the opportunity to expand its usage in the future.

Cheers,

John