Moving to freenas MB suggestions

[9C1 Newbee]

I was in the same boat. I had very marginal hardware. I spent good money trying to make that hardware work. That was money I wasted that could have went toward a proper build.

FreeNAS 10 will be out soon. It looks bad ass. I don't think it is gonna use less ram.

My advice? Follow what jgreco tells you to do to the letter.

 

[jgreco]

My advice? Follow what jgreco tells you to do to the letter.

"Take $1000 in small, unmarked bills, put them in an envelope, and mail to Resident Grinch, P.O. Box 16, Milwaukee, WI 53201"

;-) ;-) ;-)

 

[fizzgig656]

Lol. If I had that much paper money to send you I'd wouldnt have started this thread.
Ive got some us cents coins......

 

[TheDubiousDubber]

Are there any requirements of this new system that are particularly important to you? It may be helpful if you provide some more detail in regards to what you are looking for and what is a priority over what. You obviously like the idea of a low power atom board which is also going to be uATX or mini-ITX. Does the size of the MB factor in at all? Is there a power limit you don't want to exceed? Or a budget you can't go over? If you are looking to spend less, older equipment is generally a better option, like the X8 series Supermicro boards, but in turn, they consume more power. If you want it to fit a mini-ITX case, then it's going to cost more money, and in some cases require SODIMMs which aren't as readily available. There are a lot of desirable things to have when looking at hardware, but more often than not, they are proportional to cost. If you know your limits and your must-haves, then its a lot easier to make recommendations.

 

[fizzgig656]

OK, this might be easier if i tell you what i have first and all i want really is upgrade to freenas.

I have a custom case, with a mini ITX intel atom d2700mud board with 4gb ram(the max), a 4bay HDD icydock (currently 2x 1tb mirrored zfs and 2x 500gb mirrored zfs), 1 mini 2port SATA controller, 300w atx psu, running freenas.

With this i use (loosely put) file sharing (CIFS/SMB and NFS for Raspberry pi2), Dynamic DNS, transmission, plexmediaserver(within finch). I have used owncloud but ive stoped now as most of what i wanted to do i can do with plex. think thats it.
95% of the time the nas is idle even with transmission and plex running but not used, hence why i don't want it to use much power while idling, at present the current setup idles are 47w. It holds music and videos and some backups of photos from my laptop. i do sometimes use it remotely hence why i want it on 24/7.
Plex has never been used for video playing only testing, mainly music now and then, possibly more used for downloading media at remote locations or for DLNA, but thats not used much either.
Speed is not important as long as it can do the job ie, i can if I wanted to, stream a video using plex to transcode and with my current setup it nearly maxed out, but not quite this is ok as it didnt effect playback. And it's unlikely to have anything or any one else use it.
as its a custom case (pic in thread already) i can make a new motherboard mount plate if needed (and not some dodgy thing held together with sticky tape a proper plate with mounts). It is currently mounted vertically and could take a board with max dimensions of 20cm wide x possibly 20cm long. or it could be mounted flat but it could only be 16cm wide but a possible 38cm long.

money, this is always difficult. obviously i dont want to spend more than i need too or spend money on stuff i dont really need (hence trying to discuss it here) but i still dont want to limit myself and end up with crap just because ive said i dont want to spend more than.......! ive been happy (or some people may say lucky) with my current setup for the last 3 years but i have now added a few more things, plex and moved to zfs etc) from just filestore and feel freenas will be better and easier to use.

Does that answer everything? must have is as you say dependant on what can be afforded. file sharing foremost, then its the the question of have to access it etc.

 

[fizzgig656]

Am I right in thinking asus motherboards and amd processors are not advised?

 

[betso]

Yes, you are right.
In his excellent posting about hardware recommendations @cyberjock writes something that appears quite compelling to me:

AMD systems, on average, do not make good FreeNAS boxes. Why? because AMD is targeted at the lower end market. AMD doesn't put the kind of resources into R&D that Intel does for FreeBSD code, doesn't provide the kind of driver support that Intel does to FreeBSD, and AMD sells a CPU while Intel sells a chipset and CPU which narrows down the options of what motherboards will use. AMD boards often have just about any model of addon that exists while Intel's are typically a pretty narrow range. You buy an Intel board and it's virtually guaranteed to have an Intel SATA controller. These work quite well. AMD can be almost anything. Random things that aren't listed in the specs have been problems for people. Go with AMD and there's a significant chance that you'll lose out on little things like CPU temperature monitoring that will probably drive you nuts. Sorry but the fix is to go ask AMD to fix their problems.

Edit: I have removed the AMD hardware that was listed below because it's just not recommended by iXsystems, so recommending it here seems silly. To quote the CTO of iXsystems "We simply don't have any AMD machines to test with and the FreeBSD discussion lists are full of issues concerning AMD interoperability, which of course FreeNAS has inherited."

I am reading the forum for the last week with the same goal (and similar requirements) as you and the above text made me focus on Intel based solutions only.

 

[fizzgig656]

Yes. I'm not the only one :) lol. I've been looking for a reasonable mini itx intel embedded atom or celeron which supports ecc (as it seems a must) but with 4 sata ports. It's not easy. The supermicro boards are nice. Also seeing is asrock or other do them. Also now thinking of new case and psu. As there's different options about now. So much for small upgrade and moving os to freenas. Makes sense to ensure its up to spec.

 

[fizzgig656]

Can anyone shed some light on idle power consumption. Do most processors idle very low? Ie is there much difference in me getting an atom board vs a socket 1155 processor and board?

 

[jgreco]

The E3's and the Avotons do idle pretty low. Not that unusual for a system without drives to take ~30 watts idle. The Xeons a bit more, possibly.

 

[fizzgig656]

Are G2020 or G2120 processor ok?

Also any advise ATX power supply's more in format rather than 80+ (im looking at 80+ gold min) ie Flex, Micro or mini ATX ?

Can i also ask the people who have commented in this thread if they use freenas primarily for home or business use? just so i can gauge your basis for the comments and advise.

 

[fizzgig656]

Would a SUPERMICRO Model MBD-X9SCM-O and g2020 processor ("borrowed" I guess xeon would be better but could upgrade that later) be suitable? I know I would need a new case.

Does anyone know the idle power consumption with setup or help me work it out?

 

[cyberjock]

Why not read my hardware recommendations thread instead of asking questions that I've already answered in a very well written and thorough thread. ;)

PS - That's probably why nobody responded to you before. People get tired of answering questions that we've already worked to answer for you if you read the posts. ;)

 

[fizzgig656]

Im sorry If im asking the same questions that other have, its not intentional and i have been constantly trying to find search etc to be bosses disgust, i have read so many different guides on requirements and surgestions, and dont get me wrong as there all useful, some more relevant to me that others, but some info (like power consumption) i cant seem to find out, I can only assume most CPU and motherboards idle about the same (jgreco mention E3's and avatons idle pritty low what about G2020)I guess i dont help by changing my plans/thoughts to fit in with what ive got/can get!

After going back over your guide I can see you specificity mention both motherboard and processor - again apologies - I had read your guide (more than twice) but more than likely it didn't sink in as i was thinking of Atom based and ITX, now im thinking other options that are open to me.

You mention G2020 is not a good choice for CPU demanding jails like transcoding in plex. this does worry me a tiny bit, my current atom isnt great but does do it (nearly maxed out cpu and if i could get freenas to work on it i expect it not to transcode plex). this isnt something i constantly do but if i install plex i would like to know i can still use it to transcode and stream video (as mentioned previously i dont want to shoot myself in the foot because i can find something that seems to do the job - guess i could always change the CPU aftwards!!). plus i see does have a higher benchmart than my atom. I guess my question is can it still do it.

If anyone does have this setup of X9SCM and G2020, could they tell me if plex works ok possible CPU usage? any results for power consumption when idle?

 

[jgreco]

Power consumption floor for most technology will be pretty low and fairly similar across similar platforms.

"Plex works OK" is a nonstarter; Plex in direct playing mode uses next to nothing, but Plex in transcoding gets into complicated questions of what sort of source material, bitrate, etc. Kind of like asking "is my garden hose sufficient to water my lawn" without any idea of the diameter of the hose, or if we're talking a 100'x100' parcel or sixteen acres.

 

[fizzgig656]

Ok fair enough, I see your point. cant be any worse thank my current atom though? and if it does struggle i guess on this board i could upgrade the CPU?

 

[jgreco]

Depends on your current Atom. If you currently have an Atom Avoton C2750, that's a fairly competent processor which pulls in around 6500-7000. A traditional Atom pulls in at around a pathetic 1000.

The G2020 pulls in around 4000, so that's better than the D525 but crappier than the C2750. But you can probably find a used X9SCM and G2020 for ~$150 on eBay whereas the C2750 is a more premium ~$300ish.

For completeness, an Ivy E3-1230 v2 will come in around 12000 so perhaps you can see why we tend to like that solution. Nobody seems to run out of steam very easily with that. If you do, you can always move on up to the X10SRL and E5-1650 v3 (around 20000) but that's probably out there on the ridiculous end.

 

[fizzgig656]

ok, one again, thanks. Yes my current atom come in arround 890 so yes poor. but one hell of an improvement on my previous - dont ask. so with that im mind it "should" be ok.
I have now bought a X9SCM for £45. Ive got a "borrowed" (never to be returned) g2020. Ive also see a server at work which is "spare" at the moment and i believe has 2 x 4gb ECC ddr3 ram, erm that might dissapear. but ill need to check the compatibility i think first. least this will give me a starting point.

 

[jgreco]

So it'll be faster than your Atom.

 

[fizzgig656]

I hope so.