NAS Nightmare/ Hardware HELL Tyan S2881

[NASFUN]

I decided to build a nas and give this free OS a try and the neat features it has for offer.

I put together these hardware components for this project.

Tyan Thunder K8SR (S2881) version with SCSI
http://www.tyan.com/archive/products/html/thunderk8sr_spec.html
Micron 2GB, DDR, 400, CL3, ECC, REG -note seem to work fine
AMD Opteron 275 HE (OSK275FAA6CB) Both sockets in use
5 WD RE4 1TB drives, SATA 3Gpbs, non AF as far as i have read
AMCC 3WARE 9550SX-12SI PCI-X
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116033
INTEL PRO/1000 MT PCI-X

So it goes like this i get it all setup minus the 5 WD drives as im testing out the freenas and the MB only has 4 1.5Gbs slots, so i got one to a dvd, and other for testing out small HDD's with ZFS and sharing. The first problem i run into is the Integrated NIC. It is a Broadcom BCM5704C. And what would happen is under load it would randomly drop connections, try and reset and all in all would not work in the end. It was fine when talking over the network to just visit the webpage to configure freenas and really small files like pdf's, but when it went under load it just did not work reliably. And i read up and saw that the linux didn't like it and people were saying get a INTEL PRO 1000 NIC they work great bla bla bla. So i pick one up, and it seems the claims were correct, So i disable onboard and just use the PCI-X Ethernet card and am ready for next step which is the most expensive, storage. I have 4 old 1.5 sata ports which clearly isn't going to work, so i pick up a AMCC 3WARE 9550SX-12SI, read about how not to use the RAID CONTROLLERS cache and to set the HDD configuration to SINGLE DISK to use the freenas software ZFS raid. So everything should be going great i done my homework got the hardware and settings so everything plays nice, but here comes the fun part. THE MB has only 2 PCI-X slots. WHen both NIC and RAID card is plugged in the Ethernet will not work, i goto the webpage, and it takes forever and get corrupt front page of the freenas login, I swap ports and during boot of freenas the screen just goes into a endless looping of text. For some reason i cannot use the second slot PCI-X on the MB. If i do the device behaves erratic. So if i could fix this issue i i'd have a working NAS right now. IF i could get the stupid broadcom to work i also have a NAS. AND fyi i have 2 of the same Tyan S2881 MB's and they both behaved the same way. I need that raid card as there not enough ports to get to more storage and i have to have a reliable Ethernet to send and receive. This has been a hardware nightmare. Any help would be great. The last thign i want to do is have to jump ship and abandon this AMD Opteron 940 and goto Socket F as i already have everything in place and do not want to replace core parts because of these hicups. What can i do?




Also using the most recent BIOS out
2007/08/24 S2881_v208 v2.08
TYAN Thunder K8SR (S2881) BIOS V2.08

 

[cyberjock]

Ok, 2 things come to mind:

1. That system is VERY old. I'm talking like 3 months short of 10 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if that hardware isn't completely compatible with FreeBSD/FreeNAS just because of its age.
2. 2GB of RAM is 1/4th of the minimum for ZFS per the manual. I'm not the least bit surprised that you are having reliability issues. After all, if you read the requirements it says something like "for system stability and performance use at least 8GB of RAM with ZFS". The system stability phrase was put in there on purpose. I know because I put it in there.

Overall, if you start looking at the cost of upgrading your RAM to 8GB minimum, you're going to find it is probably cheaper to just build a new system. Also, even if you had enough RAM, I'd bet money your CPUs aren't going to have the necessary kick to keep the system running smoothly. That hardware is quite old and very slow compared to today's hardware.

For assistance with what hardware you should purchase check out the stickies in the hardware section. Those will provide you with all of the information and recommendations you need to purchase appropriate hardware.

If you are simply wanting to experiment with FreeNAS you can easily do that from a desktop and Virtualbox or VMWare Workstation. But continuing to try to make your hardware work is more than likely an exercise in futility. Even if you got it working and stable you'll be making a thread next week complaining about how poor your performance is and wanting help with that. Your hardware is just far far too old for this kind of project.

 

[NASFUN]

Ok, 2 things come to mind:

1. That system is VERY old. I'm talking like 3 months short of 10 years old. I wouldn't be surprised if that hardware isn't completely compatible with FreeBSD/FreeNAS just because of its age.
2. 2GB of RAM is 1/4th of the minimum for ZFS per the manual. I'm not the least bit surprised that you are having reliability issues. After all, if you read the requirements it says something like "for system stability and performance use at least 8GB of RAM with ZFS". The system stability phrase was put in there on purpose. I know because I put it in there.

Overall, if you start looking at the cost of upgrading your RAM to 8GB minimum, you're going to find it is probably cheaper to just build a new system. Also, even if you had enough RAM, I'd bet money your CPUs aren't going to have the necessary kick to keep the system running smoothly. That hardware is quite old and very slow compared to today's hardware.

For assistance with what hardware you should purchase check out the stickies in the hardware section. Those will provide you with all of the information and recommendations you need to purchase appropriate hardware.

If you are simply wanting to experiment with FreeNAS you can easily do that from a desktop and Virtualbox or VMWare Workstation. But continuing to try to make your hardware work is more than likely an exercise in futility. Even if you got it working and stable you'll be making a thread next week complaining about how poor your performance is and wanting help with that. Your hardware is just far far too old for this kind of project.

I forgot to mention i had a total of 8GB of memory already and was going to go to 16GB later since it was only $22 bucks and 49 cents for 8gb of ecc ram shipped, which I fail to see how that what you said about getting to 8GB and the whole cheaper building something new. Are 4 physical 2.2Ghz AMD cpu core really that bad off? I know they are from when AMD hit the market with there dual cores Italy core, but the way your saying that makes me feel like i got some crappy Intel Celery chip. The tune you singing is pretty much abandon ship. I have tested NAS4FREE and FREENAS and have had no issues with them working. My problem is with the PCI-X going all screwy when the 2nd one is used and i would'nt need to use the 2nd one if i could just get the Broadcom 1Gb Ethernet to just work.

 

[cyberjock]

It's not that "4 physical 2.2Ghz AMD cpu cores" are that bad off. It's that really year old CPUs are slow. Anyone worth their salt in IT knows that there's more to what makes a CPU perform than the number of cores, the CPU freq, and who made it. The architecture really does matter.

In your case, check out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Dual+Core+AMD+Opteron+275 . I'm not a fan of benchmarks because they don't tell the whole picture, but when your CPUs are 1290 CPU mark, that's not a good place to be. My laptop is more than 3x that value. Your CPU sells for less than $20 on ebay. So they clearly aren't falling into the category of "high performance". The G2020 which is generally considered to be "bottom of the barrel" for "good" performance versus cost around the forums costs about $50 and has a score of almost 2800. DDR versus DDR3 does make a difference in performance too. The Pentium g2020 is on the "High Mid Range CPUs chart" while yours is "Low Mid Range CPUs chart".

Not to mention that PCI-X can be bottlenecked as its a parallel bus architecture.

So the choice is yours.. you can continue to spend time trying to get old hardware that is not going to be a stellar performer and not working properly right now anyway to work or you can look at getting newer hardware that is going to work and provide good performance.

You also didn't really respond to my comment that FreeNAS might not be compatible with your hardware. When 9.x came out alot of hardware isn't compatible because support was removed. It's fairly logical to remove support for some of the oldest hardware when new versions come out since most people aren't going to try to use very old hardware with brand new OSes.

As for your exact issue, I have no advice. I know if a friend called me asking for help I'd tell them I'd help them spend time looking at newer hardware before I'd try using something that old. There's a good chance that your 10 year old board is going to bite the dust soon anyway as capacitors do age and eventually fail. I just wouldn't spend time on hardware that is that old considering the big picture.

 

[NASFUN]

It's not that "4 physical 2.2Ghz AMD cpu cores" are that bad off. It's that really year old CPUs are slow. Anyone worth their salt in IT knows that there's more to what makes a CPU perform than the number of cores, the CPU freq, and who made it. The architecture really does matter.

In your case, check out http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Dual Core AMD Opteron 275 . I'm not a fan of benchmarks because they don't tell the whole picture, but when your CPUs are 1290 CPU mark, that's not a good place to be. My laptop is more than 3x that value. Your CPU sells for less than $20 on ebay. So they clearly aren't falling into the category of "high performance". The G2020 which is generally considered to be "bottom of the barrel" for "good" performance versus cost around the forums costs about $50 and has a score of almost 2800. DDR versus DDR3 does make a difference in performance too. The Pentium g2020 is on the "High Mid Range CPUs chart" while yours is "Low Mid Range CPUs chart".

Not to mention that PCI-X can be bottlenecked as its a parallel bus architecture.

So the choice is yours.. you can continue to spend time trying to get old hardware that is not going to be a stellar performer and not working properly right now anyway to work or you can look at getting newer hardware that is going to work and provide good performance.

You also didn't really respond to my comment that FreeNAS might not be compatible with your hardware. When 9.x came out alot of hardware isn't compatible because support was removed. It's fairly logical to remove support for some of the oldest hardware when new versions come out since most people aren't going to try to use very old hardware with brand new OSes.

As for your exact issue, I have no advice. I know if a friend called me asking for help I'd tell them I'd help them spend time looking at newer hardware before I'd try using something that old. There's a good chance that your 10 year old board is going to bite the dust soon anyway as capacitors do age and eventually fail. I just wouldn't spend time on hardware that is that old considering the big picture.

 

[DrKK]

So the choice is yours.. you can continue to spend time trying to get old hardware that is not going to be a stellar performer and not working properly right now anyway to work or you can look at getting newer hardware that is going to work and provide good performance.

I have to second this. For well under $1000 (maybe about $800), I built EVERYTHING for my FreeNAS, and with specs that are well into the "acceptable" zone. That price INCLUDES the hard drives (I have 3x2TB). So you wouldn't have to spend much money to get a proper system.

 

[NASFUN]

Ok so you say i picked something to old and for some unknown reason its stuck in the mud and i agree going this old wasn't the best idea with all the problems i have with no reason why it shouldn't work, but you live and learn. Lets get one objective in the open, i want this to be AMD based, second i want ECC because i do not want to take any chances with regular stuff and having the ZFS pool crash and burn and loose everything. Third Having the absolute fastest thing is not mission critical, i just want it to be kept under $200. So what Socket F motherboard would you recommend? I ready got a PCI-X NIC and RAID CARD and if i could recycle those into the new build that be good. I suppose if there is a board with at min 6 sata ports that would make the 3ware card i have not needed.

www.ebay.com/itm/151136645893

Hows this look? I can worry about getting better HE model CPU's later.

 

[cyberjock]

One.. the thread was for your old hardware. If you want to start a discussion on recommended hardware make a new thread.

Two... we have stickies on some of the recommended hardware. But showing up saying "I have $200.. what hardware should I get with that budget" will get you nowhere on this forum. It is expected that you will provide your own build recommendations and let someone review it for errors. Don't expect us to build a system for you. It doesn't work that way here.

Three.. $200 is not going to get you much. That budget is far too low.

FreeNAS isn't for everyone, and if you are going to set strict and very low budget limits like $200 you should probably look for an alternative solution. Even POS disposable laptops from Best Buy cost more than $200. There's no chance you're going to get a full fledged server for $200 or everyone on this forum would be talking about it.

 

[NASFUN]

One.. the thread was for your old hardware. If you want to start a discussion on recommended hardware make a new thread.

Two... we have stickies on some of the recommended hardware. But showing up saying "I have $200.. what hardware should I get with that budget" will get you nowhere on this forum. It is expected that you will provide your own build recommendations and let someone review it for errors. Don't expect us to build a system for you. It doesn't work that way here.

Three.. $200 is not going to get you much. That budget is far too low.

FreeNAS isn't for everyone, and if you are going to set strict and very low budget limits like $200 you should probably look for an alternative solution. Even POS disposable laptops from Best Buy cost more than $200. There's no chance you're going to get a full fledged server for $200 or everyone on this forum would be talking about it.

I was able to fix the mystery of the PCI Extended slots not working when both occupied by a simple bus speed override. One stupid jumper that kept my NAS on ice for a few months. So looks like i proved you wrong cyberjock on needing lots more money to throw at the project than what i was able to afford and will not have to look elsewhere for a NAS solution, besides feels good to recycle and use stuff that will work. I hope that the solution found can be used in the future for anyone that runs into the same problem when trying to use both PCI-E are occupied and are searching for the fix. Just put a jumper on J92 on The Tyan S2881 board and should work. I attached a picture of the diagram for use by whoever whenever.