Replacing Motherboard & CPU in FreeNAS Server

[Mark Garrison]

I am currently running a FreeNAS v9.2.1.9 installation with six 3TB Seagate Constellation ES.3 128MB cache drives in ZFS RAID-Z2 on an ASRock E3C226D2I MiniITX motherboard with an Intel G3220 and 16GB of ECC RAM. It has been running solidly for over a year now serving as an iSCSI SAN for 2 bare-metal ESXi boxes (running @ 30 VMs between them), but my FreeNAS installation is clearly memory bound which has an adverse impact on overall write/read speed (CPU hardly ever gets above 1-2% usage on FreeNAS).

I was considering replacing the motherboard with an ASRock C2550D4I MiniITX that has an Intel Avoton C2550 Quad-Core Processor and supports up to 64GB of ECC RAM (and 12 SATA Headers)...although I'd probably start out with 32GB ECC to verify that more memory is truly going to help improve overall performance.

My question is what would I need to do in FreeNAS to get this motherboard/CPU replacement to work?

I assume that I would do the following:

1. Make a backup of my current FreeNAS configuration (and make a backup of my data if I were to care about my data...which I don't really as this is a home workbench).
2. Replace the motherboard, attaching all previous drives to it.
3. Install a fresh copy of the latest and greatest FreeNAS on a flash-drive mounted on the new motherboard.
4. Upload my previous FreeNAS configuration.
5. All of my zvols, and iSCSI targets/extents *should be* intact and readable.

Is that correct? Or is it more involved of a process?

 

[danb35]

In all likelihood, you'd only need steps 1, 2, and 5. That is, you should be able to plug your boot USB directly into your new hardware, boot and go. Back up the configuration just to be on the safe side, in case you do need to do steps 3 and 4.

 

[cyberjock]

I hate to be a buzzkill but you're going about this a bit wrong. That board uses unregistered DIMMs. Getting 16GB unregistered DIMMs for that platform costs an arm and a leg, and is nearly impossible to source. You can literally build an E5 based system and use registered RAM and save money over the board you are looking to buy.

In short, give up on that board and go with an E5 based system and pocket the difference. ;)

 

[sremick]

Out of curiosity, what made you decide you were being bottlenecked by 16GB RAM? I have the same MB and 6x 3TB drives as well.

 

[DrKK]

Out of curiosity, what made you decide you were being bottlenecked by 16GB RAM? I have the same MB and 6x 3TB drives as well.

Yeah I agree with sremick. It's not clear to me that you would even be remotely RAM bound here.