Skylake Caveats

[swit012]

Hi, All

Just a public service announcement for those of you interested in building a FreeNAS box using the latest Skylake architecture. Intel have made 2 decisions with the new architecture that are hostile to getting FreeNAS running as people expect to be able to.

Firstly, next gen boards include the new I219-V & I219-LM Gigabit Ethernet Chipset. My understanding is the "LM" are the server equivalent of the "V" consumer models.

FreeBSD has no drivers for this new chipset.

I have logged a feature request for supporting the new chipset, which is waiting on a new release of FreeBSD:
https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/12399

For now, you're going to have to buy an additional NIC.

The second problem is that skylake completely removes legacy EHCI support. What this means is that you will not be able to boot up off a USB Stick, period. This is not about plugging the stick into the black port rather than the blue port, even the "backwards-compatible" ports will be controlled through XHCI:
http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-remove-support-usb-based-windows-7-installation-platform-specs/

This means that GRUB 2 will not be able to recognise the USB, even though your BIOS will be able to run GRUB at the outset.

I have logged this as a feature request as well
https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/12400

In the meantime you'll want some kind of internal drive for your operating system, if you're using Skylake (e.g. a SATA DOM).

 

[tvsjr]

Make sure you're careful on heat sink selection as well:
http://hothardware.com/news/intel-skylake-cpus-are-warping-under-heat-sink-mounting-pressure

Apparently, some aftermarket parts inflict far more pressure on the CPU that intended, resulting in the CPU and the socket deforming over time.

 

[Raiz]

Which next gen boards are you referring to? The X11SSH-F I have on order says it has the Intel® i210-AT GbE LAN.

Hopefully they will come out with a fix for the lack of USB boot. Internal SSD or SuperDOM boot for now.

 

[swit012]

In my case: Gigabyte GA-H170M-D3H. Sure, this is not server grade kit, the server grade will have the same problem if they're using i219-LM.

 

[Ericloewe]

Server-grade is mostly using i210-ATs. Haven't seen any i219s on server boards yet.

 

[swit012]

Server-grade is mostly using i210-ATs. Haven't seen any i219s on server boards yet.

Yup, but no matter how you slice it, you're not going to have any legacy EHCI support, meaning your USB ports become mostly decorative no matter how server-y your motherboard is.

I say mostly, but the BIOS seems smart enough to send HID through OK, so even my wireless mouse & keyboard worked well.

 

[religiouslyconfused]

Intel said support for i219 in FreeBSD is coming soon, and they are working on an update!

https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/networking/topic/595027

 

[NASbeginner]

Which next gen boards are you referring to? The X11SSH-F I have on order says it has the Intel® i210-AT GbE LAN.

Hopefully they will come out with a fix for the lack of USB boot. Internal SSD or SuperDOM boot for now.

I'm planning on ordering the X11SSH-F as well, so looks like SSD or Sata DOM as well.

 

[RemyZ]

I ordered the X11SSH-F as well and got the 64GB Supermicro Satadom and looking forward to the build.

 

[Raiz]

Already got mine built. The X11SSH-F is working great. Couldn't get it to boot off of the USB so I used an old SSD.

 

[RemyZ]

Already got mine built. The X11SSH-F is working great. Couldn't get it to boot off of the USB so I used an old SSD.

What HDD's did you end up going with ?
Any reason you went with a Xeon instead of a Core i3 ?
I still have HDD's to purchase along with a power supply for my Supermicro 2U case.

 

[Raiz]

I went with the Xeon simply because of the recommendations on this board for the E3-1231v3. I figured the next generation of the same processor (v5) should work great.

I had 7 used 2TB drives leftover from when I had my "NAS" built into my gaming computer. I used 6 of them and set it to raidZ2. Gives me about 7TB of usable storage.
I went overkill on the power supply, but only because I found a good deal.

 

[RemyZ]

How loud is the system overall and any issues you ran into ?

 

[Raiz]

I don't have a decibel meter meter sitting next to it, but it's virtually silent. For the moment it's in the entertainment room and you cannot hear it until you walk right up beside it. I think there are only 4 fans running and the loudest is the CPU fan.

The only issue I ran into was booting off of a USB. It won't work until FreeNAS gets upgraded because of the eHCI/xHCI issue, so I used an old SSD I had.

 

[religiouslyconfused]

Still interested in building a FreeNAS machine and good info!

 

[RemyZ]

Thats good info.Just bought 2x6TB HGST hdds, 500w Plat psu and jus need 2 more hdds till i start building.Hows ur experience with plex and ripping blu rays

Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk

 

[Raiz]

I'm not really ripping any blu-rays. Are you planning on putting a blu-ray drive into your NAS to rip files?

Plex is working great after a bunch of fiddling with it. I had to learn how FreeNAS works from scratch. Building a home NAS has not been the easiest of journeys, especially since I've never touched linux in my life. I now have it working with the Amazon Fire TVs I have on every TV in the house as well as my cell phone. Next I'll work on setting up owncloud as well a learn a bit more about permissions, and figure out how to access the server away from home.

So you're going with 4 drives total? I'm guessing in a raidZ1 config? I went with 6 drives in a raidZ2 config so I could survive 2 drive failures. It really cuts down on the available space though.

 

[RemyZ]

I wanted to have the Blu Ray drive a part of the NAS so that I can rip and upload faster. Read some posts about this not being possible since there is no good passthru options for the blu ray drive when it comes to audio. I will be ripping from another pc and uploading to the NAS . I will be starting with 4 drives but will add more drives later on since my case supports 8 drives max. I hope its not a pain to add drives later on. I am still on the fence between RaidZ1 and RaidZ2 and will have to decide later on once I receive the hard drives. I didn't know there was alot of linux knowledge needed. I thought it was mostly FreeNas Gui and light cli needed. My difficulty comes in ordering parts because there is always something that is overlooked when it comes time to put everything together it seems.

 

[Raiz]

I hope its not a pain to add drives later on.

I don't believe it's possible to add additional storage once your system is set up.

 

[Bidule0hm]

It should be FreeNAS GUI only but when you add jails like Plex things gets a bit more complicated.

You can't add drives to an existing vdev but you can add vdevs to an existing pool. Please read Cyberjock's ZFS guide (link is in my signature) ;)