Upgrading my TrueNAS

[MortenSJ]

Hi guys

I've used FreeNAS before, but haven't played with it for a while. I was therefor super happy to see the new TrueNAS. I found my older computer and got it up and running. I'm mostly thinking of using it for light storage and VM (Ubuntu and WinXP)

This here is my current hardware. It's old and I remember buying all this in 2012. I build it myself with the following hardware

Fractal Design Array R2 Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 300W SFX PSU Power Supply
ASUS P8H77-I LGA 1155 Intel H77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3225 CPU @ 3.30GHz
HyperX Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Desktop Memory Model KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G

I'm a bit out of the hardware game and honestly don't know much about what's out there today.

I was hoping to get a little bit more power for my virtual machines. Is there anything I can upgrade? My first instinct was the CPU and RAM, but would it make more sense to upgrade motherboard as well? I'm not looking to buy a monster, but would ideally like to be running multiple VM.

For the Ubuntu VM, I would like to run it at least with 6 GB RAM, CPU (3 cores / 6 native threads)

Hope you guys can help me :)

Thanks in advance.

 

[Chris Moore]

I'm a bit out of the hardware game and honestly don't know much about what's out there today.

The good news, FreeNAS / TrueNAS does not need latest and greatest hardware, so you could pickup some used gear from eBay if you want newer without going to current production. The only problem with that is the eBay prices have gone a little crazy over the last year. I will give you an example:

A couple years ago, I picked one of these up for $350 and look what they are selling for now:

Chenbro NR40700 4U Storinator 48-bay Storage Server Chassis (Disc Array) Chia | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Chenbro NR40700 4U Storinator 48-bay Storage Server Chassis (Disc Array) Chia at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Anyhow, you can get some real server gear at less than new prices, or do you want to go with brand new production gear?

 

[MortenSJ]

I'm not opposed to getting some used gear, but I don't think I want such a "professional" NAS. The important thing to me is being able to run multiple VM but at the same time use it for storage. Storage would look like 6-10TB at the very max.

 

[ChrisRJ]

What I did in September/October 2020, when looking around for my new FreeNAS box (and even more so for 2 VM hosts running XCP-ng), was to go for old Supermicro X9 boards with a lot of memory slots. So I could get a lot of RAM really cheap (20 Euros for 16 GB) and a decent CPU (8 Core Xeon for 35 Euros). And power consumption is reasonable IMO with 50 watts when running with a single SSD.

 

[KrisBee]

Your options for upgrade with current kit are limited. The ITX m/board with just two slots means 2x8GB for a max 16GB and ditching your current memory. Did you check CPUs supported by the m/board at the ASUS website? It's doesn't support many Xeons with high core count - perhaps a Intel Xeon E3-1245 v2 but this could be overkill depending what you aim to do with VMs. Otherwise its i5 or i7.

You have a decent ITX m/board, one the few with six sata ports, but it's not really server orientated. Sticking with the ITX format limits the choice of alternatives, whereas the microATX format is where you can pick up Supermicro X9 or X10 m/boards but requires new case and psu.

You said nothing about what disks you have - HHD or SSD or both. For VM use, SSD can make a huge difference.

 

[MortenSJ]

What I did in September/October 2020, when looking around for my new FreeNAS box (and even more so for 2 VM hosts running XCP-ng), was to go for old Supermicro X9 boards with a lot of memory slots. So I could get a lot of RAM really cheap (20 Euros for 16 GB) and a decent CPU (8 Core Xeon for 35 Euros). And power consumption is reasonable IMO with 50 watts when running with a single SSD.

Gotcha. I was beginning to look in that direction, thank you.

Your options for upgrade with current kit are limited. The ITX m/board with just two slots means 2x8GB for a max 16GB and ditching your current memory. Did you check CPUs supported by the m/board at the ASUS website? It's doesn't support many Xeons with high core count - perhaps a Intel Xeon E3-1245 v2 but this could be overkill depending what you aim to do with VMs. Otherwise its i5 or i7.

You have a decent ITX m/board, one the few with six sata ports, but it's not really server orientated. Sticking with the ITX format limits the choice of alternatives, whereas the microATX format is where you can pick up Supermicro X9 or X10 m/boards but requires new case and psu.

You said nothing about what disks you have - HHD or SSD or both. For VM use, SSD can make a huge difference.

Okay. It sounds like I should be looking at at new m/board. Ideally a microATX? I have 2xHDD for storage and I run TrueNAS off my SSD together with my VM.

I need the following specifications for a Ubuntu VM to run a specific piece of software.

4 cores / 8 native threads or better
Ubuntu 12.04
8 GB RAM
350GB free space. (HDD or SSD).

Is that anyway possible with my current setup? It doesn't look like there are any CPU's with more than 4 cores for my ITX board.

This might be a stupid question, so please forgive me. I'm not super familiar with hardware specs and VM. If I run a VM and give it 4 cores. Are those given specificly to that VM or can I have multiple VMs running 4 cores? I hope this makes sense.

 

[Yorick]

You can oversubscribe cores, and, if the VM actually wants to use the cores, then with oversubscription, the performance to do that isn't there. "8 native threads" can be done in bhyve, you can give it 4 cores and 2 threads per, and, that needs to land on the hardware somehow.

If you can get into a uATX case, take a look at AsRock Rack X470D4U and X570D4U. You'd need new RAM, ECC works in this board, DDR4 UDIMM, not registered. The advantage is that you can use AMD Ryzen CPUs, which means you can add a decent amount of cores.

 

[KrisBee]

@MortenSJ I don't know what your mystery software is, but Ubuntu 12.04 is ancient and no longer supported. Just to be clear, do you have TrueNAS CORE or TRUENAS SCALE in mind? So you've only got one SSD and nothing else?

 

[Chris Moore]

While I was looking around eBay for deals, I ran across this:

4U 36 Bay Server SAS2 Expander X9DRI-LN4F+ 2x E5-2690 128GB FREENAS IT MODE | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 4U 36 Bay Server SAS2 Expander X9DRI-LN4F+ 2x E5-2690 128GB FREENAS IT MODE at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

It looks like a bargain to me. Plenty of CPU & RAM and room to grow drives...

 

[MortenSJ]

You can oversubscribe cores, and, if the VM actually wants to use the cores, then with oversubscription, the performance to do that isn't there. "8 native threads" can be done in bhyve, you can give it 4 cores and 2 threads per, and, that needs to land on the hardware somehow.

If you can get into a uATX case, take a look at AsRock Rack X470D4U and X570D4U. You'd need new RAM, ECC works in this board, DDR4 UDIMM, not registered. The advantage is that you can use AMD Ryzen CPUs, which means you can add a decent amount of cores.

Thank you! I'll try and do some research on the hardware you suggested.

I found this AsRock board. Would that be sufficent together with an 8core Xeon?
ASRock Rack EPC612D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 2011 R3 Intel C612

@MortenSJ I don't know what your mystery software is, but Ubuntu 12.04 is ancient and no longer supported. Just to be clear, do you have TrueNAS CORE or TRUENAS SCALE in mind? So you've only got one SSD and nothing else?

The software is just bare minimum. I'm running the latest Ubuntu at the moment. I the SSD which TrueNAS Core is running from and 4TB HDD storage. What is the difference between Core and Scale?

While I was looking around eBay for deals, I ran across this:

4U 36 Bay Server SAS2 Expander X9DRI-LN4F+ 2x E5-2690 128GB FREENAS IT MODE | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 4U 36 Bay Server SAS2 Expander X9DRI-LN4F+ 2x E5-2690 128GB FREENAS IT MODE at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

It looks like a bargain to me. Plenty of CPU & RAM and room to grow drives...

This looks a little bit as an overkill for my needs. I def. don't need 36 bays :) I only need about 6-10 TB storage and to be able to run the VM I mentioned. Ideally an WinXP together with the Ubuntu VM.

 

[ThreeDee]

lol .. I'll throw in my super budget build (in sig) .. lots of cores .. cheap ECC DDR3 RDIMM's .. Been solid since initial setup many months ago.. standard ATX form factor quad channel memory .. Cheap and runs great. The M.2 slot likes NVMe SSD's .. and not M.2 SATA .. that is the only "issue" I've encountered.

I originally had the E5-4640 installed (8 cores/16threads) ..those can be had for around $25 on ebay.

anyways .. not everybody has the funds to get into recommended hardware .. so if they are just home users, I throw in my sixpence worth of personal experience... of which in reality isn't even worth that much most times.

 

[ChrisRJ]

@MortenSJ , I really think it would make sense to be more specific about the software you want to run in VMs. Esp. since you mention Windows XP, which is a real issue from a security perspective.

 

[MortenSJ]

@MortenSJ , I really think it would make sense to be more specific about the software you want to run in VMs. Esp. since you mention Windows XP, which is a real issue from a security perspective.

The Ubuntu specs is mentioned above. I can't for NDA reasons go into the software more than that. Sorry :/

In terms of Win XP. I just need to be able to run a scanning software for a film scanner.

And thanks everyone for helping out. I really appreciate it.

I would like if I could keep my current case. I would prefer to have as minimal of a setup as possible, but still strong enough to run my VMs. I found the following mini-itx board, and it looks like it supports Intel Xeon processor E5-1600/2600 v3 series. This seems sufficient to me, and then of course with max. memory.

ASRock Rack EPC612D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 2011 R3 Intel C612

I have a 300W SFX PSU Power Supply.

Will this setup be able to work or is it just simply unrealistic to have this setup in a mini-itx?

 

[Yorick]

Yeah that looks solid. Keep in mind you'll want ECC SODIMM for this, and the memory speed notes for the board depending on CPU used.