8 HDD / 10Gbe NAS for home usage (Atom C3000 vs Xeon D)

[Tomasz Elendt]

I'm trying to find a replacement for my A1SAi-2750F that died last week after 6 years of service.
So far I've ran it in a Mini-ITX enclosure with 4 hot-swappable drive bays (CFI A-7879 V2) as a typical storage/Plex server, but when I think about the needs I might have in the next 6-10 years this might include things like:
- more drives (I will probably like to extend my pool with another mirror(s) at some point)
- 10Gbe (switching rest of my networking gear to 10gb might take some time though)
- ability to run VMs with hardware pass-through
- all this would still need to fit into my closed, short-depth networking rack (so that my kids can't mess with it)

Speaking of the hardware pass-through - my main motivation for this is that at some point (when I have more 4k media / stream more content) I might want to plug some Nvidia card to handle transcoding (something that FreeBSD, according to my knowledge, still does not support).

Right now I'm thinking of going either with Supermicro A2SDi-H-TF (Atom C3758) or X10SDV-4C-7TP4F (Xeon D-1518).

Benefits of A2SDi-H-TF:
- a bit cheaper in where I live (Germany)
- a bit faster according to most of the benchmarks I've seen
- lower TDP (25W vs 35W of X10SDV-4C-7TP4F)
- can still fit into my old ITX case for the time being (until I upgrade to something bigger that fits more drives, a graphics card and can fit into my rack - at this point SilverStone CS381 seems to be the only viable option)

Benefits of X10SDV-4C-7TP4F:
- more LAN ports (2x 10G SFP+ and 2x 1G)
- more PCI-E (2 PCI-E 3.0 x8)

So X10SDV-4C-7TP4F seems to be a more future proof option to as it has more IO options. Still, my current case cannot accommodate Flex ATX board so I would need to upgrade it now if I decided to go with it.

Any obvious facts I missed in my analysis? What would you pick?

 

[Bozon]

Any obvious facts I missed in my analysis? What would you pick?

Quick Hardware Guide
Full Hardware Guide

From the guide:

miniITX systems
MiniITX boards always involve some compromise, so their use should be carefully considered, especially taking into account that compact chassis tend to have additional disadvantages that make larger form factors more appealing.

 

[Tomasz Elendt]

MiniITX boards always involve some compromise [...]

I'm aware of that and I think that most of the people that go with Mini-ITX pick it for a reason.
In my case I have a limited space as it needs to fit into a short depth rack. I also have a limited cooling options as I can't use high-noise, high-RPM fans as the rack sits in the living room (that's why I prefer lower TDP systems).

Mini-ITX gives me more flexibility, as for 8 disk system I could use either SilverStone DS380 or CS381, whereas microATX/FlexATX could only fit in the latter.

Also, A2SDi-H-TF should be fairly safe option for FreeNAS as that's what FreeNAS Mini XL+ uses.
I could find X10SDV-4C-7TP4F mentioned in a few discussions in this forum, but it's unclear to me if people actually use it in their builds. Also, at this point there are only handful of retailers that sells X10SDV-4C-7TP4F in where I live.

At this point I'm more inclined to go with A2SDi-H-TF. The only thing that concerns me is that single x4 PCI-E slot and low number of LAN ports.
I'm concerned how would PCI-E x4 affect performance of transcoding in e.g. Nvidia p2000 (I know that in most graphics cards performance between x16 and x8 is negligible) and if the number of LAN ports would be sufficient (in case I decide to run more VMs in e.g, ESXi).

 

[bytesontheroad]

I am in the same conditions as you except I don't need any kind of jail/vm. Where I live the A2SDi-H-TF is around 650€. Have you found something cheaper that can ship in the EU?

 

[Tomasz Elendt]

I am in the same conditions as you except I don't need any kind of jail/vm. Where I live the A2SDi-H-TF is around 650€. Have you found something cheaper that can ship in the EU?

It's ~550€ in Germany at the moment:

https://www.idealo.de/preisvergleich/OffersOfProduct/6092355_-a2sdi-h-tf-supermicro.html

I've just bought the last piece from https://www.jacob.de/produkte/mainboard-a2sdi-h-tf-mbd-a2sdi-h-tf-o-artnr-3807799.html

 

[mistermanko]

You are spending a good amount of money just for accomodating that form factor. With the more flexible choice of mATX/ATX boards you could get significantly better performance and be more future proof.
550€ is SM X11 territory (board + xeon 1151).

 

[bytesontheroad]

You are spending a good amount of money just for accomodating that form factor. With the more flexible choice of mATX/ATX boards you could get significantly better performance and be more future proof.
550€ is SM X11 territory (board + xeon 1151).

Then, even if one had the chance to go for mATX/ATX boards (which could be not for Tomasz), could you suggest something equivalent in terms of power usage and TDP?

 

[mistermanko]

1151's Xeons are in the 70W range in terms of TDP but TDP is only telling you so much in terms of power usage and/or performance. TDP, first and foremost, indicates how much heat your system can generate and how you should apply proper cooling in a closed case, especially with spinning disks inside.
As for the power usage, with 1151 CPU + RAM + spinning disks you're looking at 60 - 80W idle load, I would think. Sure that's twice as much as the mITX system but surely it's at least twice as much computing power.
Considerable when you want to run VMs.

 

[Bozon]

1151's Xeons are in the 70W range in terms of TDP but TDP is only telling you so much in terms of power usage and/or performance. TDP, first and foremost, indicates how much heat your system can generate and how you should apply proper cooling in a closed case, especially with spinning disks inside.
As for the power usage, with 1151 CPU + RAM + spinning disks you're looking at 60 - 80W idle load, I would think. Sure that's twice as much as the mITX system but surely it's at least twice as much computing power.
Considerable when you want to run VMs.

Also how much does the board use versus the spinning rust? It looks like a good estimate would be about 5-6 W per drive. 40-48W for 8 drives.

 

[Bozon]

Supermicro MicroATX up to 45 W

I was surfing supermicro's motherboard site and saw these 2 rated at 45W in MicroATX form factor.

And if you go to 80W you have even more selection:

Supermicro MicroATX up to 80W

 

[Tomasz Elendt]

I was surfing supermicro's motherboard site and saw these 2 rated at 45W in MicroATX form factor [...]

Both support just 6 SATA connections and only one of them (X11SSH-GTF-1585L) comes with 10Gbe.

 

[Bozon]

Both support just 6 SATA connections and only one of them (X11SSH-GTF-1585L) comes with 10Gbe.

I always thinks of hba SAS card for the main work, and the SATA ports for boot drives and slogs. Sorry