Anybody using FreeNAS on barebones mini-ITX E-SERV NAS25-X4?

[debuser]

Hello there

I am looking to build myself a raid setup which is compact and has low power consumption and came across this barebones setup

http://www.e-itx.com/e-serv-nas25-x4.html

The cost is close to the HP N40L, but the specs are much much better.

Here are the specs -

CFI A7879 Mini-ITX NAS Chassis w/4 Hot-Swappable Bays (CAS-CFI-A7879)
Giada MI-NAS25 NAS Platform w/Intel Atom Dual Core Processor D2500 (GIA3000)
2GB DDR3 SODIMM Memory, up to 4GB (MEM2001) (Standard)
Intel GMA 3600 Graphics with VGA Port
High Definition Audio Codec with Line-In, Line-Out & MIC-In Ports
Dual Intel 82583V Gigabit Ethernet Controllers with 2 RJ-45 Ports
Marvell 88SE9230 Hardware RAID Controller for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10
4 Removable 2.5/3.5-inch SATA-III (6Gbps) HDD/SSD Tray
1 Internal 2.5-inch SATA-II (3Gbps) HDD/SSD Bay
5 x Custom Ultra Slim High-Speed SATA-III Data Cables (5xACC1005)
One Full-Height PCIe X1 Expansion Slot
6 USB 2.0, 1 Serial, 1 Parallel, 2 PS2 Ports
200W High-Output Internal Power Supply, 100Vac to 240Vac
American (US) Power Cord (Included)
Chassis Dimensions: 200(W) x 303(D) x 250(H) mm
120mm System Cooling Fan
E-PRO 1-Year System Hardware Limited Warranty (W-SYS-01) (Standard)

All of that is listed at $330.00 with free shipping.

Please let me know if anybody has this setup and what do they think?
My main purpose for this would be as a file server and media server for my audio streaming, video streaming
to my htpc and ipod touch, iphone and iPad.

Thanks in advance.

Debuser

 

[jgreco]

specs are much much better

A very curious claim. I have no great love for the NxxL's, as I think they're underpowered, but the specs on the N40L seem to be at least competitive if not better.

D2500, 1472.
N40L, 2496.
One might think the N54L faster yet, but the N40L appears to kick the D2500 around by quite a margin.

CFI NAS chassis, 4 hot swap bays.
NxxL NAS chassis, 4 cold swap bays. But it has the optical bay, often set up to hold a fifth drive or a 4-2.5-to-1-5.25 converter which is handy for SSD's or whatever. Kind of a draw.

D2500, 4GB RAM max (possibly 8? We have a SuperO D525 board that claims 4 but will take 8).
N40L, 16GB RAM max. Absolutely awesome for memory-hungry ZFS.

Dual 82583V ports? That'd be a win over the N40L except that the N40L has the horsepower to take advantage of it, and that Atom probably doesn't. The N40L does sport two PCIe expansion slots and anyone who wants to toss an extra network card in can do so easily enough.

But the A7879 looks like it's probably much smaller than the N40L, so that would be nice. The N40L is kind of large-y for a NAS.

If it were me, I'd take the A7879 and throw something more meaty in there with it. You could absolutely make a N40L killer sticking a low end mini-ITX LGA1155 board in there with a low-power i3 CPU of some sort.

 

[debuser]

Thank you for your responce jgreco. I completely agree with the points you make.. I will take back my previous comment of the specs being much much better :o
Some of the other reasons I thought the Atom server was better was because

1. I thought a low powered CPU means low power consumption.
2. The Atom server had a better RAID controller which supports 0, 1, 5 and 10


After reading your post, now I am back to thinking about getting the N40L

 

[cyberjock]

You shouldn't care about what kind of RAID controller it has at all. It's meaningless if you use ZFS.

 

[jgreco]

We have both an N36L and a Supermicro Atom D525 here. I don't have exact wattage numbers available for each of the platforms, but I can tell you that they are at least in the same ballpark - low power by i386/amd64 standards.

Each has ups and downs; the N36L is ready to go, can support 16GB, and can be expanded in the optical bay. After a quick RAM upgrade and sticking in your disks, it is FreeNAS-ready, which is nice. The D525 has dual Intel ethernets and six SATA ports, only 8GB, but can easily be stuffed into several different cases including 1U rack mount, pretty easily.

The thing that largely sours me on both fronts is that a well designed Xeon E3-1230 based system may be more efficient and capable.

Ah here we go.

The N36L was in the range of 30W idle, 35W busy.

The E3-1230 platform was in the range of 44W idle, 85W busy (and it turns out that you can shave some of that with a board lacking the Supermicro IP-KVM BMC stuff).

So here's the thing. The E3-1230 can put out at 44W (essentially idle) the same amount of stuff that the N36L does at full-tilt 35W busy. The difference is that the E3-1230 can then go much farther and actually throw some massive muscle behind it, and up to 32GB of RAM as well. But that's not even a low power Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge CPU! I suspect that one of the low power variants and careful part selection would yield a very competitive low power NAS with substantially greater power (but of course a lot more work to make it happen).

I talk about E3-1230 a lot because we've got a fair bit of it here; it is still a pretty sweet spot on the performance/cost curve and featureset list. But I'm tempted to get an E3-1220Lv2 and actually play around with it.

 

[jgreco]

Thank you for posting! Your post will not be visible until a moderator has approved it for posting.

"... Barbra Streisand!"

 

[Stephens]

I've seen some similar reports... the low power I3's are basically close to the atom chips when doing equivalent work, but they have the capability of scaling up (in performance and power draw) when necessary. I specifically looked at the i3-2120T but the basic principle applies to many newer generation Intel CPU's.

 

[jgreco]

I view it as likely to be an awesome CPU for a dedicated FreeNAS platform, but we've moved heavily towards virtualization.

When it comes right down to it, running several VM's that can be run side-by-side on a single platform and share a large pool of CPU and memory resources is less expensive, and watt-wise too. The 1U, 4x3TB E3-1230 here has FreeNAS running with one core and averages less than 20% CPU, peaking around 70%. That's low enough that it can actually run more stuff without making a noticeable dent in the watt consumption, basically no-cost for some other VM's to be hosted alongside.

The E3-1220Lv2, with the core count is cut to two and the cache reduced, eliminates some of that excess capacity, but the real question is how much baseline wattage is cut. The E3-1230 claims a TDP of 80W, but I've measured (and verified two different ways) a fully busy system at 85W, and there's power required for the mainboard, and the memory, and the power supply. So my best guess is that maybe the CPU is only consuming 60-70W of power. Using the more conservative value, that implies the system-minus-CPU is eating 25W. Since the system idles at 44W, that would mean the E3-1230 consumes 19W when idle. But this is all highly speculative! Getting that 1220L would mean being able to assign much tighter numbers based on measurements taken with it and actually produce some great extrapolations.

Anyways, anyone planning on the 1220L, note that it's an ex-ex-ex-zero CPU, meaning no onboard video.