Are Processor Recommendations for SCALE different than for CORE?

[bollar]

SCALE has reached the point where I'd like to begin playing with it on a test server that will ultimately replace one of my servers listed in my signature. The new server is likely to be a SuperMicro SSG-6049P-E1CR24L, which is a 4U 24 drive SAS3/SATA3 chassis with X11DPH-T motherboard (Xeon® Scalable Processors, Dual Socket LGA-3647) included. Although it's absolutely overkill for my final application, which is computer backups, media server for the family, various jails & containers, etc., for the next year, it will have SLOG / L2ARC loaded on M.2, probably around 200GB RAM, some SSD for metadata (special) storage and so on for the tests.

So, knowing the needs in production seem to be different from what I need in test, are there general recommendations for a processor from the LGA-3647 family? I will probably just get one for now, unless there is some enterprise test scenario that's not unlikely that could use the two processors.

Thanks!

Also, thought it's not SCALE related, is there a VDEV recommendation for the very large hard drives in the 18TB and up range. On this 24 drive system, I was thinking four RAIDZ2 vdevs of six drives each. Not married to that, though.

 

[Kris Moore]

No specific processor / HW differences between the two software platforms. All depends on your needs, if you plan on doing more VMs & Containers on SCALE then memory would probably be good.

 

[ornias]

I'm going to disagree with @Kris Moore on this.
There are significant differences in the hardware support between Linux Kernel 5.10 and FreeBSD 12/13.

There is a lot of hardware support in FreeBSD that is ported from Linux, so expect Hardware support on Linux to be ahead of FreeBSD by up-to 2-3 years in some area's. For example: Support for the latest Intel iGPU's is not available on core, but is available on SCALE.*



* Note: The official plex container doesn't fullysupport the newest iGPU's yet though, the TrueCharts container does however... We added it ourselves :)

 

[Kris Moore]

Just to clarify, I'm assuming that whatever you've run on CORE will work on SCALE. As @ornias mentions, the support if anything is better on SCALE, so I'd expect any hardware currently working on CORE to be well or better supported on the SCALE side.

 

[bollar]

Thanks to both of you. I hadn't even thought of GPU / Plex. Doesn't look like iGPU is supported on Cascade Lake/Skylake processors. I wonder if it's worth adding a discrete graphics card for transcoding.

 

[ornias]

Thanks to both of you. I hadn't even thought of GPU / Plex. Doesn't look like iGPU is supported on Cascade Lake/Skylake processors. I wonder if it's worth adding a discrete graphics card for transcoding.

All intel iGPU's are supported by SCALE afaik.
I just updated our container and our container supports Broadwell up to Gemini Lake with initial support for Elkhart Lake
Though I'm not 100% sure for the SCALE integrated drivers, but at the VERY least Broadwell up to Ice Lake should be supported just fine!

 

[bollar]

I assume what I'm building is similar to the IX-4224P. Maybe I should just get a quote.

 

[ornias]

I assume what I'm building is similar to the IX-4224P. Maybe I should just get a quote.

You could also look at the TrueNAS M40 starting at 4000$
Though the X series also looks like it does what you want it to do ;-)