Bit the bullet (finally bought the motherboard)

[Bikerchris]

I've plumbed for a Supermicro MBD-X11SCL-F-O - @Yorick was kind enough to suggest this board, although this one has "-FO " in the model name, but seems to be the only variation I can get a hold of in this country (UK). Got it for £200 (around $270, or 225 Euros). The deed is done now anyway, the submit order has been pressed!

Thanks again Yorick, just need to get myself a PSU, RAM (32GB ECC) and I can slowly move out my Windows 10 install from it's current location. Then I'll be able to see what happens with FreeNAS on decent/suitable hardware.

 

[Yorick]

-O just means “retail”, if memory serves.

I expect you’ll enjoy the build. What are you pairing this with? I3-9100f?

 

[joeschmuck]

and I can slowly move out my Windows 10 install from it's current location

What does this mean? Are you moving Windoze 10 to a VM on top of FreeNAS? Or maybe you just mean you are physically moving your Windoze 10 computer to another location in your house.

I'm sure you will enjoy your new motherboard.

P.S. I knew a biker named Chris in Virginia. He loves to race and work on his off road vehicle, when he's not in a lab testing out new Navy software.

 

[Bikerchris]

-O just means “retail”, if memory serves.

I expect you’ll enjoy the build. What are you pairing this with? I3-9100f?

Thank you for that.

You got the CPU spot on You did mention a low spec CPU but the 9100F was only a little more in cost and was more available over here in the UK.

What does this mean? Are you moving Windoze 10 to a VM on top of FreeNAS? Or maybe you just mean you are physically moving your Windoze 10 computer to another location in your house.

I'm sure you will enjoy your new motherboard.

P.S. I knew a biker named Chris in Virginia. He loves to race and work on his off road vehicle, when he's not in a lab testing out new Navy software.

It is a bit strange what I'm doing, ish.

1. Build this Supermicro board plus i3-9100F and install just plain Windows 10.
2. Wait until it's stable, then move my hard drives (3 x 3TB, 1 x 6TB, all 3/4 full) from my Windows 10 workstation (E5-1650v4 / X99-E WS) to the one above.
3. Use the E5-1650 machine to extend my familiarity with FreeNAS (mainly for storage, Plex and non-Graphics intensive VM's)
4. Once I've achieved 3 to a comfortable extent, the Supermicro / i3-9100F becomes a snapshot storage only.

The final situation is that the new Office I'm building in my back garden (my background is Building Construction) will house the snapshot machine. The E5-1650 machine will be in the house.

This is probably a little too much information if the above isn't already!

My background is poor for anything that isn't Windows/Mac, but I am familiar with code having done websites (not using CMS's but simple ole' html/php/css). I'm ensuring I'm under no time pressure to become sufficiently competent with FreeNAS before I begin to depend on it. I've spent on average an hour a day during the last 3-4 months experimenting with FreeNAS on 2 near identical Althon dual core machines (one that I found and another that was my parents before I upgraded them). I bought a dozen old/part used 300GB drives so I could experience and diagnose issues - which of course happened with sketchy drives, and this was the intention. I've tested SMART alert emails (what a wonderful script I found here), I've created mirrors, stripes, tried Rsync and replications from one machine to another. I've been getting myself in trouble and then digging my way out, or find out how to prevent it in the first place. It has been a steep learning curve for me, but I feel it's worth it if I care about my data, both business and personal. I haven't posted too many questions on here (I hope!) because I would prefer to just read and not ask questions that have already been answered.

I truly wish I was the Navy Chris, but alas not. Just a small time ex-racer that had a career ending incident that took 3-4 years to recover from - I still ride, but the event caused a deviated thought process you could say. While I was recovering, I could just about wipe my own backside for the first 6 months, so I learnt more about computers to distract me from the unpleasantness (as it didn't require physical movement, some that I struggled with). Ah what fun memories that brings back!

Anyway! I'm looking forward to my first server motherboard, especially that IPMI function...and yes, I do question was gets my motor running these days!

 

[joeschmuck]

Wow, sorry to hear about your life changing event and I hope you are fully recovered. And it's okay to have limited computer experience, you have 100% more Mac experience than me. I can't even operate an Apple iPhone, drives me nuts.

And I now understand what you are doing with your computers, migrating Windoze 10 to a new piece of hardware. I might be doing that soon, someone got me thinking about upgrading since mine is so old (10 years), ancient in computer timelines. And a new system would offer me better performance and energy savings. Of course i priced a system and it would cost me almost $700 just for the upgrade, no power supply, case or stuff like that, just the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and a new super fast NVMe SSD. The RAM might be overkill but I was going to start with 32GB.

Anyway! I'm looking forward to my first server motherboard, especially that IPMI function...and yes, I do question was gets my motor running these days!

IPMI is nice to have if you have a computer remotely located or you just don't want/need a keyboard and monitor connected to it. It's not something you will ideally use everyday. I use it for my servers and it works very well but I only use it once a month when I update my ESXi software, assuming there is a software update available.

I hope all works out for you and I'm sure if you have some difficulty, just ask the question and someone will come to your rescue.

-Joe

 

[Bikerchris]

Wow, sorry to hear about your life changing event ....

Thanks, it's kind of OK now, it's been a good few years, but once these things happen, they're hard to shake. I am physically recovered now as much as can be, my new internal metal complains a bit now and again but doesn't restrict me. At least there are fewer metal detector jokes than there use to be - got those from every person I mentioned it to! Yeah, I had to be a bit Apple literate as I worked in a company that exclusively used them. I used CAD on a VM thing called Parallel I think it was. I have to say it did well, just a pity I shared my office with the Apple servers...shows what they thought of me!

Crikey, 10 years eh - mind you saying that, the test machines I've been using haven't skipped a beat. Funnily enough I've finally bought the last few bits for the new windows "lol server". I went for 16GB in the end, but I've also treated what's to become the main Freenas box with 32GB (2 x 16) of additional RAM (currently 2 x 8). Good luck with the upgrade in due course!

Yeah IPMI sounds like a great feature - I'm in a quirky situation at the moment and have 2 office rooms next to each other. Fortunately someone's punched cat cables through the wall already (nice masonry wall, so no sound at all) and I've placed my test rigs in there. The IPMI will help in this situation, but also the future one when I will mostly be around 40m away (120 ft).

Not forcing you to go into detail, but do you have a vm and Freenas in it? I've heard ESXi mentioned a number of times for VM, only used the FreeNAS flavour so far (behyive or similar), understand it's a bit limited. Unfortunately my two cores haven't given me much experience, but the re-used 6 core should be interesting.

Thank you though, really kind of you Joe, very much appreciated. I'm currently in the process of trimming my data to reduce the number of HDD's I have to buy :-/

Picture of my test servers attached, for funzies.

 

[Constantin]

Glad to hear your body has healed. I tumbled once on the race track but nothing serious. The only thing hurt was my pride and I learned to check my enthusiasm with cold Dunlop 209s. Years after that low-speed low-side, I was so busy at work that I only rode 1 mile in 2 years. That's when I sold my Fireblade and switched to a convertible. Now my convertible is old enough to vote. Hopefully the Fireblade is still alive and well also.

Best of luck with your server builds and I fully agree that FreeNAS has a pretty steep learning curve. That said, I'd be remiss if I didn't add that both Windows and MacOS have become increasingly obfuscated and difficult to use thanks to feature-bloat and willful / random deviation from the great UX guidelines that used to reign at Apple 20 years ago. The iOSification of MacOS continues, much to the detriment of the user experience.

My latest Mac episode was discovering that the Disk Utility program (used for formatting, partitioning, and image creation) was single-threaded, i.e. once you start a task, the program is locked up. Drop down into the command line (via Terminal) and I was able to load up each hyperthread with an image process, getting 8 tasks done in parallel instead of just one. Call it lazy programming, dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator, whatever, but I cannot stand how core functions in the GUI cannot take advantage of multiple processor cores.

I do wonder at what point I'll get so fed up with both Windows and MacOS to make the jump to Linux.

 

[joeschmuck]

Not forcing you to go into detail, but do you have a vm and Freenas in it?

Yes, look at my tag line for Show Systems. I've been running 11.1-U7 but think I should upgrade. I'm not fast to upgrade software when it just works but lately things have not been working so great. I'm pretty sure it's a Windows software update that killed my shares from working so well. But FreeNAS on a VM works very well provided you have a plan. If it's a simple FreeNAS installation as you are planning, it's easy. There are some things to be aware of such as passing through the drive controller or use RDM, do not take your datastores and make virtual hard drives to store your data, that is a rookie move.

 

[Evertb1]

I do wonder at what point I'll get so fed up with both Windows and MacOS to make the jump to Linux.

I understand you but I need to confess: Long before I got a bit tired of Windows (and the always continuing updating) I was fed up with Linux. Why? Because It has been the great promise that was never fulfilled for decades. I think I started with a RedHat starter pack around 1996 or so. And it was the start of a lot of trouble. Funny to toy around with, but not if you wanted productivity. I mean, installing a printer driver and getting a kernel panic? That was Linux for years. And at this point in time Linux is getting pretty bloated as well. And all those distro's and different desktops, ughh. I use Ubuntu on one of my machines but while it certainly works OK it is not the holy grail of workstation computing to me. And in the mean time I make an excellent living with my Windows based tools. Now if you talk about Linux servers that is a different story. A happy one

 

[Bikerchris]

Thank you @Constantin , very kind of you to say. Glad you've only hurt your pride, cold tyres can be a literal pain eh. I can't blame you for selling the blade, I always wanted one but could never justify it for every day use. Ha, convertible old enough to vote, nice one.

Thank you also for the luck, I think I'll need it, though I'm doing well so far on temporary/disposable data - though that's not really my competence, more the quality of FreeNAS. You're absolutely right about Win/Mac, it has been frustrating to ensure I'm aware of any updates that may disturb my work.

Wow, that's impressive that you can turn a single to a multiple thread. It's a poor show considering the multi-core machines - having said that I use CAD programmes that are largely single threaded as well, and high speed just gets the job done better. I'm hoping to upgrade my workstation next year to a 3950X, as my 4C/8T machine doesn't like doing too many things at once (naturally). I occasionally need to render and that means turning on my spare workstation that has a whooping 6C/12T, so I can leave that to do the work but it's a highly inefficient workflow.

I'm surprised you haven't jump ship already and gone to Linux! I'm seriously going to give a few distro's ago, aside from Ubuntu. I hear good things about PopOS, but haven't had a successful install yet (poor spare hardware).

I'm certainly looking forward to having my files on a non-windows machine, I have around 8TB, so far I'm looking at getting around 25-30TB of raw storage and then using a RAIDZ2 arrangement. I'll probably change my mind, but it's a start!

 

[Bikerchris]

Yes, look at my tag line for Show Systems. I've been running 11.1-U7 but think I should upgrade. I'm not fast to upgrade software when it just works but lately things have not been working so great. I'm pretty sure it's a Windows software update that killed my shares from working so well. But FreeNAS on a VM works very well provided you have a plan. If it's a simple FreeNAS installation as you are planning, it's easy. There are some things to be aware of such as passing through the drive controller or use RDM, do not take your datastores and make virtual hard drives to store your data, that is a rookie move.

Sorry @joeschmuck , I should have done that - so you can pass through the drives to FreeNAS, that's interesting, I'll read up about that and also test it soon. Sorry to hear things have gone a bit off, like you say, perhaps an update will help - I'm the same as you with the 'if it ain't broke' camp. I will certainly give it a go, thanks for the advice, it's something I will do very cautiously, as I'm very much wet behind the ears!

 

[Evertb1]

pass through the drives to FreeNAS

Take note that @joeschmuck was talking about passing through the disk controller not seperate drives. Freenas/ZFS needs to have control over the hardware. In a VM you do that by passing trough the HBA (controller) to the VM.

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

I do wonder at what point I'll get so fed up with both Windows and MacOS to make the jump to Linux.

I so wish I was Linux 100% of the time. But, alas, some things require Windows. (Damn my love of Arma 3... )

 

[Bikerchris]

Take note that @joeschmuck was talking about passing through the disk controller not seperate drives. Freenas/ZFS needs to have control over the hardware. In a VM you do that by passing trough the HBA (controller) to the VM.

Thank you for that @Evertb1 , that probably saved me some time in the future. I do have an HBA, so at least I can try it out.

 

[joeschmuck]

Take note that @joeschmuck was talking about passing through the disk controller not seperate drives. Freenas/ZFS needs to have control over the hardware. In a VM you do that by passing trough the HBA (controller) to the VM.

True, passing the controlled is the best practice however in the spirit of learning... ESXi 6.5 and greater does a good job of passing the individual hard drives through via RDM. I do use it and it works great. I do prefer passing the entire controller if you can but there is some hardware that will not pass the controller well, for example some built in motherboard controllers. If you do not have an add-on HBA card and are using only the motherboard controller, and that controller also handles the boot drive... Well that is a sticky pickle to be in. The resolution is RDM and pass though just the SATA ports/hard drives that you want to. It's not straight forward to implement but after a bit of reading you can make it work and once you have it working the first time, you will be able to repeat it easily.

On a side note, I have upgraded my ESXi machine to ESXi 7.0 and I also upgraded my FreeNAS to 11.3-U4.1. I'll have to change my tagline soon. I'm using the evaluation version, got 60 days to enter the license key.

 

[Constantin]

...I can't blame you for selling the blade, I always wanted one but could never justify it for every day use. Ha, convertible old enough to vote, nice one.

I found the Fireblade quite great for single-person rides, especially if they weren't too long and involved at least some highway use along the way. The ergonomics were great for the track but stank on long rides because I'm too tall. Too much pressure on the palms unless you were going 120+MPH, which isn't legal many places. But awesome in the twisties and such a easy clutch for such a beastie motor. Best of all, being a Honda, every replacement part just fits.

The convertible allows the boss and I to enjoy the great outdoors without the need for all the biker paraphernalia (suit, boots, back protector, gloves, helmet, etc.) and when the weather is unwelcoming, you just put the top up... Plus, having been spun 180* thanks to a wee lad with a V8 5.0 Mustang on a wet night not observing the local speed limits while showboating for a friend, I'll say that having a cage around you is really nice even if the airbag leaves you with a 10" bruise. I walked away from that accident.

I remain baffled about the extent that programmers are not required to take advantage of multiple cores when there is a good case to be made for them, but this likely comes back to making the GUI as simple as possible, even if the underlying engine would allow you a lot more. It's a pity - I see it elsewhere as well, whether it's iTunes not being able to import more than one song / disk at a time, for example. Speaking of offloading, a relative used to offload massive lease analysis' to a supercomputer at work, let it run overnight, then return in the AM to see what rate they were going to offer for the latest Boeing Super-Jumbo.

I'm surprised you haven't jump ship already and gone to Linux! I'm seriously going to give a few distro's ago, aside from Ubuntu. I hear good things about PopOS, but haven't had a successful install yet (poor spare hardware).

I'm fully cognizant that the grass may seem greener in Linux-land. However, the way that Apple keeps pushing for new hardware as the OS evolves, even if the new machines are not materially faster (or even slower as during the MacPro cheesegrater vs. trashcan transition). Todays MacPro is a compromise that screams "gap-filler" and which was obsolete the day it was released.

Will be interesting to see how the Axx series of CPUs will integrate with Thunderbolt and other, non-iOS I/O. With the departure of Ive, there is some hope for more functional machines from Apple. However, with the ARM transition I expect a lot of stuff to stay on the cutting floor, so I plan on virtualizing my current install of Mojave to keep 32-bit app, FireWire, etc. compatibility. I already have a VM of Snow Leopard just so I will be able to open older copies of Word documents in peace and quiet.

The Z2 array you are envisioning should offer a good balance of performance and redundancy. Best of luck with that too!

 

[Bikerchris]

True, passing the controlled is the best practice however in the spirit of learning... ESXi 6.5 and greater does a good job of passing the individual hard drives through via RDM. I do use it and it works great. I do prefer passing the entire controller if you can but there is some hardware that will not pass the controller well, for example some built in motherboard controllers. If you do not have an add-on HBA card and are using only the motherboard controller, and that controller also handles the boot drive... Well that is a sticky pickle to be in. The resolution is RDM and pass though just the SATA ports/hard drives that you want to. It's not straight forward to implement but after a bit of reading you can make it work and once you have it working the first time, you will be able to repeat it easily.

On a side note, I have upgraded my ESXi machine to ESXi 7.0 and I also upgraded my FreeNAS to 11.3-U4.1. I'll have to change my tagline soon. I'm using the evaluation version, got 60 days to enter the license key.

Thank you very much for elaborating @joeschmuck , really helpful. If I have a moment, I'll definitely try it on one of my HBA equipped test machines.

Hope your upgrades go smoothly, fingers crossed!

 

[Bikerchris]

Completely agree @Constantin , over on this side of the pond we have great roads and plenty of them very close to hand, so a blade isn't so bad - oddly there's been a large number of people commuting into London on Blades and similar bikes, which I think it's odd, as there are no bends!!! I've had a go on a few blades, from the first one onward and they were amazing, the first was very twitchy with the 16in front!

Wow, that V8 5L must be stonking, we don't get big engine'd cars over here, or rather I'm not in the right circles to know people with them. Saying that, I went to a client who has an American car, a Mustang of some variety - I've been designing an extension for his car to stay dry, because yes it does rain here a bit! I'm glad you walked away with a bruise, like you say, would have been far worse to go wrong on two wheels.

I did hear/read that some processes can't be run parallel on multicores, though I forget why - perhaps video editing can't be done in chunks or something...I'm officially talking about my pay/knowledge grade! That's cool about the Boeing, I'd love to know how long 1 conventional computer would have done the same task? Weeks, months or even years!?!?

I have heard (I seem to hear an awful lot) about Linux-land, @Evertb1 's comments ring very true from my very brief experience, but also the experience of others that I knew, who delved into that world. As he mentioned, I recall a guy working all day trying to make a printer work. I say good luck to them of course, it must be great to get away from MS/iOS. Much like @Newfoundland.Republic , I too need Windows to make money that pays for food in the winter!

Watching the MacPro saga was entertaining to say the least, especially at the costs involved - though of course I'm not a in position to depend on Mac's and there are no doubt many that buy them for the workflow/reliability.

You've got some knowledge there about the CPU's, I can only read!

Thank you, I thought Z2 was sensible, I have a few unused but good condition SSD's, so I'll probably use them to create any VMs that I want to play with!

 

[Constantin]

Yep, had the smaller front and bigger rear wheel, circa 1994 edition Fireblade. Never found that to be a particular issue as long as the shocks were properly set up. Liked the look of the all-red one that followed in 1995 better but learned to live with black / purple / yellow. Great bike, easy to work on, very reliable. The only issue I ran into repeatedly is gumming of the carbs even if I ran Stabil through them before putting the bike away for the winter.

Speaking of multi-core operations, one of the biggest everyday professional impacts happened when Microsoft finally introduced multi-core recalcs in Excel. It only took until 2006 - thanks to the MS Office monopoly. I remain amazed how much the Excel team has focused on eye-candy to the point where even putting together a simple chart takes far longer than it should. Collaborative Excel work (even when hosted on a MS Sharepoint, OneDrive, whatever) is a hot dumpster fire and hosed our data repeatedly before we gave up.

As for the Mustang, it was a tired old late-80s model that certainly sounds aggressive. Why parents would buy that as a first car for their 17-yo is beyond me, however. Right up there with having the kid drive at night, in the rain, with a friend. The insurance company and the state ascribed full fault to him (and that will have cost him big bucks - the insurance always gets its money back) but I'm glad none of us were badly hurt. My state now forbids young drivers to have friends in the car until they have graduated from a junior to a full license. Too many dead and killed.

 

[Bikerchris]

Yep, had the smaller front and bigger rear wheel, circa 1994 edition Fireblade. Never found that to be a particular issue as long as the shocks were properly set up. Liked the look of the all-red one that followed in 1995 better but learned to live with black / purple / yellow. Great bike, easy to work on, very reliable. The only issue I ran into repeatedly is gumming of the carbs even if I ran Stabil through them before putting the bike away for the winter.

Speaking of multi-core operations, one of the biggest everyday professional impacts happened when Microsoft finally introduced multi-core recalcs in Excel. It only took until 2006 - thanks to the MS Office monopoly. I remain amazed how much the Excel team has focused on eye-candy to the point where even putting together a simple chart takes far longer than it should. Collaborative Excel work (even when hosted on a MS Sharepoint, OneDrive, whatever) is a hot dumpster fire and hosed our data repeatedly before we gave up.

As for the Mustang, it was a tired old late-80s model that certainly sounds aggressive. Why parents would buy that as a first car for their 17-yo is beyond me, however. Right up there with having the kid drive at night, in the rain, with a friend. The insurance company and the state ascribed full fault to him (and that will have cost him big bucks - the insurance always gets its money back) but I'm glad none of us were badly hurt. My state now forbids young drivers to have friends in the car until they have graduated from a junior to a full license. Too many dead and killed.

Yeah that's the one, I just found it was a bit twitchy when pushed, also it sort of fell into bends when not on the throttle. It was similar to the GPX750R, they stuck a 16 inch on that if I recall, with a similar effect. The urban tiger model was my wall poster when I was young, eventually got to ride one and had a combination of adoration and excitement that I finally rode the bike that had been on my wall for so many years. You're not wrong though, good bike to work on and returns reliability if looked after...and even if neglected a bit.

I don't have experience of Excel (my wife lives in it, doing clever things I don't understand), but that's pretty bad they didn't sort out multi-core use for so long - like you say, monopoly.

That's crazy about a 17 year old in a Mustang, over here in the UK kids normally get sub-litre cars to start with. Of course there are exceptions, I when I was 18 and at college, one guy the same age had a sports car - promptly wrapped it round a tree. To teach him a lesson they bought him a equally expensive car, but a slower one instead. Boggles the mind.