GigaByte GA-X79S-UP5 usage for freeNAS?

[jbates58]

hi all.

i have this motherboard, an intel I7-4820K and 16gb Tram Group 2400MHZ Ram

i know that the CPU and the ram are not recomended for freenas, but i am wondering if i replace them with more suited parts, if the motherboard will work well. or am i best off getting rid of it aswell and just getting all new gear?

my plan is

Home server system, running

• Plex
• Sabnzb (Have an Odroid XU that i may run this on instead)
• Sickbeard
• CouchPotato
• Deluge/Transmission (Have an Odroid XU that i may run this on instead)

i would also like to try setting up a home firewall using pf sense, so that i can filter out adds etc... at the gateway level. and as noted above for Sabnzb and Deluge/Transmission, i have another system that i am happy to run them on. so that they can run all day long as the odroid does anyway. and am i able to set the Freenas system to sleep? as nobody is home throughout the week days, as we are at work. and at night we are asleep. the devices backup to the Odroid currently at 12Am, but i am happy to change the times that that happens, to more suited times if i am able to have the system sleep. as i am wanting to lower the power consumption. and the amount of power on time is on 4-6hours/day. so a MASSIVE power saving if i can have it sleep the rest of the day.

if i can have it to sleep, i will move the odroid to the modem directly, so that the server sleeping and losing the firewall connection wont effect it.

the system will also be used for backing up

• 2 Samsung Android Phones
• 2 Android Tablets
• 2 Windows Laptops
• 3 Windows Pc's

and will also need to stream media throughout the house to the above devices. i would like to assume that it could potentially play to all devices simultaneously at the highest quality available to the device/connection.

and am i able to start with drives that already have data on them? i currently use flexraid, but am wanting to try something different, that is a bit more reliable. as i am having alot of issues trying to make a AIO system for gaming and serving.

the case i am using is a Backblaze pod, and has plenty of airflow over the drives. i have installed 6 of noctua's new Industrial series 3000RPM fans and they do a great job keeping my current drives at ambient temps.

my current drives are a mixture of 3TB Wd Greens and Seagate's. aswell as a few 2TB WD/Seagate. and 2 6TB Wd Red's. i have ~10 3Tb drives in the mixture.

i hope that i have provided enough info on my aim for the system.

please advise me on what the best route i should take is.

Jason

 

[cyberjock]

Replacing the motherboard buys you what exactly?

We recommend server-grade motherboards (which won't work with that CPU), and ECC RAM (which again won't work with that CPU).

So I'm not even sure what you think you'd gain by swapping just the motherboard. You have to either go against all of our recommendations and keep that hardware, or look at a new processor, RAM, and motherboard. There is no in-between. There is a distinct line between desktop stuff you are using to buying and server-grade stuff that FreeNAS should be run on. You can't do a hybrid of the two very well. :p

As for the rest of your questions, I think you should do your own research and figure out the answers for yourself. They are questions you really should be able to answer for yourself before you dive into using FreeNAS. ;) Someone else is welcome to answer them all if they want.. but they seem pretty elementary and really should be answerable by a little searching of the forums...

 

[jbates58]

i clearly stated in my first post

"i know that the CPU and the ram are not recomended for freenas, but i am wondering if i replace them with more suited parts, if the motherboard will work well. or am i best off getting rid of it aswell and just getting all new gear?"

was more wondering as the board is a server class board, with a C606 chipset, if that is a bad choice or not. the board supports ECC from what i can gather, but wether that means it actualy utilizes it is another matter. i am happy to buy a new server based cpu and ram and board aswell.

Jason

 

[Ericloewe]

How does it have a C606 if it's called "X79"? Ah, Gigabyte decided to go with confusing marketing.

Let's put it this way: It should work if you swap out the CPU and RAM for a Xeon and ECC UDIMMs, but you might have trouble with some of the stuff on that motherboard (Audio, WiFi,...) and you won't have IPMI.

Before you buy anything, I'd recommed that you try out FreeNAS and see if everything works. Use your results to aid in your decision.

 

[cyberjock]

Oy. It looks like X79 doesn't mean X79 anymore. Oh Gigabyte. I love you so, but you gotta stop playing games with model numbers...

That board you are looking at buying still isn't recommended as it has all the extra stuff on-board that you do not want. It will burn extra watts and can cause the system to not be stable (and sometimes usable). So yeah.. still not much better in terms of being recommended hardware. :/

Kind of disappointed in Gigabyte for saying X79, but it not being X79. I've been buying desktop hardware from Gigabyte exclusively for 4+ years and that is very disappointing.

 

[marbus90]

Which revision of the storagepod do you have? If it isn't the v4 without the SATA multipliers, I can't recommend that chassis either.

Also you can't (really shouldn't) combine pfSense, FreeNAS and a "gaming" system in a single point of failure. pfSense should have its own low-power 24/7 box, FreeNAS gets a Xeon E5 system with plenty of RAM (1GB RAM per 1TB storage) and your gaming system could repurpose the existing hardware.

Receipt for the FreeNAS only could be a Supermicro X8 series mobo, already coming with two CPUs and lots of DIMM-slots (at least 12 to 16)- you'll need them with 45 HDD-bays due to the 1GB RAM per 1TB storage. Alternatively an X9 or X10 board with a Xeon E5-1620 or E5-2609. Then add 3x LSI 9201-16i controllers to connect the HDDs to the system. PSU-wise I would pick a 1.2 to 1.5kw Corsair single-rail to feed all the disks. Especially since you want to spin all disks up and down on a daily basis.

Migrating your data could be done via creating a 11drive raidz3 volume (spare the 2TB HDDs, they'll only lower the total pool size) and copying the data over. After that you ideally add 11drive raidz3 volumes to the existing pool. Another way of expanding space-wise is replacing the smaller HDDs with bigger ones - as soon as the smallest disk in the volume is replaced with a bigger one, the pool size will automagically grow. With 11drive vdevs you can utilize the 45 bays better at 4x11disk plus one warm spare, yielding 32 usable disks.

 

[Ericloewe]

3x LSI 9201s? Expanders would be much cheaper...

 

[marbus90]

3x M1015 and 3x expanders (or 1x M1015 and 4 expanders) won't be much cheaper, doubles the point of failures, would need more cables, drives the energy usage and heat up and is harder to integrate within the chassis. I'd rather pick the 9201-16i.

 

[jbates58]

it is the direct wire storage pod, i brought the upgrade kit for it to change from the port multipliers that it originaly had (what a terrible idea they are) and i currently have 3 M1015's in the system. so if i can keep them and use them, that would be great. i have only started to look at pfsense, since deciding to get my pc away from an AIO to a dedicated server. but am happy to forgo the pfsense route for now and use a small dedicated system for that later. my main focus is the nas/media server. so i would potentialy need to have 270GB odd of ram to fully utilise the pod? that seems a little far beyond what i would like to spend.

 

[cyberjock]

You might not need 270GB of RAM, but even for a home user you are probably talking 64-96GB of RAM minimum. :/

 

[marbus90]

Yup, you /might/ not need it from the start, but as soon as you have performance issues, the only solution is to add more RAM. Hence my recommendation towards boards which can utilize that.

Also if you want to fully utilize the system and run 5-6x M1015 to connect all bays, there's no way around a Dual-CPU mainboard. Does the pod take E-ATX boards (up to 13" front-to-back)?
Anyway, here are some mobos, selected after IPMI, enough DIMM slots and enough PCIe lanes spread over the slots. For the X8 generation you can pick any CPU available for that socket, only if you want encryption you should pick the L56xx/E56xx/X56xx series where xx is same or bigger than 20.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTH-iF.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DTH-6F.cfm (currently for 360$ on ebay) (the onboard LSI 2008 controller is the same as one of your M1015 down to the SFF-8087 ports)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10SRL-F.cfm (UP Xeon E5, up to 128GB with standard 16GB RDIMMs, 256GB only with 32GB LRDIMMs which are still a bit pricey)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRi-T.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRH-i.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRH-iT.cfm (2x10Gbe RJ45, compatible to 1Gbe)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRH-C.cfm (LSI 3008 onboard)
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DRH-CT.cfm (LSI 3008 onboard, 2x10Gbe RJ45, compatible to 1Gbe)

The issue with the LSI 3008 boards/HBAs would be that they don't use the SFF-8087 connector but that new miniSAS (forgot the number for that). I suppose the SFF-8087 from Backblaze are hardwired?