Hardware advice - which is more appropriate?

[Popolou]

I'd be grateful for some opinions whilst I'm in the motions of planning a move to better hardware. I have a little dilemma as to which of the following systems (and their respective hardware) is suitable for the purposes i have in mind. Both are dell boxes, r730 and both can be chopped and changed on spec if need be.

System 1

Code:

CPU                     Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2667 v3 @ 3.20GHz
CurrentClockSpeed       3200 MHz
MaxClockSpeed           4000 MHz
NumberOfEnabledThreads  16
NumberOfProcessorCores  8
Installed Capacity      128.00 GB
Memory Speed (DDR4)     2133 MHz

System 2

Code:

CPU                     Dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v4 @ 2.60GHz
CurrentClockSpeed       2600 MHz
MaxClockSpeed           4000 MHz
NumberOfEnabledThreads  28
NumberOfProcessorCores  14
Installed Capacity      512.00 GB
Memory Speed (DDR4)     2400 MHz

One of the roles will be for a combination of SMB/CIFS over x8 SSDs configured as RAIDZ2 via dual 10Gb links which also includes x4 2TB NVME drives configured as mirrored pairs over iSCSI as block storage for my ESXi VM's, itself served over a 100Gb mellanox. On testing, this works well.

The other is a simple file server on x8 SATA spinners of some 20TB in size each. No flair and just configured for storage and served over dual 10Gb links.

I suppose my dilemma is a traditional one and it's a toss between raw grunt i.e. core speed vs cores. Would i really be better served with the more involved role (smb/iscsi/esxi) being on System 2 (mhz for mhz slower despite it being a v4 CPU) or would it be better scenario running on System 1 and i just add more RAM (despite it being marginally slower).

I suspect there could we be little in real terms but i'd hate to then move it all over and reconfigure if i find i was mistaken.

Cheers
Pops

 

[Popolou]

Nobody?

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Hyperlink to the exact manual section on CPU selection:

CORE Hardware Guide

Describes the hardware specifications and system component recommendations for custom TrueNAS CORE deployment.

www.truenas.com

 

[ChrisRJ]

Can you rephrase your question/problem? I am not sure what exactly you want to do. Besides, it seems to me that you did not quantify your requirements. This may or may not be a problem here. But, if possible, adding some numbers about required IOPS and transfer rates (sequential vs. random access) would be helpful.

As a general comment, this community is quite helpful. If you do not get replies that is generally because your question is not specific enough. This may of course be only my perception .

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

@ChrisRJ : I guess if we're going to get all technical there's the big link (below), but pertaining to the general question the TrueNAS documentation (linked in my previous post) covers it. Annnnd, since this is a server forum, "getting technical" is pretty much what we do, so....:

Performance Tuning for SMB File Servers

Performance Tuning for SMB File Servers in Windows.

learn.microsoft.com

And to Chris's point, there's more to it than just SMB:

ZFS 101—Understanding ZFS storage and performance

Learn to get the most out of your ZFS filesystem in our new series on storage fundamentals.

arstechnica.com

Hope this helps.

 

[Popolou]

Evening both.

Am aware of those pages (and i think i've revisted them from time to time having used freenas/truenas for over a decade), thank you all the same. It's the overlap between SMB and iSCSI roles that one of the systems will have which had me pondering the setup on this occasion and specifically which of the CPU's to go with. One is a v3 at a faster base clock but fewer cores whilst the other is a more modern v4 and technically a step up (certainly by a generation) but at a slower base speed...yet more cores. I'm disregarding any effects of the differing memory speeds of the two systems in this case (but i'd happily stand corrected if that should not be the case).

Other than that, the OP had the details; essentially, is conflating the two roles into the one system the problem since they have different requirements or would i simply be overthinking this.