Looking for recomendations...

[Robert Thomspon]

Hey guys...

Ive been running a pretty stable, but power hungry FreeNAS build for about 3 years now... and I think we'd like to move to a little bit of a greener build... Id also like to begin futureproofing the network so am looking to move to a 10gb backbone for the network rather than the 1gb we are currently running.. Lastly, trying to move to rack mount to tidy up the clusterfudge that is my current setup... Anyway...

Currently have: T7500 with dual Xeon X5667 processors and 192GB ECC RAM. Running 6x6TB drives with half as redundant...
Also, as Costco decided to sell the Seagate external 8GB drives which are nothing more than Desktop hard drives stuffed in USB enclosures, I picked up 4 of them (figure ill take a little space loss in exchange for running 2 less drives... so 4x8TB drives in the new build)

Mostly reaching out because Ive an old T3500 that I squeezed into my rackmount 3U chassis... but for some god awful reason, it is super picky about the RAM and doesnt want to use any of the Registered ECC RAM I have (mind you, it's also picky in that it maxes at 4GB per slot...so, a max of 24GB of RAM)... Ive it currently set up with 12GB of Non-ECC (something im not terribly comfortable with running the size of ZFS that I have)…

ANYWAY... i'd prefer to stay cheap and reuse some of the processor power I already have (either the X5667... or maybe bump it down to an E5530... or even an L5530 ...as I have both already on hand)...

With that said... I do run an Ubuntu VM that runs my SQL database as well as some other Jails (Sonarr, Transmission, Owncloud, SABNZB... the usual).

Would I even notice a performance difference bumping down the processor? What is an "Appropriate" amount of RAM (I was watching the RAM usage, and Ive never really gone above 16GB of utilization... and even that, i think was for a resilvering)...

Can anyone suggest a good motherboard with lots of RAM slots that's pretty open with compatibility? Ive been debating moving to a Ryzen buld... but really dont want to dump hundreds of dollars into ECC DDR4... only to have it stay almost as power hungry as my T7500...

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

tbh your post is a bit hard to follow. Would you mind posting a clean and simple list of what parts you want to buy or currently have and are willing to repurpose?

Also, it would be very helpful if you followed the instructions in the Links in Will it FreeNAS? **Required Reading for This Sub-Forum** post as well as the general forum guidelines. Specifically, providing links to parts you are interested in as well as full and complete part numbers. It goes a long way in making it easier for folks to check compatibility and suitability of parts.

For example, what exact type of HDDs are you referring to when you say

Also, as Costco decided to sell the Seagate external 8GB drives which are nothing more than Desktop hard drives stuffed in USB enclosures, I picked up 4 of them (figure ill take a little space loss in exchange for running 2 less drives... so 4x8TB drives in the new build)

And what exactly do you intend to do with those? If you browse the forums and look for information about USB drives you'll find that they are very highly discouraged for use in storage pools primarily because the

Can anyone suggest a good motherboard with lots of RAM slots that's pretty open with compatibility? I've been debating moving to a Ryzen buld... but really don't want to dump hundreds of dollars into ECC DDR4... only to have it stay almost as power hungry as my T7500...

Check out the resources section. @Chris Moore recently provided two comprehensive build lists that you may be interested in.

I'm very interested to see what you settle on especially as you zero in on your performance target while consuming less power.

 

[Robert Thomspon]

Yeah, sorry... rereading that it was kind of a word vomit... trying to get all the info out faster than I can type :)

For now, Ive modified a 3U rack mount chassis, switched to a water cooled solution for a T7500 and have the machine together on a single processor w/96GB of RAM (calculations tell me its still overkill on RAM... but I can adjust as I figure out what I want to have this thing end up being.

For now... It's a Dell T7500 w/ Xeon X5667 processor, 96GB DDR3 ECC Registered RAM. In a modified (read: cu a little notch out of the side to fit the motherboard) 3U rack mount Chassis, a 650W Gold Power supply. 4x8TB Seagate Barracuda drives (These are the ones from the USB enclosures bought from Costco)… I don't run the drives for longer than a 3 year stint, and have only ever had 1 of these begin to fail (that was about a year ago now)… They seem to take fairly well to running on a NAS and they're cheap enough, I can keep a spare on hand...


Anyway... what I would like to move to, I think... is a more modern, lower power Xeon processor and motherboard (after handling the current beast, ive 0 doubt I can squeeze just about anything into a rack mountable solution :) ) I've like to stay with as lower power as I can get on the CPU (ive seen specs on xeons running in the 20W range... but Im unsure how much FreeNAS depends on CPU power... I guess that's sort of what Im asking... How important is it to run a multicore (past 2) processor... Ill be running at least 1 VM that runs my SQL, Sonarr, SABNZB, and some other small applications... and 2 jails... 1 for Transmission (I run it in a jail to allow it to sit behind a VPN) and 1 jail for Owncloud.

Hope that clears it up... a little.

 

[Heracles]

Hi Robert,

FreeNAS can use a lot of CPU, or almost nothing. It all depends of what you do with it.

Compression, crypto, VM and jails all increase the CPU load. From your list, I would say that you will need a significant amount of CPU.

Also, know that many power saving options will kill your hardware faster. By experience, it is way better to keep the drive spinning all the time instead of stopping them every now and then.

Good luck in your design,

 

[Robert Thomspon]

Hi Robert,

FreeNAS can use a lot of CPU, or almost nothing. It all depends of what you do with it.

Compression, crypto, VM and jails all increase the CPU load. From your list, I would say that you will need a significant amount of CPU.

Also, know that many power saving options will kill your hardware faster. By experience, it is way better to keep the drive spinning all the time instead of stopping them every now and then.

Good luck in your design,

Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like I was looking for a power saving machine... Im looking for a machine that runs consistently all the time... with as little power as I can make it run on. I have no intention of having the drives spin down to shave those pennies off... Im looking for the machine as a whole to be as low power as I can make it... while still having the functionality that I want out of it and while running 24/7.


On a side note... Does anyone know what (Under DATASET: STORAGE) what the SYNC function is? Options are: Inherit, Standard, Always, Disabled... Im not sure I paid attention to this setting last time I built a FreeNAS box...

 

[Heracles]

Hi Robert

That SYNC is for SYNC writing, To sync write everything is the safe way to do, but in some cases, it will slow down the access significantly. In that case, you can choose between safe and slow or fast and fragile.

I would recommend you keep it as default and so SYNC write.