MacPro 3,1 - E5462 2.8GHz performance

[Number1Onion]

I have this MacPro 3,1 with a Xeon E5462 2.8GHz Harpertown cpu. The E5462 doesn't have AES-NI. Its currently running 11.1 U4. I'm considering encrypting my 6x1tb RaidZ2. Currently there is no data on it as this was just built a few days ago. Thoughts on performance, etc. I'm using a Dell H310 HBA w/ LSI 9211-8i P20 IT mode for 2 drives in the CD bay. The OS is currently running on a small PATA drive as FreeNAS refuses to boot from USB.

I'm also considering RaidZ2 vs RaidZ3. I'm planning on slowly migrating my 1tb drives to 3tb drives in the future.

 

[Ericloewe]

Its currently running 11.1 U4.

You got FreeNAS to boot? Cool, most people struggle with that on Mac Pros.

I have bad news, however. You're lucky if you get okay performance with that CPU/platform without encryption. Encryption is likely to make things grind to an absolute halt.

 

[Number1Onion]

You got FreeNAS to boot? Cool, most people struggle with that on Mac Pros.

I have bad news, however. You're lucky if you get okay performance with that CPU/platform without encryption. Encryption is likely to make things grind to an absolute halt.

Really? What if I were to swap in one or two X5482 3.2GHz?

Something I'm noticing whether I have encrypyion enabled or not, is that it's currently doing about 100mb writes per minute... From reading, I saw that Intel NIC are the best bet. Do you think thats the problem with the speed issues I'm seeing? I'm thinking that could possibly be it as the CPU and Disks aren't being taxed. I'm seeing CPU usage of max 20%.

Yep. I have a USB that has rEFIt that is the first thing detected by the system. It does its thing and pushes it to grub on FreeNAS. Then you let grub boot without striking enter as if you do then it refuses to boot as it hangs on part of the boot.

 

[Ericloewe]

What if I were to swap in one or two X5482 3.2GHz?

The CPU core isn't the problem, the FSB is. Having literally every byte that goes through the system go through that relatively puny interface destroys performance. Need something from RAM? FSB. PCIe? FSB. You can see how the simplest operation quickly gets out of hand.

From reading, I saw that Intel NIC are the best bet.

Intel NICs are undoubtedly the correct choice, but they're not going to do any miracles.

I'm thinking that could possibly be it as the CPU and Disks aren't being taxed. I'm seeing CPU usage of max 20%.

That's not very meaningful, a lot of that could be simply waiting for something to arrive.

 

[Number1Onion]

The CPU core isn't the problem, the FSB is. Having literally every byte that goes through the system go through that relatively puny interface destroys performance. Need something from RAM? FSB. PCIe? FSB. You can see how the simplest operation quickly gets out of hand.


Intel NICs are undoubtedly the correct choice, but they're not going to do any miracles.


That's not very meaningful, a lot of that could be simply waiting for something to arrive.

I'm a complete idiot. Problem seems to be fixed. It was ram limited as I never slotted the second tray after working on it.

So with that resolved, I've seen posted that once you hit about 80% pool utilization you get pretty significant degraded performance. Would that percentage be earlier if encrypted or are they about equal?

 

[Ericloewe]

Encryption would have no bearing on that, it's a straightforward fixed penalty for every disk I/O.

 

[Whoop_dang]

How is the hardware working? I have the same Mac Pro running Mac OS and Mac Server, but it gets wonky with sharing the drives i have attached.

Will FreeNAS only handle the internal drives, or will it handle USB drives attached through a USB 3.0 PCI card too?

 

[Ericloewe]

FreeNAS doesn't particularly care, but external hard disk enclosures are a race to the bottom.