BUILD Mini-ITX C226 Haswell build

[Dusan]

Think you need a tftp server with the Freenas image file available on your network and activate PXE preboot environement on the BIOS board to accomplish this.

You don't need any PXE & TFTP with IPMI. You just point it to a local .ISO file and it will be mounted as a virtual CD ROM on the server.

 

[Sir.Robin]

You don't need any PXE & TFTP with IPMI. You just point it to a local .ISO file and it will be mounted as a virtual CD ROM on the server.

That is correct and is how it works with most vendors.
Its might be differently implemented though.
HP for example requires you to buy a license to use virtual media (iso mount).


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[Dusan]

That is correct and is how it works with most vendors.
Its might be differently implemented though.
HP for example requires you to buy a license to use virtual media (iso mount).

This is ASRock, not HP, no special licenses here: ftp://europe.asrock.com/manual/IPMI/E3C226D2I.pdf

 

[Sir.Robin]

I am aware of that. I said "for example".


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[SmallGuy]

You don't need any PXE & TFTP with IPMI. You just point it to a local .ISO file and it will be mounted as a virtual CD ROM on the server.

Thanks for the information.
I had never use IPMI and discover this "low level remote". Glad to now this is also on the Asrock.
Sorry for my misinformation post, but it was a "thinking".

 

[jonnn]

Is there any confirmation of FreeNAS working on this board yet ?

If so, has anyone measured idle power under FreeNAS?

 

[Dr.T]

As far as I can tell it's the only server grade mITX Haswell board.

There are more coming now, for example Microstar MS-S0891 or ASUS P9D-I, they have fewer SATA ports (5 and 4 - if it's critical).

 

[jonnn]

6 SATA ports = very useful

4 or 5 = WTF

I wish this ASROCK board has HDMI out. Would be awesome to have an HTPC and ZFS via virtualization.

I have an E3C226D2I AND a E3C224D2I coming (I know, sigh...) Gonna return or sell one of them.

 

[Dr.T]

6 SATA ports = very useful

4 or 5 = WTF

My bad - MSI have 6 SATA ports (6-th eSATA on the back; yes, it's not so comfortable for use but still is a problem solve).

 

[Bairesman]

There are more coming now, for example Microstar MS-S0891 or ASUS P9D-I, they have fewer SATA ports (5 and 4 - if it's critical).

I steel feel ASHrock's E3C226D2I has a better specs than these two... IMHO

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[underpickled]

Is there any confirmation of FreeNAS working on this board yet ?

If so, has anyone measured idle power under FreeNAS?

It works fine. I haven't measured power yet though.

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[engmsf]

The_Tox, what CPU cooler are you using with your Asrock E3C226D2I? Would you know or remember if the underside of the motherboard has space (free of transistors, diodes, etc) to accommodate a back plate from one of the larger heat sinks like a Hyper 212 EVO?

 

[underpickled]

The_Tox, what CPU cooler are you using with your Asrock E3C226D2I? Would you know or remember if the underside of the motherboard has space (free of transistors, diodes, etc) to accommodate a back plate from one of the larger heat sinks like a Hyper 212 EVO?

I'm using the stock cooler. Unless you're constantly under a high load, I doubt you'd need much more than that for Haswell... That being said, I'm pretty sure the motherboard actually came with a separate back plate for non-stock coolers.

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[underpickled]

Is there any confirmation of FreeNAS working on this board yet ?

If so, has anyone measured idle power under FreeNAS?

I don't know if or when I'll get around to measuring power, but if I do... Are you referring to "FreeNAS running but not much happening" idle or "the server is off but the motherboard still has power/IPMI" idle? I might grab a power meter and test a series of different scenarios, but keep in mind that the drives, CPU, and fans will dominate the power draw most likely and it will be difficult to isolate the draw from the motherboard.

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[jonnn]

I don't know if or when I'll get around to measuring power, but if I do... Are you referring to "FreeNAS running but not much happening" idle or "the server is off but the motherboard still has power/IPMI" idle? I might grab a power meter and test a series of different scenarios, but keep in mind that the drives, CPU, and fans will dominate the power draw most likely and it will be difficult to isolate the draw from the motherboard.

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No worries. My board came in and I have a kill a watt. I will report some data soon.

 

[jonnn]

Here are my power numbers under FN

Setup
C226 board
1x 8gb DIMM w/ ECC (set to 1.5V)
G3220 Pentium
Stock Fan set to 50%
Dell RM112 power supply
Single WD Green 1.5 TB drive
IPMI connected and enabled
1 NIC connected and enabled
Disabled stuff in bios:
-USB3
-Serial port
-Enabled platform C state support
-Disabled virtualization Support

Drive at idle: 21.3W - 21.5 W
Drive sleep: 19.1W - 19.5W
CIFS share transfer from another system to this drive in stripe at ~80mb/s (limited by drive speed) 33W - 34W
Drive disconnected: 18.5W - 18.9W
-----Note the platform has itermittant spikes to ~28W at idle, then settles to ~19.8W then down to 18.5W. I suspect this if Freenas doing something


These numbers represent my Kill a Watt, and my extremely efficient PSU, so don't expect to reproduce.

I will compare with Windows 8, ESXi and NAS4Free later.



A gripe I have is there is no under-clocking support. I wish I could cap CPU speed at 2.0 GHz or so.
My old MSI H61 board with a Sandy Bridge Pentium idled ~3W lower, but of course I was only running 2gb ram, single NIC and no ECC, no IPMI, etc....


Other performance info...
I have a 6x toshiba 7200 array in RAID z2... scrubs come in at over 600mb/s on 3.5TB of data. CIFS is about where expected at ~100mb/s.

 

[Dusan]

A gripe I have is there is no under-clocking support. I wish I could cap CPU speed at 2.0 GHz or so.

powerd does throttle down the CPU when there is no activity and you can also use it to limit max CPU frequency (or you can just set a fixed frequency via sysctl dev.cpu.0.freq) However, I doubt you will see any power saving. The frequency doesn't matter much when idle as the cores are mostly in C1/C1E state anyway. If you limit the frequency during CPU intensive task then the task will take longer and the throttled CPU may even consume more energy than unthrottled to finish the task.

 

[Nomad]

Here are my power numbers under FN
Drive at idle: 21.3W - 21.5 W
Drive sleep: 19.1W - 19.5W
CIFS share transfer from another system to this drive in stripe at ~80mb/s (limited by drive speed) 33W - 34W
Drive disconnected: 18.5W - 18.9W
-----Note the platform has itermittant spikes to ~28W at idle, then settles to ~19.8W then down to 18.5W. I suspect this if Freenas doing something


These numbers represent my Kill a Watt, and my extremely efficient PSU, so don't expect to reproduce.

Seems like a great build, I'm running on much older ECC hardware AMDx6 and using around 50-60W average over a day, but my drives don't stop working. Plex/Utorrent/VM's. ~$22.77 a year more to run. I think I'll be sticking with this until something dies.

 

[underpickled]

I just borrowed a Kill A Watt from my local public library (who knew!)... I'm hoping to do some tests this weekend, including turn-on, idle, file reads and writes, and HD transcoding.

 

[jonnn]

Seems like a great build, I'm running on much older ECC hardware AMDx6 and using around 50-60W average over a day, but my drives don't stop working. Plex/Utorrent/VM's. ~$22.77 a year more to run. I think I'll be sticking with this until something dies.

I'd say 50-60W is quite good with 6 drives working.

I just borrowed a Kill A Watt from my local public library (who knew!)... I'm hoping to do some tests this weekend, including turn-on, idle, file reads and writes, and HD transcoding.

Nice. will be interesting to see your #'s.