BUILD Need advice on server upgrade: Supermicro X10SL7-F vs. AsRock C2550D4I

[Razorblade]

Hello,

I'm planning to update my (Home)FreeNAS server with new hardware and go to 9.3 - currently I'm running the latest 9.2 version of FreeNAS.

The general conditions are:

• The NAS is used for filesharing (FTP, NFS and CIFS), mainly media files and as ISO datastore for ESXi. Backups of my VMs are also stored on the FreeNAS server.
  
• No encryption or deduplication is used.
  
• Only standard compression is used - if any.
• No jails or plugins are installed and I'm not planning to do so.
  
• Currently I have 12 disks running, planning to go on 14 within the next few weeks.
  
• There's not much load on the server - I think ~90% idle.
• The server should be able to saturate a 1Gb/s LAN connection.
• FreeNAS is installed on an USB thumb drive

I narrowed it down to two possible configurations that will possibly suit my needs:
1.
Mainboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F
CPU: Pentium G3220
(According this thread Hardware Recommendations the CPU is enough for my needs)

2.
Mainboard & CPU: AsRock C2550D4I

Both mainboards will be equipped with 16GiB of ECC UDIMMs and I have some PCIe cards for additional SATA/SAS ports.
The prices for these builds are roughly the same so that shouldn't be an issue.

So, now the question is, what's the more power efficient and futureproof build? Somewhere on the forums I read that there will be problems with future FreeNAS versions and the above mentioned Pentium CPU.
There are many threads in the forums discussing the Supermicro board with a Xeon CPU but none with this board and a Pentium CPU although it is recommended as a Low-End solution.

Thanks in advance

 

[Mlovelace]

Based on what you've described I would go with the X10 build. It will give you the ability to add compute if you find yourself cpu bound down the road. Also there have been some reports of issues with the marvel controlled SATA ports on the avoton boards.

 

[Ericloewe]

X10SL7-F, IMHO.

As @Mlovelace said, future expansion is much easier and you can actually use all onboard SATA/SAS connectivity without issues. Since 16GB DDR3 UDIMMs are crazy expensive and probably will be forever, might as well stick to the X10. By the time you need more than 32GB of RAM, entry-level server hardware will support that.

The X10SL7-F can easily support 14 drives, plus many more with SAS expanders or a few more via additional PCI-e controllers. Speaking of which, what are those controllers you mentioned? If they're low-end SATA stuff with Marvell controllers, might as well forget about them.

 

[marbus90]

Definitively X10SL7-F. Cyberjock is working with ASRock on the Marvell issues on the C2x50D4I, but it's likely not to be resolved quite soon.

Prepare to throw out the PCI cards unless they're SAS HBAs and not RAID-Controllers. Also with 12-14 HDDs you wouldn't need any extra controllers on the X10SL7-F, all of these ports are fully usable for FreeNAS - you only have to flash the onboard LSI 2308 Controller to the P16 IT Mode firmware.

No matter how bad you fuck up, a 1Gbps connection should always be saturable with that disk count.

 

[DrKK]

Yeah, I think we all consider the X10 series of SuperMicro boards to be "the" boards to go with for a home user, unless something else is specifically indicated. I concur---X10.

 

[Razorblade]

Thanks for all your suggestions.
I think I'll go with the Supermicro board as this was also my preferred solution.
As you mentioned there seem to be some issues with the marvel controllers

@Ericloewe
I have one Highpoint SAS controller and some cheap DeLock SATA controllers.

Thanks again

 

[marbus90]

I have one Highpoint SAS controller and some cheap DeLock SATA controllers.

All of which won't work with FreeNAS that well.

 

[DrKK]

All of which won't work with FreeNAS that well.

Yeah, I suspect your results will be fair, and very poor, respectively.