New Build Configuration

[eye3]

This is my second try at this build. My first configuration had an ATX mother board in a mini ITX case. I ended up switching over to a Skylake processor and then found out all of the issues with the USB boot drives. Below is my new proposed configuration. If you guys could take a look at this and let me know if I'm overlooking something I would appreciate it. I also restated my use case.

My use case for FreeNAS is a Time Machine backup server, plex, emby, sabnzbd, couch potato and plex. I'll also use FreeNAS as an iSCSI target for an ESXi machine that I have. I'm an Systems Engineer so I use the ESXi machine in a limited fashion to mock up integration projects. I'm not so concerned with IOPS performance since my VMs will not be used for production purposes.

I currently have two Macs that I'll use Time Machine for and I would plan to have an additional two machines in the future. I also plan use AFP shares for additional centralized storage for my macs (ISO's, etc..).

As far as plex and the other home theater components I plan to store 1080p movie files. I'll probably move to 4k in the next couple years as the media becomes more readily available.

Here is my proposed build.

Case: Fractal Node 804
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1245 v5 SkyLake 3.5 GHz
Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSH-F-O
RAM: 2X Samsung M391A2K43BB1-CPB 16GB ECC DDR4 2133 (32 GB Total)
Power Supply: Sea Sonic G550
Disks: 8X WD Red 4TB (RAID-Z2)
Boot Disk: Samsung SM951 M.2 PCIe SSD 128GB (Plan on repurpossing this in the future once the Skylake USB issues are resolved)
UPS: ???

I ended up going with the E3-1245 over the E3-1240 for the Quicksync support. I know Plex doesn't support Quicksync acceleration but I figured if they do at some point it was worth it for the extra $15.

 

[joeschmuck]

I basically have this system so MB, RAM, CPU, and PS are fine. I'd ensure the power supply has all the SATA power connections you desire and many PCI-e SSD add-on cards don't actually boot the system so ensure you buy one that clearly states it will boot your system, otherwise I'd grab a PCIe to SATA add-on card and toss in a SATA SSD. If you buy the SM951, please list the adapter card info used as well and if it boots up. Everyone will want to know.

 

[eye3]

I basically have this system so MB, RAM, CPU, and PS are fine. I'd ensure the power supply has all the SATA power connections you desire and many PCI-e SSD add-on cards don't actually boot the system so ensure you buy one that clearly states it will boot your system, otherwise I'd grab a PCIe to SATA add-on card and toss in a SATA SSD. If you buy the SM951, please list the adapter card info used as well and if it boots up. Everyone will want to know.

Thanks for confirming the components that you used. The power supply has eight SATA connectors so I think I would ok with it. I used the power supply sizing posts to pick the wattage. Why would the PCI-e SSD not be able to boot? Would this be a FreeBSD OS issue or is it at the BIOS level? I've read couple review sites where they benchmark boot performance but all of those tests were done on a Windows based OS. I'll definitely let everyone on the board know what I found out about if it's abel to boot or not.

 

[joeschmuck]

The PCI-e SSD will not boost the bootstrap performance by any real measurable speed however software upgrades will benefit heavily from anything other than a slow USB flash drive.

As for if the PCI-e SSD is bootable, that is at the BIOS level. Some of the SSDs are just not recognized by the BIOS as a bootable device so that is the issue. I would imagine a Google search would yield what boots and what doesn't, so I'm not saying the drive you selected will not support it, just that you should make sure it does because it's not cheap, plus you need to buy an add-on adapter so you can interface it to the PCI-e card edge connector. It all comes down to new technology.

 

[eye3]

The PCI-e SSD will not boost the bootstrap performance by any real measurable speed however software upgrades will benefit heavily from anything other than a slow USB flash drive.

As for if the PCI-e SSD is bootable, that is at the BIOS level. Some of the SSDs are just not recognized by the BIOS as a bootable device so that is the issue. I would imagine a Google search would yield what boots and what doesn't, so I'm not saying the drive you selected will not support it, just that you should make sure it does because it's not cheap, plus you need to buy an add-on adapter so you can interface it to the PCI-e card edge connector. It all comes down to new technology.

Thanks for the information. I didn't choose the SSD to increase boot performance I just chose it so that I could boot the system since I'll be unable to boot from a USB stick. The cost of the M.2 PCIe SSD ended up being cheaper than buying a SATA HBA and and additional cheap SSD.

Regarding the PCIe SSD, why would I need to buy an add-on adapter? Shouldn't I be able to just connect it to the M.2 slot on the motherboard?

 

[joeschmuck]

Regarding the PCIe SSD, why would I need to buy an add-on adapter? Shouldn't I be able to just connect it to the M.2 slot on the motherboard?

That is only if you use a SATA SSD, you would need an extra power connector.

 

[eye3]

I basically have this system so MB, RAM, CPU, and PS are fine. I'd ensure the power supply has all the SATA power connections you desire and many PCI-e SSD add-on cards don't actually boot the system so ensure you buy one that clearly states it will boot your system, otherwise I'd grab a PCIe to SATA add-on card and toss in a SATA SSD. If you buy the SM951, please list the adapter card info used as well and if it boots up. Everyone will want to know.

I can confirm that the SM951 M.2 SSD boots FreeNAS 9.3 stable on a Skylake motherboard. The exact model of the SSD is SAMSUNG MZHPV128HDGM and it's connected to the M.2 port on a Supermicro X11SSH-F-O.

 

[joeschmuck]

That is very good to know. Thanks for the feedback.