Non-ECC RAM okay just for a few months?

[danb35]

Do u know about how much I would have to spend for a decent ZFS box? would be for one raidz2 with 3tb drives starting at 6 disks, and one raid 10 with 500gb SSDs starting at 4 disks

For four bays, it's hard to beat the Dell PowerEdge T20, starting at US$179, brand new. Add some RAM (the $179 configuration comes with 4 GB, IIRC) and your drives, and you're set. @Robert Trevellyan is your guy for those. I can't immediately think of a low-cost pre-built six-bay server, though--the closest I can come is the Lenovo TS440, which can have up to 8 bays.

 

[Robert Smith]

Technically, four drives fit in a usually less expensive Lenovo TS140; but, if going with Lenovo, do get the 440 right away to have more room to grow and easier HDD access.

 

[danb35]

Sure, four drives fit in a TS140, but I think the T20 is cheaper. But if he wants six drives, I think he'd have to go for the TS440.

 

[redking]

For four bays, it's hard to beat the Dell PowerEdge T20, starting at US$179, brand new. Add some RAM (the $179 configuration comes with 4 GB, IIRC) and your drives, and you're set. @Robert Trevellyan is your guy for those. I can't immediately think of a low-cost pre-built six-bay server, though--the closest I can come is the Lenovo TS440, which can have up to 8 bays.

Sure, four drives fit in a TS140, but I think the T20 is cheaper. But if he wants six drives, I think he'd have to go for the TS440.

Do u have some recomendations for a decent motherboard/cpu combo for a FreeNAS server?


I already have everything else, eccept the ecc ofc. I even got a good case for the filserver. I guessing 450w powersupply wil be suficcient for this, or? I have no idea how to calculate electricity, but with a 450w powersuply, my UPS can handle the extra powersupply :)

im gonne see if I can get what I need cheap on ebay and just build it myself

 

[Linkman]

I'd tend to agree that ZFS without ECC is better than any other filesystem (with the possible exception of btrfs) without ECC, but I don't understand your reference to Unraid/OMV/etc. Those run on commodity PC hardware as well, and can take advantage of ECC just as FreeNAS can.

I only mention those since often the response to someone who is building a FreeNAS box without ECC is to give them non-ZFS based NAS alternatives. From my reading, and again I don't have the enterprise experience that a lot of the posters here have, I'd rather have a non-ECC ZFS sytem on otherwise compatible hardware, then a non-ZFS filesystem on the same hardware. Others may read the same information and disagree with me. :)

 

[Linkman]

I already have everything else, eccept the ecc ofc. I even got a good case for the filserver. I guessing 450w powersupply wil be suficcient for this, or? I have no idea how to calculate electricity, but with a 450w powersuply, my UPS can handle the extra powersupply :)

The forum can help with your power supply calculations...
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[redking]

I am looking a bit at "ASRock X99 extreme 4" motherboard and the "Intel Xeon E5-2620 V4, Socket-2011-3" as a replacement to what I have.

That way I can keep my original plan on having everything in one box and running my FreeNAS in a VM.

So im thinking I will just keep going with my setup as planned, and just swap the parts one by one as fast as the money allows me to. hopefully ill be done swapping it all before any of my current memmory goes bad.

if im lucky ill be able to cower most of the motherboard/cpu cost by selling my asus x99-a and the i7 as I replace em

 

[Ericloewe]

I am looking a bit at "ASRock X99 extreme 4"

That doesn't do much to help you. You should be looking at proper server or, at the very least, workstation boards. That means no X99.

And that is the overkill solution. Xeon E3 v5 would be significantly cheaper and still very capable.

 

[Robert Smith]

I am looking a bit at "ASRock X99 extreme 4" motherboard...

You are looking at gamer products. If you want ASRock you need ther server division:
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

 

[redking]

That doesn't do much to help you. You should be looking at proper server or, at the very least, workstation boards. That means no X99.

And that is the overkill solution. Xeon E3 v5 would be significantly cheaper and still very capable.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157543 hmm, according to this page the "ASRock X99 extreme 4" is supposed to support ECC with the Xenon processor

Anyways, I kinda get your point, it has been feeling like a bit of an overkill. I bought the x99 setup simply because trying to figure out what I needed gave me a massive headache as I didn't know much more then the fact that I like this shit at that point, I and I figured, whatever is the newest tech got to be good enough for everything..

From what I can tell, the "Intel Xeon E3-1245 V5" processor supports 64GBs of ram, witch I feel is kinda a must if FreeNAS is going to be run as one of my VMs.

Really like the price on that processor, I might actually be able to cower the entire cost by selling my x99 i7. how safe is it to buy stuff like this used on ebay? is there allot of bad experienses there?

But I am having a little trouble finding a good servergrade 1151 motherboard where I can confirm that it supports 64GB ram, any1 tips there?


Also the ting I have to consider, is simply how much easier it is to do financially for me if stay with the x99 chipset. With that I mean that I can simply buy the motherboard, change it, and sell the old one, and then just keep going bit for bit instead of buying it all at the same time. budget is stretched as it is right now, and I just seriously suck at saving in general...

Also when I look at "Intel Xeon E5-2609" witch has 1.7GHz and 8-cores, I see that it cost basically the same as the "Intel Xeon E3-1245" witch has 3.5GHz and only 4-cores. What I am trying to figure out here is, what should I value the most for a Hypervisor? the extra cores, or the extra GHz?

 

[redking]

You are looking at gamer products. If you want ASRock you need ther server division:
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

Thank you sir! you wouldn't by any chance know of an ATX sized server grade motherboard you would recommend? The only one I can find with a price within reason and looks like its server grade on the Norwegian webstore Im' looking at is the "ASUS Z10PA-U8". Looks like a good board, but it only seems to support xenon processors, so I would have to start with the processor first I guess as the Asus x-99 supports both. Anyone have any experience with this card?

 

[Robert Smith]

That kind of artillery does not mesh well with budget conscious scenarios.

Slow down for a bit. Describe how you intend to use the FreeNAS.

 

[redking]

it will be all right somehow :) allways does..

Plan is to run it as a VM in my KVM hypervisor. I have an IBM m1015 flashed to IT-mode for the pci-passthrough. have tested the passthrough setup for a couple of days now with 2 disks just to play around. the pci-passthough seems to be working perfectly so not to worried about the actual setup tbh.

But if I find I way to push a "ASUS Z10PA-U8" and a "Intel Xeon E5-2609" in to the budget, I still have a pretty sweet hypervisor right? the ECC ram too of course :)

will the 1.7GHz be a bit slow? or is the 2 extra cores more important for that type of usage?

 

[Robert Smith]

How about this, keep your awesome PC and run hyperviser on it for other things. But make a separate low-power box for FreeNAS, if you need NAS at all.

Virtualized FreeNAS is not yet mainstream. What you intended to do with KVM is experimental.

 

[danb35]

While FreeNAS has been shown to work well under ESXi if the proper precautions are followed, my understanding is that this is not the case under KVM. I'm not sure if KVM has been shown to have problems, or if it just hasn't been tested adequately yet. Perhaps @jgreco can fill us in.

 

[redking]

How about this, keep your awesome PC and run hyperviser on it for other things. But make a separate low-power box for FreeNAS, if you need NAS at all.

Virtualized FreeNAS is not yet mainstream. What you intended to do with KVM is experimental.

This option is ofc something I am thinking about. All is beeing considered right now. but I really like the idea of trying to keep it all in one BOX.

I realize that it is experimental, but my understanding is that if it is done correctly, it really is no reason why I shouldnt do it. This wont be a production envirement, and everything I do in my server is in a very big part beeing done for the experimental and learning purposes. I am still very much a newbie, and ZFS is just one of many things I need to learn. Worst case: I will learn something new that I should not do in the future, and then I am saved by backups, again :)

While FreeNAS has been shown to work well under ESXi if the proper precautions are followed, my understanding is that this is not the case under KVM. I'm not sure if KVM has been shown to have problems, or if it just hasn't been tested adequately yet. Perhaps @jgreco can fill us in.

I think KVMs pci passthrough might have a bad rep bcus its a bit tricky to figure out all the details to get it propelie working. In my expreience atleast, it seems to work stable, non of my VMs have shown issues with this so far. USB passthough on the otherhand dont seem to be much stable.. But stay away from RedHat if u plan on doing pci passthrough with KVM, this shit dont work with RedHat/CentOS at all... RedHat is doomed to give u a heart attack if u try to use it as your hypervisor OS!

I also have a seperat box for my desktop where I am virtualizing my windows gamer with pci passthrough and a kvm switch to jump between linux and windows. pretty sweet setup and the VM has proven to be very stable so far atleast. this one is barley tested a few weeks now tho, so cant really say much on the stability issue yet..

I guess there is way easier ways to get this working with ESXi, but I feel like the PCI passthrough in KVM seems very very stable so far. I have not had any issues with the passthrough so far(ive been using pci passthrough with other VMs).

If any1 have different experinces then me with KVM and PCI passthrough, I would very much like to hear your toughts on this matter tho.

 

[Stux]

Have you looked at the E5-16XX range? You can get cores AND gigahertz and a good price.

E5-1650 gets you 6 high speed cores with hyperthreading.