- Joined
- Jan 14, 2023
- Messages
- 623
Hello all,
when I purchased the server I had a different usecase in mind (mainly tinkering with a few VMs, docker and I thought (as many youtube videos suggested) i could also run truenas as a VM)). I then learned that a baremetal install is better and later I also upgraded from 32 GB to 64 GB RAM. So I deployed the machine in January this year:
Since then it has been bugging me that I'm not able to use ECC RAM and from what I gathered that would be strongly recommended. I don't want to spend too much cash since the current server is only 9 month old (probably my wife will inherit it and her hold office PC will retire / get sold for a few bucks).
So mainly my two questions would be:
1) Should I upgrade?
2) Would the following hardware be a good upgrade?
I'm planning to run Home Assistant and 2-3 ubuntu VMs and I use it for storage of our photos, documents etc.. Currently I'm using 4x4 TB HDDs and 1x4TB HDD as a hot spare (maybe I will migrate to RAIDZ3 when I swap servers and rely on my B2 backup / local backup on my windows machine during migration, I know that RAIDZ2 and 1 hotspare isn't the best config). + boot drive and 2 SSDs (mirrored for the VMs) Current power draw is around 50 W (mainly idle, the VMs don't do much computing), if I could stay under 100W for the upgrade, that'd be great.
I'm overwhelmed by the choices of mainboards and their names. This is what I came up with:
Total 450-500 Eur (plus cooler, SSDs)
Edit: some notes on the selection:
Is this platform too old? Should I spend a bit more and get a newer generation?
My current machine reports around 93 % of idle for the past 6 months, so I wouldn't need the many cores / threads of the 2683 but for just 30 Eur more than then 2680 I'd take them. I think 8 threads may be enough for me anyway. The only CPU intensive task currently is when paperless consumes new PDFs and does it's OCR.
Any suggestions on the selected hardware would be appreciated and also if this is an upgrade path worthwhile to follow. I'm hoping to get at least 5 years of usage out of that hardware. I know nobody can predict a failure but I would assume the hardware isn't too old to last me some time. From my experience hardware either broke < 2 years or it basically got discarded due to age / performance.
While waiting for responses I did some further reading and came up with a more recent alternative:
Total 640-700 Eur (plus cooler, SSDs)
I run SCALE over CORE because when I initially set up everything I read about SCALE beeing better for VM deployment (so far no problems). This however does pose the problem with the memory management, that only half is available for ZFS Cache. Since I upgraded to 64 GB I had no problems so far (although occasionally SWAP gets used), usually 7-10 GB free with 20 GB for Services and 31 GB for Cache. So while I would be limited to 64 GB RAM with this build I doubt that this will be a problem in the future. I don't really plan to extend the storage on this system (maybe swap the 4 TB drives for 6 TB drives as the space requirements grow over time, but no other pool or so).
If you recommend me leaning towards option 2 I can adjust my budget accordingly. If you need any additional information I'll happily provide them.
Best regards!
when I purchased the server I had a different usecase in mind (mainly tinkering with a few VMs, docker and I thought (as many youtube videos suggested) i could also run truenas as a VM)). I then learned that a baremetal install is better and later I also upgraded from 32 GB to 64 GB RAM. So I deployed the machine in January this year:
OS Version:TrueNAS-SCALE-22.12.3.3
Product:B560M-ITX/ac
Model:Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-10100 CPU @ 3.60GHz
Memory:62 GiB
Since then it has been bugging me that I'm not able to use ECC RAM and from what I gathered that would be strongly recommended. I don't want to spend too much cash since the current server is only 9 month old (probably my wife will inherit it and her hold office PC will retire / get sold for a few bucks).
So mainly my two questions would be:
1) Should I upgrade?
2) Would the following hardware be a good upgrade?
I'm planning to run Home Assistant and 2-3 ubuntu VMs and I use it for storage of our photos, documents etc.. Currently I'm using 4x4 TB HDDs and 1x4TB HDD as a hot spare (maybe I will migrate to RAIDZ3 when I swap servers and rely on my B2 backup / local backup on my windows machine during migration, I know that RAIDZ2 and 1 hotspare isn't the best config). + boot drive and 2 SSDs (mirrored for the VMs) Current power draw is around 50 W (mainly idle, the VMs don't do much computing), if I could stay under 100W for the upgrade, that'd be great.
I'm overwhelmed by the choices of mainboards and their names. This is what I came up with:
Mainboard | x10srl-f | 160 Eur used |
CPU | Intel Xeon E5-2686 v4 or Intel Xeon e5-2680 v4 | 80 Eur used or 40 Eur used |
Cooler | ||
RAM | Micron 32GB DDR4 ECC PC4 - 2400T MTA36ASF4G72PZ or HP DDR4-RAM 32GB PC4-2133P ECC LRDIMM 4R | 2x34 Eur used 2x39 Eur used |
Power Supply | 500 Watt Seasonic Core GM Modular 80+ Gold | 80 Eur new (or something comparable, probably the cheapest seasonic modular PSU I can find) |
Case | fractal define xl but open to suggestions, 8 3.5" Bays would be nice | ~ 100 Eur |
Edit: some notes on the selection:
Is this platform too old? Should I spend a bit more and get a newer generation?
My current machine reports around 93 % of idle for the past 6 months, so I wouldn't need the many cores / threads of the 2683 but for just 30 Eur more than then 2680 I'd take them. I think 8 threads may be enough for me anyway. The only CPU intensive task currently is when paperless consumes new PDFs and does it's OCR.
Any suggestions on the selected hardware would be appreciated and also if this is an upgrade path worthwhile to follow. I'm hoping to get at least 5 years of usage out of that hardware. I know nobody can predict a failure but I would assume the hardware isn't too old to last me some time. From my experience hardware either broke < 2 years or it basically got discarded due to age / performance.
While waiting for responses I did some further reading and came up with a more recent alternative:
Mainboard | x11ssm-f | 160 Eur used |
CPU | xeon 1240 v6 or xeon 1230 v6 | 80-130 Eur used |
Cooler | scythe Mugen 2 | recycle from old sandy bridge PC |
RAM | MEM-DR416L-CL01-EU21 | 4x55 Eur new |
Power Supply | 500 Watt Seasonic Core GM Modular 80+ Gold | 80 Eur new (or something comparable, probably the cheapest seasonic modular PSU I can find) |
Case | fractal define xl but open to suggestions, 8 3.5" Bays would be nice | ~ 100 Eur |
Total 640-700 Eur (plus cooler, SSDs)
I run SCALE over CORE because when I initially set up everything I read about SCALE beeing better for VM deployment (so far no problems). This however does pose the problem with the memory management, that only half is available for ZFS Cache. Since I upgraded to 64 GB I had no problems so far (although occasionally SWAP gets used), usually 7-10 GB free with 20 GB for Services and 31 GB for Cache. So while I would be limited to 64 GB RAM with this build I doubt that this will be a problem in the future. I don't really plan to extend the storage on this system (maybe swap the 4 TB drives for 6 TB drives as the space requirements grow over time, but no other pool or so).
If you recommend me leaning towards option 2 I can adjust my budget accordingly. If you need any additional information I'll happily provide them.
Best regards!
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