BUILD SuperMicro X10 build

[Pharfar]

My first FreeNas build is now 2 years old. The storage space has quickly disappeared. I blame my growing movie collection, pictures of babies, and my children generating insane amounts of data on their iPads.
My old system was build the way a FreeNas system isn't meant to be built. But as the value of the stored data grew in value, the more paranoid I got. Off-site backup wasn't enough to calm my nerves. So, please say hello to my new build "Papfar":
OS: FreeNas 9.2.1.7
Case: SuperMicro SuperChassis 822T-400LPB
Motherboard: SuperMicro X10SLM-F
CPU: Intel Pentium G3220
RAM: 16 GB Hynix HMT41GE7AFR8A-PB
HDD: 6 x WD Red WD20EFRX 2 TB in RaidZ2
The system is mounted in a Ikea Lack table. It has perfect rack dimensions, and only cost me 8$ (used). All brackets and screws have been upgraded to accomodate the increased weight.
Currently I'm running stress tests to RAM, CPU and drives. So far, nothing has exploded...

And a big THANK YOU to the forum. A lot of good info, and a lot of good advice has made it possible to build a machine that works out-of-the-box, and will be doing so for many years.

Next: Building a pfsense box

 

[anodos]

Wow! Good job on the rack. I wish I had thought of that. It would have been easier to get spousal approval than my 42U rack :)
How is the sound level? (My 2U is as loud as a vacuum cleaner).
How are the temps with the exhaust so close to the wall?
What IKEA furniture will you use for your pfsense box?

 

[Ericloewe]

I will hijack this thread to take off my hat (well, headphones...) to the person who thought "Hey, this perfect example of the cheapest crap Ikea has to offer is just the right size for rackmount servers!"

That said, you seem to have a nice little server that'll serve you well (no pun intended) for quite some time.

 

[DrKK]

SuperMicro X10SLM+-F, Intel G3220, WD Reds.

Sir, you have built the textbook home-user FreeNAS that we recommend. Well done.

 

[Knowltey]

That motherboard and processor are the same that I am using without problems. Let me know how those reds work out for you as those are one of the types of disks that I am looking into for my upgrade from ZFS Mirror to RAIDZ2.

Also as you see above, even our own glorious leader approves of your build, so you should be good to go.

 

[messerchmidt]

i would go with a cheap 4 core haswell xeon as it will not be much $.

 

[Knowltey]

i would go with a cheap 4 core haswell xeon as it will not be much $.

Unless he is doing plex transcoding the G3220 is more than powerful enough for FreeNAS. Also, I'm not sure what your definition of "not much $" is, but even the cheapest Haswell Xeon I'm seeing is at least three times the price of the G3220, so there is really no point in paying three times the price to get more performance when he isn't even taking full advantage of the cheaper option's performance.

 

[messerchmidt]

Unless he is doing plex transcoding the G3220 is more than powerful enough for FreeNAS. Also, I'm not sure what your definition of "not much $" is, but even the cheapest Haswell Xeon I'm seeing is at least three times the price of the G3220, so there is really no point in paying three times the price to get more performance when he isn't even taking full advantage of the cheaper option's performance.

If he was using a cheaper board, used ram, etc - than yeah penny pinch. With this build, adding $150+ wont kill him and should future proof him; Based on the case he selected and the other specs, I can infer that this will be used for a business. Accordingly, throwing in a xeon e3-1220v3 and be done with it.

 

[Knowltey]

If he was using a cheaper board, used ram, etc - than yeah penny pinch. With this build, adding $150+ wont kill him and should future proof him

He's future proofed as it is. Why spend $150+ when a few years down the road he can just upgrade to the newest faster G series processor that Intel puts out for another $60 if he feels the need for more performance? That and my G3220 yet in the few weeks I've had it hasn't so much as used more than 10% of it's processing power except during scrubs.

And what cheaper board are you even thinking of. That is one of the cheapest boards that you can get that supports ECC, and the only other cheaper ones aren't very much cheaper, maybe $20 at the most.

Your argument is basically "Do it because you can!" and that's just silly. Why would you buy a dualie turbodiesel superduty pickup truck, when all you do is drive back and forth a mile or two for work and groceries? Sure it can do the job, but a Honda Civic can more than do it as well for a much cheaper pricetag.

Sure I could go out and buy a Xeon right now and stick it in for my NAS, but I would see absolutely 0 performance gain from doing so, my money would be better spent on upgrading my storage pool and RAM.

 

[messerchmidt]

As he is doing everything from scratch, on a system like this, and in his place, I would spend the extra money on the cpu now versus potentially having to do it when my needs changed in the future.
To me, the difference is an insignificant sum relative to the whole at this time. If two+ years he wants to add some jails, etc then he may not be able to find a xeon cpu that works with that board if he needs to swap it then,etc. Yeah the Pentium dual core will do, but if he is buying everything new regardless, I would go for the xeon. Feel free to disagree.

 

[Pharfar]

Anodos: The lack table has room for 8U. I'll build a 1U pfsense box, and place it in the table as well. Noise isn't an issuse, we have a dedicated PC room.

Messerschmidt: I did consider a Xeon, but my old i3-3225 was never stressed. I think a Xeon will be overkill. At the moment we are only 4 users. The G3220 was on sale, and a Xeon (with danish taxes) would cost $200 more than this Pentium.

 

[Knowltey]

As he is doing everything from scratch, on a system like this, and in his place, I would spend the extra money on the cpu now versus potentially having to do it when my needs changed in the future.
To me, the difference is an insignificant sum relative to the whole at this time. If two+ years he wants to add some jails, etc then he may not be able to find a xeon cpu that works with that board if he needs to swap it then,etc. Yeah the Pentium dual core will do, but if he is buying everything new regardless, I would go for the xeon. Feel free to disagree.

You realize right that he can literally upgrade that processor 3 times before even spending as much money as the first Xeon?

 

[panz]

Maybe he was scared by Supermicro manual, that says "don't pull the CPU heatsink"! ;)

 

[messerchmidt]

here the difference in price here is less than$150 cdn between the Pentium G3220 and the xeon e3-1220v3

 

[Knowltey]

You realize r

here the difference in price here is less than$150 cdn between the Pentium G3220 and the xeon e3-1220v3

Dude, his usage scenario only uses a small part of the G3220, getting the extra processor power is figuratively flushing money down the toilet.

 

[raidflex]

You realize r



Dude, his usage scenario only uses a small part of the G3220, getting the extra processor power is figuratively flushing money down the toilet.

If you know you will never need to run jails/plugins in the future, then the Pentium is perfectly fine. Upgrading to a newer "G" series in the future will maybe increase performance 5% per generation. so upgrading in that respect for performance does not make sense.

 

[Pharfar]

A delayed update: I finally begun the transfer from my old system to the new system. The old system was semi-critical (work related), and I had to wait for the right moment. I just have to share a screenshot:

Massive transfer speed on a 1 gbit network. Thank you ZFS

 

[Fraoch]

Sayyy...that's a really nice screenshot. May I ask what's running there?

 

[Pharfar]

Only a zfs send | zfs recv. I did a "systat -ifstat 1" to monitor activity

 

[Fraoch]

Very useful, thanks.