TrueNAS Scale Upgrade - Which CPU?

[LuxTerra]

Any insight or advice is appreciated.

Looking to upgrade my 45drives server CPU/RAM and motherboard for 2x 25GbE or 100GbE SMB. Array will be 6x stripes of 7drive RaidZ2 plus 3x hot spares (45 drives total). Home lab use cases; primary performance drivers:

1) Individual workstation clients that need to move large quantities of data across Ethernet/multithreaded SMB, but typically one client at a time.

2) Virtualized Linux desktop w/GPU pass through for some local HPC tasking.

Besides the typical SMB loves high clock speeds, I can’t find data for comparison of these CPUs. All systems would have 8x 64GB ECC RDIMMS.

Options
1) Threadripper Pro 5975WX 32c@280W / 4die w/128MB L3 - outright clocks and cores
2) Epyc Milan Freq. 74F3 24c@240W / 8die w/256MB L3 - moderate clocks w/medium cache
3) Epyc Milan-X 7473X 24c@280W (cTDP up for 280W) / 8die w/768MB L3 - lower clocks w/large cache

The 74F3 has a great all core turbo with much less cache pressure and no 4die Infinity-fabric memory bandwidth limitations like the TRP; but hard to beat more cores and clocks. I can’t find data on how Milan-X all core behaves with the increased cTDP…probably not too far behind the 74F3?

Thanks!

 

[homer27081990]

The problem with such optimizations is that sort of a benchmark (on a FreeBSD OS at the very least) of the specific apps you will be using, the only way to accurately gauge performance is to actually use the CPUs in your setup...

I personally feel that the Threadripper Pro option is the best one for your use case, based on the fact that you don't need a set-and-forget server, but in essence a centralized workstation.

The SMB performance differences for these chips (IMO) would not be significant enough to be a decision factor.

Given the options you present, money doesn't seem to be a factor either (or this is an imaginary build for a bet or something ), so that leaves just the overall specs of the chips, ie not clocks and cores, but PCIe lanes and instruction sets and virtualization features etc.

I also think you would benefit from a search for TrueNAS performance on these chips (CORE ? SCALE ?) because every OS (freebsd and linux included) has its quirks with hardware and it would be a pity to buy one of these chips based on raw performance only to be stymied by downright incompatibility (although it is a very long shot that any of these chips would be incompatible).

As for tampering with TDPs, the obvious choice is Threadripper Pro, because server chips typically do not take kindly to be messed with, given that they are produced with specific metrics in mind (IPCs per watt, mainly, energy efficiency is the main driver in server space, not outright performance).

So, until three guys each with one of those CPUs and TrueNAS or a hardware TrueNAS wizard shows up here, every comparison is speculative on a high degree, mainly because not many people use those CPUs for TrueNAS with all of these use cases.

I don't think I told you anything you don't already know, or that everything I said holds water necessarily, but reading your post I got the sense that you needed a talking board more than actual help, so... I hope I helped.

 

[LuxTerra]

Sorry, I should have specified Scale. I need an ATX motherboard, so the options are mostly ROMED8 or H12SSL variants.

I won’t be overclocking this, so TRP has no benefit there. Milan/Milan-X have configurable TDPs (cTDP), which isn’t overclocking; the chip won’t run outside of it’s established turbo clocks. However, enabling a higher cTDP should allow it to boost higher within the AMD specified limits. The default cTDP for the 7473X is 240W, but AMD allows it to run at 280W.

The primary use is as a NAS, but sometimes I have batch processing that exceeds the 128GB in my workstation and it would be nice to use a Scale Linux VM on the server, instead finding a way to segment the task.

Probably the main thing is, making sure that the lower clock speeds of the Milan-X (7473X) won’t constrain SMB performance over a 2x25GbE NIC.