Unable to break the 9MB/s barrier

[Crab Balls]

A key concept with ZFS has always been to replace the incredibly pricey high end RAID controllers you might use in a large server with dozens or hundreds of disks with a software solution; it is expected that you are instead throwing CPU at the problem because CPU is relatively cheap.

If you take a fully loaded LSI 3108 like the Supermicro AOC-S3108L-H8iR with the CacheVault and CacheCade options you're up around a thousand dollars just for the RAID controller - and you still need a halfway decent system to provide the grunt because CIFS is singlethreaded, so add on at least a low-end Pentium, motherboard, and memory for at least another three hundred dollars, so about $1300.

With FreeNAS we try to throw a low end Xeon, a quality mainboard with an HBA, some memory, and maybe a SLOG device, and that usually ends up somewhat less expensive. Costs can be cut there if you don't need the HBA or performance levels of a Xeon... an 8GB box with an i3 CPU and the non-HBA variant of that board is cheaper still.

"Enterprise hardware" is a red herring because what you actually need is hardware capable of doing what the software requires; we tend to find that no consumer grade hardware does this well, and so we typically suggest the Supermicro boards because they were designed for server use, and are actually cheaper than a lot of the prosumer kit people try to pick out on their own.

I'm not knocking FreeNAS, it is a great concept and well thought out package that looks like it took a lot of work to evolve over the years. It's more me being hardheaded and trying to go the other direction with hardware to downsize and simplify. This is a residential installation and I've already went through and outgrew the phase of using full size rack cabinets and fully loaded 4U servers. Done it for years and don't want it anymore. It sucks when you get the electric bill and it says your house is consuming more electricity on average than anyone else. The wife keeps pointing this put to me. This is what made the underpowered D525s so appealing to me, the extremely low power consumption and small footprint. I've got everything wall mounted and neatly streamlined, even made a redneck rack out of scrap 2-by material (wood) and angle aluminum for the pair of D525s and switches. Looks really nice if I say so myself.

The original plan was to work the bugs out of the little 1U Atom and add a small drive cabinet loaded with 2.5" drives on top of it. I want to keep the same case so I'm not sure if replacing the current MB with the Supermicro MBD-A1SR-2758F-0 and max it out with ECC would give me better performance? I'm not sure it will and am skeptical. Even if it worked with acceptable performance today, I wonder if it would quickly dead-end with a few FreeNAS updates. Since I'm looking to run only Plex for media and a few simple shares, I might have to abandon FreesNAS altogether and load up a minimalistic Ubuntu Server install and be done it. I have some thinking to do. Anyway, I really appreciate all the help from the forum. Thanks!!!

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm starting to think an i7 box is inappropriate for entry level FreeNAS. Might have to bump it up to a quad Xeon with 192GB RAM!:)

It is, it doesn't support ECC RAM.;)

 

[Crab Balls]

It is, it doesn't support ECC RAM.;)

It will after I custom fit it in there with a 20 oz, framing hammer!!:D

 

[joeschmuck]

The funny thing is, you can likely plug in ECC RAM and your system will run, so many people don't know any better that the ECC portion of the RAM isn't doing anything.

I have a basement which needs framing

 

[Crab Balls]

The funny thing is, you can likely plug in ECC RAM and your system will run, so many people don't know any better that the ECC portion of the RAM isn't doing anything.

I have a basement which needs framing

You're right, it is that extra chip on their for parity.

 

[jgreco]

I'm not knocking FreeNAS, it is a great concept and well thought out package that looks like it took a lot of work to evolve over the years. It's more me being hardheaded and trying to go the other direction with hardware to downsize and simplify. This is a residential installation and I've already went through and outgrew the phase of using full size rack cabinets and fully loaded 4U servers. Done it for years and don't want it anymore. It sucks when you get the electric bill and it says your house is consuming more electricity on average than anyone else.

Those recycled servers do suck the watts and make the noise. You can make quieter stuff, however.

The wife keeps pointing this put to me. This is what made the underpowered D525s so appealing to me, the extremely low power consumption and small footprint. I've got everything wall mounted and neatly streamlined, even made a redneck rack out of scrap 2-by material (wood) and angle aluminum for the pair of D525s and switches. Looks really nice if I say so myself.

It doesn't look nice until we say so. Pictures required. ;-)

The original plan was to work the bugs out of the little 1U Atom and add a small drive cabinet loaded with 2.5" drives on top of it. I want to keep the same case so I'm not sure if replacing the current MB with the Supermicro MBD-A1SR-2758F-0 and max it out with ECC would give me better performance?

The 2758 is optimized for network appliances (routers, firewalls), while the 2750 is aimed at more general computing and has a modest turbo-boost. Either way, you're limited by the Avoton's relatively slow cores (compared to a Xeon) but the good news is that with more cores you may get more consistent behaviour out of the NAS. A home user with normal usage patterns probably never seriously taps more than two or three cores, and with eight you are virtually guaranteed free cores for Plex.

I'm not sure it will and am skeptical. Even if it worked with acceptable performance today, I wonder if it would quickly dead-end with a few FreeNAS updates. Since I'm looking to run only Plex for media and a few simple shares, I might have to abandon FreesNAS altogether and load up a minimalistic Ubuntu Server install and be done it. I have some thinking to do. Anyway, I really appreciate all the help from the forum. Thanks!!!

I've generally been much more impressed with the Avoton (~6000 score) than the D525 (~1000 score), they're both "Atom" in name only... a good Xeon E3-1230 v3 (~12000 score) is only twice as fast as that Avoton, and a top-of-the-line E5-1650 v3 (~19000 score) is still only about 3x faster than the Avoton. That's about the best CPU you can get for NAS duty, and that differential of 3x is much smaller than the 6x differential between the D525 and the Avoton.

We have certainly seen equipment dead-end over time with FreeNAS. Years ago, the AMD E350 was a popular "budget" platform but that's no longer viable. The HP MicroServers seem to have fallen out of favor (or, at least, I no longer suggest them). However, iX is selling an Avoton as their FreeNAS-Mini platform so I'd expect it to be supported for at least a few years.

I will say this: if you were to go for any platform at all where you wanted the option to run Ubuntu Server later, if FreeNAS were to not work out, the Avoton would seem to be a great compromise. Ubuntu runs Plex just fine as far as I know.

 

[Crab Balls]

Those recycled servers do suck the watts and make the noise. You can make quieter stuff, however.



It doesn't look nice until we say so. Pictures required. ;-)



The 2758 is optimized for network appliances (routers, firewalls), while the 2750 is aimed at more general computing and has a modest turbo-boost. Either way, you're limited by the Avoton's relatively slow cores (compared to a Xeon) but the good news is that with more cores you may get more consistent behaviour out of the NAS. A home user with normal usage patterns probably never seriously taps more than two or three cores, and with eight you are virtually guaranteed free cores for Plex.



I've generally been much more impressed with the Avoton (~6000 score) than the D525 (~1000 score), they're both "Atom" in name only... a good Xeon E3-1230 v3 (~12000 score) is only twice as fast as that Avoton, and a top-of-the-line E5-1650 v3 (~19000 score) is still only about 3x faster than the Avoton. That's about the best CPU you can get for NAS duty, and that differential of 3x is much smaller than the 6x differential between the D525 and the Avoton.

We have certainly seen equipment dead-end over time with FreeNAS. Years ago, the AMD E350 was a popular "budget" platform but that's no longer viable. The HP MicroServers seem to have fallen out of favor (or, at least, I no longer suggest them). However, iX is selling an Avoton as their FreeNAS-Mini platform so I'd expect it to be supported for at least a few years.

I will say this: if you were to go for any platform at all where you wanted the option to run Ubuntu Server later, if FreeNAS were to not work out, the Avoton would seem to be a great compromise. Ubuntu runs Plex just fine as far as I know.

Thanks for all the help and great advice. I am going to do some research and see which way I really want to go. I know going light is something I really want to do, but if the performance hit is going to be too much I will have to find that sweet spot.