BUILD [UPDATE] X10SLR-F with 8/16 HDD -> Please review the result

[solarisguy]

@Hobbel, what did you observe when changing your RAM size?

 

[Hobbel]

@solarisguy
It's mainly used as iSCSI storage -> more RAM, better performance. Used for about 20 VM's (Terminalservers and others).
I'm no expert in ZFS, but what I heard is, that it's not the best one for iSCSI. In this scenario performance (latency) means everything and I have to look for ZIL / L2ARC / more RAM...

 

[solarisguy]

@Hobbel, thank you! Although I my original thought was that you might have some hard data (like double the RAM, quadruple the speed ;)) :D

 

[Hobbel]

@Hobbel, thank you! Although I my original thought was that you might have some hard data (like double the RAM, quadruple the speed ;)) :D

unfortunately... not ^^

The FreeNAS feels a bit more smooth. Maybe just in my mind, but I'm ok with that ;)

 

[solarisguy]

[...] The FreeNAS feels a bit more smooth. Maybe just in my mind, but I'm ok with that ;)

I have had a similar experience, updated RAM and felt good (better???) :D

 

[DearestDreamer]

So I just got the SC836BA-R920B case and.. I don't see any way to mount the 2.5" drives in the back? Did you ever figure out how you're supposed to do that?

 

[Fuganater]

So I just got the SC836BA-R920B case and.. I don't see any way to mount the 2.5" drives in the back? Did you ever figure out how you're supposed to do that?

Looking here it does not look like there is a mount like the SC846 has. There are plenty of PCI solutions out there for HDD or SSD. Most recently one posted by @jgreco here.

 

[Hobbel]

So I just got the SC836BA-R920B case and.. I don't see any way to mount the 2.5" drives in the back? Did you ever figure out how you're supposed to do that?

2.5" on the rear side is optional with this case. I think this is what you watn: MCP-220-83605-0N (no guarantee, please have yourself a look at http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/3U/836/SC836BA-R920.cfm?parts=SHOW under optional Parts List)

 

[DearestDreamer]

Oh yeah you're right Hobbel. Thanks so much, I'll get that now, I didn't know I had to buy that part separately, oh well, thankfully it's not too expensive.

 

[DearestDreamer]

double post error

 

[DearestDreamer]

@Hobbel, can you perhaps take a look at my thread over here?

Is the very left LED ("Power Fail") on your 836 chassis always on red too?

 

[DearestDreamer]

I was wondering if you were experiencing the same thing here.. I have the very left chassis fan plugged in FANA (bottom left on the motherboard, if I/O panel is top right) and the CPU fan in FAN1. Now the funny thing is when I change the fan speeds from "optimal " to "Heavy I/O" in IPMI, only FANA (very left one) goes high up (~3900RPM), the rest of the fans only go up to like ~2900RPM. Do you see the same happening for you? Are we supposed to plug in CPU fan in FANA instead? Just seems kind of weird only FANA increases in 'Heavy I/O'...

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yes, it's normal. In Heavy I/O mode you want to increase cooling of drives/backplanes/HBAs/... but not the CPU.

 

[Stux]

The 32GB are LRDIMMs (not exactly RDIMMs, but work nonetheless (when on listed on the tested memory list)). The markup is acceptable if you think you would need 256GB RAM and still want to stick with the very same system.

I know this is an old post, but fairly certain that SuperMicro says that LR-DIMMs don't work with E5-16XX CPUs, you need an E5-26XX for that.

** E5-1600 series CPU does not support LRDIMM type memory

 

[TXAG26]

I know this is an old post, but fairly certain that SuperMicro says that LR-DIMMs don't work with E5-16XX CPUs, you need an E5-26XX for that.

** E5-1600 series CPU does not support LRDIMM type memory

There are now 32gb RDIMMs now. That should get you to 256gb with an E5-16xx CPU. Besides the limitation, I can't imagine someone being able to actually utilize 512gb of ram with today's single socket E5-26xx CPU's. It seems like such a system would be severely CPU limited if a workload actually requires anywhere near that amount of ram.

 

[jgreco]

There are now 32gb RDIMMs now. That should get you to 256gb with an E5-16xx CPU. Besides the limitation, I can't imagine someone being able to actually utilize 512gb of ram with today's single socket E5-26xx CPU's. It seems like such a system would be severely CPU limited if a workload actually requires anywhere near that amount of ram.

Depends on the workload. You realize you're saying that in a forum for a product where that is absolutely not the case.

Plus, you can use the E5-26xx CPU's in the single socket boards, and those can have lots of cores, and even on the E5-1650's, I think you might be able to use 256-512 in some general purpose cases.

 

[TXAG26]

Depends on the workload. You realize you're saying that in a forum for a product where that is absolutely not the case.

Plus, you can use the E5-26xx CPU's in the single socket boards, and those can have lots of cores, and even on the E5-1650's, I think you might be able to use 256-512 in some general purpose cases.

It's more of a CPU scaling and price concern. With the memory controller now on the CPU, addressing 512gb of ram from two physical sockets vs one socket, will provide a tremendous performance bump (and cost a lot less). With the newest Xeon's having 20+ cores, sufficient memory bandwidth becomes quite the concern if all cores are being heavily used.

I agree though, FreeNAS memory usage is unique as it is more linear and likely scales up to larger amounts of system ram better, compared to other types of loads.

It's amazing that we're even talking about 512gb of ram! I just checked the latest ram prices on Wiredzone:
~$150/32gb DDR4 RDIMM/LRDIMM
~$700/64gb DDR4 RDIMM/LRDIMM

A dual socket board is still the way to go for both price and performance if you need to hit 512GB of ram.
Dual CPU board w/16 ram slots @ 32gb/slot = 16 x 32gb = 512gb. $150 x 16 = $2,400.
Single CPU board w/8 ram slots @ 64gb/slot = 8 x 64gb = 512gb. $700 x 8 = $5,600.