Upgrade CPU help needed

[katit]

My current setup is below in my sig. Been working fine for all those years. Now I decided to do some upgrades and bump up specs. Ideally with as little effort as possible :)
1. I ordered exact same RAM another 16G pair to max out setup to 32G.
2. I want to upgrade CPU

MB specs:

Intel® 4th Generation Core i3 series, Intel® Celeron®, Intel® Pentium®v, Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v3, Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1200 v4 series.
Socket LGA 1150 supported

I am not even sure what CPU I should look for and where? I assume used CPU should work and probably cheap, but which one should I look for?
Energy-efficiency is kind of important, but I want to run VM little faster.

Questions:
1. Will upgrade to RAM/CPU mess with TrueNAS? I assume not, but just in case...
2. The only reason I want to upgrade CPU is to run Ubuntu VM. And the only reason for that is to setup Crashplan backups. Any other cloud backup options that will work good/better and maybe easier?

 

[winstontj]

#1: Nope, it'll be fine. I upgraded cpu and memory in a x11ssh-f mobo not too long ago. Just power it off, swap the stuff (or add memory) and power it back on. It was easy and tn core recognized it fine.

#1-cpu: Your current G3470 is 2c/2t @ 3.6ghz and 53w tdp. A xeon e3-1265Lv3 is ~$35-$40 (free shipping) on ebay and is 45w tdp as well as faster: 4c/8t @ base 2.5ghz and turbo 3.7ghz. The xeon also has other "stuff" like aes-ni and VT-d which might be nice with running a VM or other things. I run a e3-1268Lv5 in my tn core machine (with hyperthreading turned off in bios so 4c/4t) and it's awesome. It is lower power than the e3-1220v5 I used to run and it still maxes out the 10GbE uplinks which is all I care about. Xeon e3v4 cpu prices were more than double that of e3v3 prices on ebay so I'd stick with the v3 cpus for your x10sl7-f. I took a quick look at i3 cpus --they are all 2c/4t cpus, no turbo boost and none of them have aes-ni (as well as some other stuff you get in the xeons). If it were me, the e3-1265Lv3 seems like a no-brainer...

#2: I can't help. Sorry... I have no idea. Our 3-2-1 data plan having 1x local tn core machine, 1x local tn core machine for backups and 1x core machine offsite at a family member's house.

 

[katit]

#1: Nope, it'll be fine. I upgraded cpu and memory in a x11ssh-f mobo not too long ago. Just power it off, swap the stuff (or add memory) and power it back on. It was easy and tn core recognized it fine.

#1-cpu: Your current G3470 is 2c/2t @ 3.6ghz and 53w tdp. A xeon e3-1265Lv3 is ~$35-$40 (free shipping) on ebay and is 45w tdp as well as faster: 4c/8t @ base 2.5ghz and turbo 3.7ghz. The xeon also has other "stuff" like aes-ni and VT-d which might be nice with running a VM or other things. I run a e3-1268Lv5 in my tn core machine (with hyperthreading turned off in bios so 4c/4t) and it's awesome. It is lower power than the e3-1220v5 I used to run and it still maxes out the 10GbE uplinks which is all I care about. Xeon e3v4 cpu prices were more than double that of e3v3 prices on ebay so I'd stick with the v3 cpus for your x10sl7-f. I took a quick look at i3 cpus --they are all 2c/4t cpus, no turbo boost and none of them have aes-ni (as well as some other stuff you get in the xeons). If it were me, the e3-1265Lv3 seems like a no-brainer...

#2: I can't help. Sorry... I have no idea. Our 3-2-1 data plan having 1x local tn core machine, 1x local tn core machine for backups and 1x core machine offsite at a family member's house.

Thank you! I actually just upgraded to TrueNAS scale (mainly for purpose of VM). For CPU I picked up E3-1285 v4. Just like you said it is x2 of a price I guess but at this point I decided to max out my MB as I probably won't touch it for a looong time now. Same with RAM, maxing to 32Gb at this point.

 

[winnielinnie]

2. The only reason I want to upgrade CPU is to run Ubuntu VM. And the only reason for that is to setup Crashplan backups. Any other cloud backup options that will work good/better and maybe easier?

Is there a reason you need to use Crashplan?

When you say "cloud backups", are you referring to your "local cloud" (i.e, TrueNAS), or a "remote cloud" where you store your backups on a third-party host?

Is this what you want to achieve:
Local clients ---> backup to ---> TrueNAS (+ other backups)

Or is it this:
TrueNAS ---> backup to ---> remote cloud host

 

[katit]

Is there a reason you need to use Crashplan?

When you say "cloud backups", are you referring to your "local cloud" (i.e, TrueNAS), or a "remote cloud" where you store your backups on a third-party host?

Is this what you want to achieve:
Local clients ---> backup to ---> TrueNAS (+ other backups)

Or is it this:
TrueNAS ---> backup to ---> remote cloud host

Well, here is what I have setup on my TrueNAS
1. Regular SAMBA shares. I did fell a victim or ransomware once. So now I do have daily snapshots on my datasets for 1 week.
2. SyncThing where desktops dump their data. SyncThing folder on TrueNAS is RO for SAMBA clients. This way I don't actually "backup" local clients, there is no need, I can rebuild. But local folders with files ARE backed up via SyncThing.
3. FTP folders on TrueNAS - "other" clients dump data there (NVR, remote server backups)

So, I am confident data is good as far as being safe inside my house.

Open issues: House fire, hardware theft, etc.

Thats why I have crashplan plain account. I had crashplan plugin/jail before and more recently I just had Linux VM with crashplan on it. All it does - syncs up/upload files online from certain (most important) datasets. Linux VM broke on my FreeNAS (wouldn't connect to UI) and I am not Linux guru to figure why, so I was hoping better virtualization in TrueNAS scale will have it running solid.

Not like I am uploading media online from my NVR. I only backup actual documents and family pictures/videos.

 

[winnielinnie]

I only backup actual documents and family pictures/videos.

Is it less than 25 GB total?

If so, StorJ offers a free plan for 25GB. It's a partnership between iXsystems and StorJ.

You'd configure it as a Cloud Backup task. No need for a "plugin" or "jail" or "VM". No overhead in setting up something outside of TrueNAS proper. (Built-in to Core and SCALE.)

I can't speak from experience, but it wouldn't hurt to try?

It just seems like a lot of extra overhead just to backup to a third-party cloud (in this case CrashPlan) if it requires an entire VM just to accomplish what can already be done with TrueNAS directly.

 

[katit]

Is it less than 25 GB total?

If so, StorJ offers a free plan for 25GB. It's a partnership between iXsystems and StorJ.

You'd configure it as a Cloud Backup task. No need for a "plugin" or "jail" or "VM". No overhead in setting up something outside of TrueNAS proper. (Built-in to Core and SCALE.)

I can't speak from experience, but it wouldn't hurt to try?

It just seems like a lot of extra overhead just to backup to a third-party cloud (in this case CrashPlan) if it requires an entire VM just to accomplish what can already be done with TrueNAS directly.

Will definitely check! I am all for simplicity.
I have about 200Gb backed up to CrashPlan, it won't be free, but $4/4TB is cheaper than crashplan. Need to look into it.

Crashplan got versioning too which I like and used before.

 

[NugentS]

@winnielinnie I have tested the IX to storj implementation. I was backing up my personal folders and a media library full of small files (books). It works - BUT
The process is using rclone and it backs up file by file - thus generating an awful lot of objects with small files. This number of objects can rapidly swamp the free tier from storj - or at least thats how it appeared to me. Deleting the resulting backup was fraught as well.

A much better solution (from a storj PoV) was using Duplicati and some tuning which kept the number of objects in a controllable state - but duplicati has some issues that are irritating.

I admit that the library was worst case scenario (a lot of small files), but thats what I was testing

The takeaway here is that it works - but watch the number of objects in case it gets out of hand

 

[katit]

@winnielinnieThe process is using rclone and it backs up file by file - thus generating an awful lot of objects with small files.

My case is the same. Bunch of documents and pictures. Plus various small business files.

Dunno if I want to even try it.. Crashplan been good for what it is with it's features. Getting it there - (VM, app) - different story. But again, once VM running - setting up Crashplan client is a breeze and it works.

 

[winstontj]

My case is the same. Bunch of documents and pictures. Plus various small business files.

Dunno if I want to even try it.. Crashplan been good for what it is with it's features. Getting it there - (VM, app) - different story. But again, once VM running - setting up Crashplan client is a breeze and it works.

I'm shocked more people don't leverage family/friends. We have family out of state so perfect for offsite backup. We have a small, slow nas at their home (with a little APC BackUPS 550) and they have the same thing at our house. It is easy, cheap, super low-power, etc. I guess you need family that is a little nerdy to be willing & able to set it up but it is really an excellent and robust solution from our point of view.

 

[katit]

I'm shocked more people don't leverage family/friends. We have family out of state so perfect for offsite backup. We have a small, slow nas at their home (with a little APC BackUPS 550) and they have the same thing at our house. It is easy, cheap, super low-power, etc. I guess you need family that is a little nerdy to be willing & able to set it up but it is really an excellent and robust solution from our point of view.

Yep. I guess I don't have a family member with something like that..

 

[katit]

I have friends but I can’t really trust my data to be there. Unless there is some kind of encryption possible?

 

[winnielinnie]

ZFS encryption supports "raw streams" and can remain encrypted on the destination, without ever needing to unlock the datasets.

Whether a full replication or incremental., you can send ZFS snapshots (from an encrypted ZFS dataset) to another destination (TrueNAS, ZFS server, etc) without ever needing to unlock the destination side.

There's a caveat though. ZFS encryption does not hide the names of the datasets, snapshots, or used space. (If your dataset and snapshot names are "uninteresting", then it's no problem. If the "used space" isn't an issue either, then you're fine.)

But you have to be diligent. Don't accidentally setup a replication task that sends the encryption key to the destination.

EDIT: The "destination" doesn't even need to be a remote server. You can do this on an external USB as well. Just keep in mind USB is not meant to be used with ZFS, and your "backup" will lack any redundancy.