What case does IX use

[kirkdickinson]

Does anybody know what case and Motherboard and power supply does IX use for their FreeNAS 2U?

Thanks :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Does anybody know what case and Motherboard and power supply does IX use for their FreeNAS 2U?
Thanks :)

They have several 2U systems listed on their site and looking at the photos, it appears that they are all Supermicro chassis (several different models) and it is possible that iXsystems had Supermicro make some customization to the chassis. They will do that if you order enough quantity.

Some of the others size systems look like they could be some other manufacturer because I don't recognize them, but they have a lot of Supermicro chassis pictured and I bet they buy them with the system board already installed as that is also an option that Supermicro offers.

Which one were you interested in?

 

[Chris Moore]

Does anybody know what case and Motherboard and power supply does IX use for their FreeNAS 2U?

Thanks :)

Sorry, I was talking about the iXsystems options, not the FreeNAS certified option, but it is still a 2U Supermicro chassis with a Supermicro single socket server board.

 

[kirkdickinson]

They have several 2U systems listed on their site and looking at the photos, it appears that they are all Supermicro chassis (several different models) and it is possible that iXsystems had Supermicro make some customization to the chassis. They will do that if you order enough quantity.

Some of the others size systems look like they could be some other manufacturer because I don't recognize them, but they have a lot of Supermicro chassis pictured and I bet they buy them with the system board already installed as that is also an option that Supermicro offers.

Which one were you interested in?

I was looking at this chassis:

On this page:
https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-certified-servers/

 

[Chris Moore]

I was looking at this chassis:

On this page:
https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-certified-servers/

That system is offered in either of two drive configurations. You can get 12x 3.5" drives or 24x 2.5" drives. Which were you interested in?

 

[kirkdickinson]

That system is offered in either of two drive configurations. You can get 12x 3.5" drives or 24x 2.5" drives. Which were you interested in?

12 drive. :)

 

[Chris Moore]

12 drive. :)

The 12 drive system is probably this component from Supermicro with a custom cover over the drives.
https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/2U/5028/SSG-5028R-E1CR12L.cfm

 

[Chris Moore]

12 drive. :)

Here is where you can buy the bare-bones unit but it still needs parts to make it complete:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816139042
If you were willing to take something a little older, this would likely get the job done:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2U-Supermi...-SAS2-6Gbs-FREENAS-UNRAID-Server/132389841931

 

[Chris Moore]

What did you plan to do with it?

 

[kirkdickinson]

What did you plan to do with it?

I currently have a 4TB x 6 FreeNAS in ZFS-2. Am contemplating building another with more capacity. I have an old XP server that could die any day and want to have a main and backup server. Thinking about 4Tb x 8. (My current one shows on the windows share as 2.66 free of 13.9)

I built my last one with all new parts. If I am looking at this link on ebay right, this looks like it is complete except for drives. Right? I don't see ECC listed on the specs for that ebay item.

Add drives and FreeNAS and it would be ready to go?

 

[Linkman]

Both the motherboard and processors in that listing support ECC. I'd be surprised if it weren't ECC. But you can certainly ask the seller for clarification. (Can you even use non-ECC in those boards?)

 

[Chris Moore]

I don't see ECC listed on the specs for that ebay item.

They don't say ECC, but they say "REG" and that means it is Registered ECC, which is fairly typical of servers. The Xeon E3 servers usually use "Un-buffered ECC" and the terminology has as many derivations as there are people using it. It is a little older of a server which is why it is so inexpensive. The same vendor has similar systems with newer system boards if you are interested in something used, you might want to do some comparison shopping.

Add drives and FreeNAS and it would be ready to go?

Yes, add your drives, install FreeNAS and it should be good to go. Some of the vendors will customize the system for you if you ask.

 

[kirkdickinson]

They don't say ECC, but they say "REG" and that means it is Registered ECC, which is fairly typical of servers. The Xeon E3 servers usually use "Un-buffered ECC" and the terminology has as many derivations as there are people using it. It is a little older of a server which is why it is so inexpensive. The same vendor has similar systems with newer system boards if you are interested in something used, you might want to do some comparison shopping.

Yes, add your drives, install FreeNAS and it should be good to go. Some of the vendors will customize the system for you if you ask.

Cool, thanks.

Kirk

 

[kirkdickinson]

They don't say ECC, but they say "REG" and that means it is Registered ECC, which is fairly typical of servers. The Xeon E3 servers usually use "Un-buffered ECC" and the terminology has as many derivations as there are people using it. It is a little older of a server which is why it is so inexpensive. The same vendor has similar systems with newer system boards if you are interested in something used, you might want to do some comparison shopping.

Yes, add your drives, install FreeNAS and it should be good to go. Some of the vendors will customize the system for you if you ask.

I asked the seller and they said it does support/have ECC memory.

One more question if I could. I have been building parts list on NewEgg and this would save me about 800 over what I have in my list.

The CPU I have in my NewEgg wishlist is a Xeon E3-1225 v5 @ 3.3GHz (quad) and the CPU's (2) that come with this listing are Xeon L5640 @2.27Ghz. (hex)

The Passmark scores show me that the E3 has 7824 (single thread 1982) and the L5640 has 6451 (single thread 1100)

I guess I can figure this out myself, but it seems that the L5640 x2 can handle many more threads at the same time.

So.... in an office situation where it is mostly providing CIFS shares, this ebay listing should probably work better than the E3??? But if I were trans-coding PLEX streams, the E3 might be better?

 

[Chris Moore]

This is a retired enterprise server. It is probably around 6 years old (maybe a little more) and it will be louder and less energy efficient than a new system but if you are just looking for a file server it should do everything you need. If you want to transcode in Plex, I can't say. I don't know how well the Plex plugin utilizes multiple cores.
You could always go with a little newer model like this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2U-Supermi...ridge-16core-FREENAS-JBOD-SERVER/132389525025
The system board in this one supports up to 1.5 TB of RAM and it uses LGA 2011 Xeon E5 V2 CPUs, so if it didn't go well enough with the CPU it has, it would be pretty easy and not very expensive to put a more powerful CPU in it.
Something like this should give you all the power you would need:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Matched-Pa...GHz-15MB-7-2GT-s-80W-LGA2011-CPU/252976662995

 

[Chris Moore]

In

I asked the seller and they said it does support/have ECC memory.

One more question if I could. I have been building parts list on NewEgg and this would save me about 800 over what I have in my list.

The CPU I have in my NewEgg wishlist is a Xeon E3-1225 v5 @ 3.3GHz (quad) and the CPU's (2) that come with this listing are Xeon L5640 @2.27Ghz. (hex)

The Passmark scores show me that the E3 has 7824 (single thread 1982) and the L5640 has 6451 (single thread 1100)

I guess I can figure this out myself, but it seems that the L5640 x2 can handle many more threads at the same time.

So.... in an office situation where it is mostly providing CIFS shares, this ebay listing should probably work better than the E3??? But if I were trans-coding PLEX streams, the E3 might be better?

In a home environment, the newer system is going to generate less heat and noise and that rack mount chassis is going to have loud fans that you will want to replace.
What are your goals here?

 

[kirkdickinson]

This is a retired enterprise server. It is probably around 6 years old (maybe a little more) and it will be louder and less energy efficient than a new system but if you are just looking for a file server it should do everything you need. If you want to transcode in Plex, I can't say. I don't know how well the Plex plugin utilizes multiple cores.
You could always go with a little newer model like this one:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/2U-Supermi...ridge-16core-FREENAS-JBOD-SERVER/132389525025
The system board in this one supports up to 1.5 TB of RAM and it uses LGA 2011 Xeon E5 V2 CPUs, so if it didn't go well enough with the CPU it has, it would be pretty easy and not very expensive to put a more powerful CPU in it.
Something like this should give you all the power you would need:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Matched-Pa...GHz-15MB-7-2GT-s-80W-LGA2011-CPU/252976662995

Cool, thanks. I may do that. Would be a much faster build if everything works out ok.
Kirk

 

[kirkdickinson]

Cool, thanks. I may do that. Would be a much faster build if everything works out ok.
Kirk

2nd FreeNAS in my small office. (7-8 users) I asked about PLEX because I was curious. I won't be putting PLEX on this one. I have a FreeNAS at home with PLEX on it.

This would be living in a storage room.

 

[Chris Moore]

Cool, thanks. I may do that. Would be a much faster build if everything works out ok.
Kirk

For a small office, just doing file shares, this server should be great and probably have all the resources you need, possibly for several years. There is a small department where I work that has been using one similar to this for a little over 5 years and it is still all they need. It just needs new hard drives and it could keep going another five years. No failures so far except I have had to replace two disks.