Why don't we recommend Atoms?

[diedrichg]

I'm researching building a pfSense box and have come to the conclusion that the SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SRi-2758F-O with the Atom 8-core C2758 is a solid choice and could easily serve as FreeNAS hardware.

In reading the reviews for this board on Newegg http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?...TjlK_1EFOh7HEbfW2MuTshoCKwvw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds, the C2758 appears more than capable of being an efficient FreeNAS processor. It's low power https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=75490.msg420296#msg420296 usage and raw power seem to make for a recommended low-power build.

Why don't we recommend the A1SRi-2758F-O for those wanting an ultra-low power build? It seems capable enough to transcode at least 1 stream for those wishing to run a media server as well as functioning as a standard file server.

 

[diedrichg]

For the most part, the Intel Atom C2758 falls in-line with our expectations. The lack of Turbo Boost means that on single and multi-threaded benchmarks the chip will trail its Avoton C2750 counterpart.

http://www.servethehome.com/intel-atom-c2758-benchmarks-8-core-rangeley-tested/

 

[zambanini]

there are some posts about this builds in the forum. even supermicro vs asrock

xeon d is also nice

 

[danb35]

There are a number of builds with Atoms, and the FreeNAS Mini even has one (a 2750 IIRC), so I'm not sure who "we" is who "don't recommend Atoms". I believe the 2750 is considered to be more suitable than the 2758 for NAS applications, though.

 

[diedrichg]

It just feels like every time someone is looking for suggestions for a low power system, the only suggestions "we" give are i3 or maybe Pentium. I actually don't recall reading the 2750 as a suggestion. But that's good to know that it is being mentioned.

Fwiw, my G3420 and (4) 2TB Reds pull 40W at idle.

 

[Jailer]

It's probably because it doesn't use much less power then an i3 or xeon system at idle and either of those 2 has much more in reserve than the 2750 when more is needed.

 

[hugovsky]

I have one. And to home and even a small business, I think it's more than enough. Only problem I see now is that I can't upgrade cpu. But I
imagine that when time comes to upgrade, I'll prefer to upgrade everything.

 

[danb35]

I guess I read "don't recommend" as "recommend against", which isn't quite the same thing. I don't see people in general recommending against Atoms, but I agree that I don't see them recommended too often. To me, the value proposition just isn't there. Yes, the idle power draw can be pretty low, and yes, they're getting to be reasonably powerful processors, but (1) they tend to be expensive (the board you listed goes for $329 on newegg, which is less than I remember, but still getting pretty close to the cost of X10SLL + Xeon), (2) they tend to be ITX boards, which limits expansion, and (3) it's impossible to upgrade the CPU (though admittedly that isn't too common anyway).

The power draw is nice, and I'm not sure how close something like an X10SLL + Pentium can come to that. That isn't something I've prioritized (I'm pretty sure my chassis fans alone draw the 40W you cite for your whole system at idle), for better or for worse.

 

[hugovsky]

Yes, I agree with you. I've bought mine with the ideia of no fan, no noise, simple all-in-one and stability. Low power too. And that's what I got. It could be more powerful, maybe a litle less expensive but, can't have all. Maybe next time the decision will be diferent.

 

[Ericloewe]

C2758 is a networking CPU. Not ideal. The equivalent "standard" CPU (which adds turbo boost) is the C2750.

C2550 and C2750 are definitely recommended - the FreeNAS mini has an ASRock C2750 board.

 

[Mike77]

Is it possible to run pfsense on your FreeNas? I thought that pfsense needed a dedicated machine.

At the moment I'm looking at connecting three different Lan's with OpenVPN in bridge mode. But seeing that I have a good FreeNas Machine at home, that would save me getting the parts for one of the VPN routers.

 

[Ericloewe]

Is it possible to run pfsense on your FreeNas?

Nope. Not going to happen, either.

 

[Robert Smith]

Though there are other uses for it for most people pfSense is their perimeter device, it stands between your local unprotected network and the big bad Internet.

pfSense itself is very well hardened; but I personally, would not be brave enough to put a FreeNAS box on the perimeter.

Ideally, you want pfSense in its own little box. Some folks run pfSense virtualized and I have not seen any breaches reported yet (though a few months ago there was a scare due to buffer overflow vulnerability in floppy drivers).

 

[Nick2253]

I could see from a business perspective why running pfSense virtualized makes sense, but for a home user, it just isn't there.

I seriously considered virtualizing pfSense at my house on my main XenServer, primarily to save power, but the power load of pfSense is so minimal on the Atom system I set up for it that it didn't make a lot of sense.

From a usability perspective, I didn't like it, because I didn't want to schedule downtime with my girlfriend if I ever wanted to or needed to restart the hypervisor. :D That was probably the biggest factor against virtualizing it for me.