Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] ZFS tolerance

[Philip Robar]

I’ve done lots of small pools of random drives-including ones with drives
in USB2 cases-over the years and I’ve never had ZFS complain.
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Support for USB3?

[Philip Robar]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 3:12 PM, Rich Teer  wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Nov 2015, Jonathan Adams wrote:
>
> > You might be better off with a FreeNAS setup instead of Linux+ZFS, as
> long
> > as you don't mind configuring it via a browser interface ... We have 3 of
> > the beasties now running in production environments and they even have
> ZFS
> > boot (and they don't forget how to do ZFS when they get a new kernel)
>
> Hmm, that's a good idea (although the browser-only stuff gives me pause).
> I
> like the idea of ZFS boot.  I guess I should really take a closer look at
> ZFS
> on FreeBSD too...
>

Bear in mind that USB3 is still experimental in FreeNAS/FreeBSD 9.3—the
current stable version of FreeNAS—so you have to explicitly turn it on. My
USB3 PCIe card works, but the USB3 ports on my Lenovo ThinkServer TS140
motherboard don't. And while there has been a lot of USB work in FreeBSD
10.x, USB3 is still hit and miss based on which USB chipset you have.

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] SATA Expansion cards

[Philip Robar]

[Once more without the typos and formatting that I thought that I had
deleted.]

This is a good list of cards for use with ZFS. It's kept up to date by the
author (It was last updated on 12/04/2014.), states compatibility with
different OSs, and has lots of comments:

From 32 to 2 ports: Ideal SATA/SAS Controllers for ZFS  Linux MD RAID:
http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] SATA Expansion cards

[Philip Robar]

Also nice: The author discusses issues with bottlenecks (if any) for each
card/chipset.

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Cram more drives into an HP xw8600

[Philip Robar]

My apologies for taking so long to respond. I started a first draft of this
and then forget to finish it before going on vacation.

Phil

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 8:28 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote:

 Philip Robar philip.ro...@gmail.com writes:

 First, thank you sir for your repeated good input.

  Personally, I want one of the tray less x in y bays just because I think
  that they look cool. (I lust for this case, but am too cheap to replace
 the
  used server I recently purchased on eBay for a great price with a new
  mini-ITX motherboard, CPU, ECC memory and the case:
  http://www.u-nas.com/cases.html)

 Not sure I really get it about that nifty looking case... does it have
 its own OS, or would your workstation os be running it?


While the maker sells preconfigured NAS boxes using these cases [1], I'm
only interested in the case, which comes with the hot-swap, tray less drive
bays and a power supply. The 2, 4 and 8 bay versions are $130, $150 and
$200 respectively. Unfortunately they only take mini-ITX motherboards and
the system I went with came with a micro-ATX motherboard.

I run FreeNAS for my home server. FreeNAS is FreeBSD based with an HTML GUI
for configuration. The server's primary purpose is to be a ZFS file server
with me as the only user. I chose FreeNAS over some variation of Solaris or
illumos [2] (even though I'm an ex-Sun [RIP] employee) because I had used
it in the past and liked it for its ease of use (though it's GUI really
needs the loving attention of someone who knows something about user
interfaces) and for it's home and multi-media oriented plugins that I might
want to use in the future.

Another advantage of FreeNAS, which I've never seen mentioned, is that you
can save its basic configuration in a single file like you would a router.
This makes for easy disaster recovery and allows one to play with alpha and
beta releases and then easily roll back to a stable release just by
reinstalling and loading the config file.

May I ask how much your ebay purchase cost you? I probably shouldn't
 but can't help but wonder how badly I got beat up.


I don't mind answering this at all. Hopefully others will find it useful as
well. The short answer is $140:

Supermicro 1U short case with 280 watt power supply.
Supermicro X7DVA-L motherboard

2 x LGA 771 CPU sockets
2 x Intel NICs
6 x SATA II (Plenty for my purposes)
6 x DDR2 memory slots for up to 48 GB of ECC memory (DDR2 ECC memory is
very inexpensive.)

Several PCIe and one PCI slots

Built in VGA  audio (Technically it's probably a workstation, not a server
MB.)

Room for two 3.5 inch drives internally. (No tray less slots, but I really
don't need them.)

2 x Xeon L5420 CPUs for 8 cores total
8 GB (2 x 4) DDR2 ECC RAM (leaving 4 empty slots)
1 x 500 GB WD Blue HD

Here's the long version if you're interested:

I wanted an inexpensive server for ZFS that had ECC memory. I was already
doing what many do for a DIY home NAS: repurposing a reasonably lowish
power old PC and getting by with only 4 GB of non-ECC memory, but I really
wanted to get that last bit of protection that ECC memory offers and I knew
that I was eventually going to need more memory for additional services
that I want to run. (N.B. I think that the warnings about using ZFS with
less than 8 GB of memory (some even say 16) given by some rather outspoken
people (one in particular) in the FreeNAS community are a rather overblown
if all you're doing is running a simple file server for a few people.)

After doing some research I found that it would cost me $250 [3] to ~$400+
[4] for current generation hardware that used ECC memory. After deciding
that I could live without some of the benefits of new hardware (very low
power usage, AES-NI instructions for on-the-fly encrypted filesystems, the
latest virtualization features, the latest vector instructions, Quick Sync
for transcoding, IPMI remote management) I started looking on eBay for used
options.

I first found a couple of variations of Dell servers that had been custom
built for early cloud servers that were coming onto the used market in
large quantities for less than $200. But if I recall correctly there was a
hardware incompatibility with FreeBSD that would have been to expensive to
work around.

I then searched on supermicro and xeon or ECC, sorted by price and
found a bunch of 7 series Supermicro systems in 1U or 2U cases for very
reasonable prices. Some more research taught me about the low power (for
the time) L series Xeons that many of theses systems came with and in the
end I decided that the Xeon L5420 CPU was the best bang for my buck. The
Xeon L5420 has 4 cores, 50 W max TPD, ECC support, is 64 bits, has basic
VT-x support for virtualization and pretty good power saving features. It's
single core performance is about the same as an AMD Sempron 140 according
to GeekBench 3 (1400).

I eventually picked the Supermicro system I described above which is all
together more than good enough for a one

Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Cram more drives into an HP xw8600

[Philip Robar]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Nikola M. minik...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 07/23/14 08:34 PM, Philip Robar wrote:

 If you don't mind a mini rack sitting outside of your case this is an
 inexpensive ($30) option:

 http://www.sansdigital.com/storage-gadgets/hddrack5.html


  Huh, I think that is for mounting Inside the case, not outside,


No, it's explicitly meant to be used outside of the computer's case. I've
actually seen this product in person.


 and to use same power supply from the case.


No, if you'd actually read the description you'd know that is uses the 20
or 24 pin ATX cable from a separate power supply to power the drives and
that it has it's own on/off switch.

It would be not practical to mount anything outside the case, since you
 need as much SATA cables from the controller, as drives you have. And using
 SATA extenders is NOT advisable, due to unknown affects that chips inside
 extender have on data flow (unless it is all SAS drives because SAS is
 another thing because it is routable).


Actually its quite practical to mount drives outside of the case using a
rack like this. It's a cost effective option for people who've run out of
space in their current case and don't want to buy a new one or who have
exceeded the capacity of their case's power supply, but have a spare laying
around. I've effectively made a small one of these using a removable cage
from another case. I run the data and extended power cables out a card slot
in the back of my short 1U case to my external drives. The SATA spec says
that data cables may be up to one (1) meter long so no extenders are needed.

Many people like me have their server in a location that is out of sight,
like the basement or a closet so we don't care about aesthetics. But, if
that matters it's easy enough to use some bread wrapper ties, cable ties or
cable sleeves to tidy things up.

Please read the reviews for this product at Amazon and Newegg. They are
overwhelmingly positive.


 Nonetheless, having external drives in tower would need some case and
 that brings us back to mounting drives in (bigger) PC case as better
 solution.


No, as I've explained above. Another option, though, would be to get an
eSATA card and a drive case that supports port multiplication, but then you
have to be aware of the throughput limitations of a shared data path.

Yet another external option, albeit an expensive one, that preserves
performance would be to use thunderbolt.


Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Cram more drives into an HP xw8600

[Philip Robar]

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote:


 Can anyone tell me if it is better to have a cage with backplane.
 If backplane is just some raid rigamorole... probably useless for this
 But would a general sata backplane be any advantage?


For personal use it's mostly a matter of convenience. If you're not going
to be changing drives on a regular basis and/or you don't need the
continuous uptime that hot swapping gives you then I'd say save the money.

Personally, I want one of the tray less x in y bays just because I think
that they look cool. (I lust for this case, but am too cheap to replace the
used server I recently purchased on eBay for a great price with a new
mini-ITX motherboard, CPU, ECC memory and the case:
http://www.u-nas.com/cases.html)

I guess I would assume the power unit is up to that task... can anyone
 comment on that?


There are web apps that will help you figure this out. Try searching on
power supply calculator.

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Cram more drives into an HP xw8600

[Philip Robar]

One option might be an x in y drive bay that slides into the top forward
facing builtin drive bay. (Where x  y.) These are available in both hot
and non-hot swapping versions. They use fan(s) forcing air over the drives
to keep the temps down. Search on drive bays or drive cage to get an
idea of what I'm talking about.

If you don't mind a mini rack sitting outside of your case this is an
inexpensive ($30) option:

http://www.sansdigital.com/storage-gadgets/hddrack5.html

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Cram more drives into an HP xw8600

[Philip Robar]

The tray less cages that Bill and I mentioned can be a little pricy ($100
+/-) so be aware that there are less expensive x in y options, both tray
and tray less, that don't have backplanes* that the drives plug into, i.e.
they are just bays that house the drives closer together and include a fan
to keep them cool, and you run data and power cables directly to each drive.

For instance:

Norco 5 x 3.5 (trayless) HD cage with cooling fan
Dimensions: W x H x D: 7.1 inch x 4.1 inch x 5.75 inch
2 cages for $27 with shipping at Amazon: http://amzn.to/1tBbQhJ

There are several similarly priced alternatives shown on the Amazon page.

In between these two options is something like this Rosewill 4 in 3 cage
for $45. The lower price is most likely due to its all
plastic construction: http://amzn.to/1pH75AC

Phil

* Though tray less w/o a backplane doesn't strike me as particularly useful.
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Any hardware snafus in this lineup?

[Philip Robar]

I forgot one thing. The Avoton boards have not been tested with Solaris,
OpenIndiana or any of its derivates. Lots of people are asking about them
for this use, but no results yet that I know of yet.

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Anyone??? Re: Can OI run on these MBs?

[Philip Robar]

These are fairly new boards, after searching via Google it seems to be the
case that no one has tried Solaris/OpenIndiana/illumos/... on them yet.
Lots of people talking about it, but no one seems to have actually tried it
yet.

Here's a chance for you to be a pioneer. Buy one from a place with a
liberal return policy and let us know how it goes. :-)

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Anyone??? Re: Can OI run on these MBs?

[Philip Robar]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 3:19 PM, ken mays maybird1...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Hans,

 More compatible is the Intel S1200KP motherboard.


Interesting, but it's of stock at newegg--as in it appears to be
discontinued. And it's socket 1155, not 1150 so it doesn't use the lower
power Haswell CPUs.

The point of these new ASrock (and Supermicro's similar) boards is that
they use the new Intel Atom Avoton CPUs:

4 or 8 cores
Low power (~half or less of a Haswell CPU)
Roughly half the overall compute power of a Haswell Xeon
AES-NI for encryption
Up to 64 GB of memory (Twice that of most small 1150 server boards, which
are chipset/CPU limited.)
Dual Gb NICs
Lots of SATA ports

IPMI


all in a mini-ITX board.

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] Any hardware snafus in this lineup?

[Philip Robar]

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 7:20 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote:

 These hardware specs are for a planned home lan zfs NAS


 CONFIGURATION
 CPU : AMD 64 CPU AM3/AM3+
 AMD FX-8350 Piledriver (Vishera) 4.0GHz (Eight Core) 32nm,
 AM3+ 8MB Cache

 Cooling Fans : AMD 64 CPU Fans
 Coolermaster GeminII S, 5 Copper Heat Pipes, Extra Quiet
 140MM CPU fan

 Motherboard : AMD 64 AM3/ AM3+ Motherboards
 ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 AM3+,AMD 760G, Onboard video,HDMI,
 USB3.0

  NOTE: I'm pretty sure this ram can be ECC.
Most asus boards accept both.

 Memory : DDR3 Dual Channel memory
 32GB (4x8GB) PC14900 DDR3 1866 Dual Channel (high
 performance memory)


From your description you're building a dedicated home single purpose, i.e.
file, server. Unless you have other plans in the back of your mind the
parts you chosen seem inappropriate or gross overkill from, respectively,
either an energy efficiency or compute power standpoint. I suggest that
instead you consider an Intel socket 1150 CPU and a real server motherboard.

Even the lowest end Haswell Celeron has more than enough compute power for
a home file server and all Haswells have much lower TPD than the AMD and
probably also idle at a much lower wattage too.

Haswell Celeron G1820 - $40 at Microcenter.
Haswell Core i3 4130 - $100. If you need AES-NI support for file system
encryption.
Haswell Xeon E3-1200 V3 - Starting at around $200. If your server is going
to do something like video transcoding.

A server motherboard will have ECC support, Intel NICs and IPMI for remote
management. Supermicro is most people's server board brand of choice, but
there's also Tyan, ASUS and others to choose from.

One of the new Intel Atom Avoton (4 or 8 core) server motherboard/CPU
combos from ASrock or Supermicro are even more attractive from an energy
cost standpoint. (This is a serious consideration for a system that runs
24x7.) (http://www.servethehome.com has reviews of several of these.)

Since you said this is a home server I assume that that means that there
will be at most a handful of connections at any given time. In that
situation even 16 GB of memory will be more than you need, but in any case
get ECC RAM. It costs so little more that it just doesn't make sense not to.

Phil
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Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] HP Proliant Microserver N54L questions for those who've already tried it

[Philip Robar]

I've seen discussions on modifying the BIOS to enabling hot-swapping and up
SATA levels of the HP Proliant Microserver N54L in other forums-- FreeNAS if
I recall correctly--when I was looking into HP Microservers a couple of days
ago. A little searching should quickly turn up those thread. I got the
general impression that they worked and were stable.

As to Windows, I'd be surprised if Windows 7 didn't run well enough to
write to USB.

Phil
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