Will this work?? Asus P8Z68-V Pro???

[siamsquare]

Yo,

 

Wanna build a 20 HDD server, will be my first!

Was thinking of buying a Asus P8Z68-V Pro as it allready has 8 sata ports on board! For processor I was thinking of a low power Intel Core i3-2100T, 2.50GHz, 3MB, HD2000, S1155.

And some 6GB of DDR3 1600.

So my question is will this work with Unraid?

 

gr33tz

[Johnm]

I have tested unraid on a similar board (ASUS

P8P67 Pro-R3) and it fired up. I didn't test it with hba cards.

 

That said, if you are serious about building a server, I would not buy this board. I would look at a true server board. It might even be a bit cheaper.

 

You will have lots of extra stuff on this board that unraid won't see or use. Possibly causing conflicts from shared devices and instability. You could also run into problems getting a drive controller to run in one of the pcie slots.

 

I would look into a supermicro (or asus, tyan) server board in lga 1156 or 1155.

Plus if you get one with ipmi. You might be really happy

 

The rest of your list will work with a supermicro board. Do check the ram specs. They can be picky on ram.

[siamsquare]

I have tested unraid on a similar board (ASUS

P8P67 Pro-R3) and it fired up. I didn't test it with hba cards.

 

That said, if you are serious about building a server, I would not buy this board. I would look at a true server board. It might even be a bit cheaper.

 

You will have lots of extra stuff on this board that unraid won't see or use. Possibly causing conflicts from shared devices and instability. You could also run into problems getting a drive controller to run in one of the pcie slots.

 

I would look into a supermicro (or asus, tyan) server board in lga 1156 or 1155.

Plus if you get one with ipmi. You might be really happy

 

The rest of your list will work with a supermicro board. Do check the ram specs. They can be picky on ram.

 

Well I just want a really fast server as I currently own 3 NAS systems which have an average speed of over 90mb/s in raid-5.

I'm just recently willing to explore the wonderful world of homemade servers and have a go @ it!

But I don't wanna mess it up, nor buy a system which is too much for running Unraid.

I just want it to be able to move large amounts of data really fast (blurays) over the network!

 

gr33tz

[prostuff1]

Well I just want a really fast server as I currently own 3 NAS systems which have an average speed of over 90mb/s in raid-5.

The only way to get those speeds out of unRAID is to use a cache drive for all your writes.  If you write to a disk in the array you are likely to see around half the speed you mentioned above.

[Johnm]

Agreed.

 

Unraid is aimed more for long-term slower yet stable storage that uses less power.  If your Looking for high end speed. You need to look into zfs of hardware raid.

 

As mentioned. You can improve copy speeds with a cache drive.

 

 

Also your statement about  hardware speed is incorrect.  You could get a c202 or c204 chipset serverboard and it would have much better performance and stability then a gaming desktop board. And cost less.

 

Personally, I use tier storage. I have fast hardware raid arrays as my first storage level. Then older and less used files get moved to unraid.

 

 

All multimedia and backups go to directly to unraid.

[siamsquare]

Agreed.

 

Unraid is aimed more for long-term slower yet stable storage that uses less power.  If your Looking for high end speed. You need to look into zfs of hardware raid.

 

As mentioned. You can improve copy speeds with a cache drive.

 

 

Also your statement about  hardware speed is incorrect.  You could get a c202 or c204 chipset serverboard and it would have much better performance and stability then a gaming desktop board. And cost less.

 

Personally, I use tier storage. I have fast hardware raid arrays as my first storage level. Then older and less used files get moved to unraid.

 

All multimedia and backups go to directly to unraid.

So would a Supermicro X9SCA-F be a better choice?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C202_C204/X9SCA-F.cfm

 

And what processor would I need then for a fast 24HDD configuration?

 

gr33tz & thanks for all the feedback

[Johnm]

That would work, if you dont need PCI dragging you down. the X9SCM-F, X9SCL+-F or even the X9SCL-F might be a better choice.

 

A note, when ordering those boards, they might have a "-O" in the name (X9SCM-F-O). that just means retail box with manuals and cables.

 

the -F means it has IPMI = KVM over ethernet.

AKA, dont need to ever plug them into a monitor or keyboard. you have built in bios level remote contol.

 

I am a big fan of the 3 listed above. they work with pretty much any Server OS and are rock solid.

 

As far as a CPU. honestly.. these guys can take any E3 (sandybridge) Xeon for massive horsepower.

But, for a straight-up file server like unRAID, Win2008r2, WHS, *nix, etc... an I3-2100 or 2100t is more then enough horsepower without breaking a sweat or breaking the bank and keeping the electricity use low

I have 3 X9SCM's, I feel like i have a Prius with a 440 in it.

 

keep in mind you cant put an I5 or I7 on these. if you do go Xeon, get one without a GPU in it.

[siamsquare]

That would work, if you dont need PCI dragging you down. the X9SCM-F, X9SCL+-F or even the X9SCL-F might be a better choice.

 

A note, when ordering those boards, they might have a "-O" in the name (X9SCM-F-O). that just means retail box with manuals and cables.

 

the -F means it has IPMI = KVM over ethernet.

AKA, dont need to ever plug them into a monitor or keyboard. you have built in bios level remote contol.

 

I am a big fan of the 3 listed above. they work with pretty much any Server OS and are rock solid.

 

As far as a CPU. honestly.. these guys can take any E3 (sandybridge) Xeon for massive horsepower.

But, for a straight-up file server like unRAID, Win2008r2, WHS, *nix, etc... an I3-2100 or 2100t is more then enough horsepower without breaking a sweat or breaking the bank and keeping the electricity use low

I have 3 X9SCM's, I feel like i have a Prius with a 440 in it.

 

keep in mind you cant put an I5 or I7 on these. if you do go Xeon, get one without a GPU in it.

 

So I decided on the case ...; A Norco 4224 which I will mod with a 120mm Fan Backplane and quiet fans, and a Supermicro X9SCM-F motherboard with 8 gigs of ram, Corsair TX-750 V2 powersupply

 

But after some reading I still am hesitating which processor I should buy. I currently own 4 NAS systems ,2 from QNAP and 2 from Netgear with average write speeds of 80-100mb/s Raid-5 so I would like at least to get those speeds from my Unraid server. I know speed gets higher the more powerfull your processor is (have 2 comps quad 6600 and core I7 with diff speeds to NAS) so I think it would be better to buy a server processor Xeon in it?

Also would an SSD cache drive be ideal? I was also planning to put 2 Supermicro Add-on Card AOC-SASLP-MV8 sata Pci-e cards in my server, but is there an Sata-600 alternative that works with Unraid? Just to be future-proof?

 

Questions..questions..hope you can clarify them!!!

 

gr33tz & thanks for all the info

[Johnm]

But after some reading I still am hesitating which processor I should buy. I currently own 4 NAS systems ,2 from QNAP and 2 from Netgear with average write speeds of 80-100mb/s Raid-5 so I would like at least to get those speeds from my Unraid server. I know speed gets higher the more powerfull your processor is (have 2 comps quad 6600 and core I7 with diff speeds to NAS) so I think it would be better to buy a server processor Xeon in it?

Unfortunately there is no truth that. The limiting factor to network write speed would be a combination of the network card, the drive speed and the raid/parity overhead. 

 

For a cheap software based raid5 (motherboard based raid for example) there will be CPU overhead because the CPU is acting as the raid IO controller on top of its normal duty.

 

that said, any modern processor (C2D  and newer [even an atom]) should be more then powerful enough to prevent raid drive IO lag.

(for example, I have a Supermicro Atom server board with a 6 drive (5400rpm) raid5 on the built in ICH9 (software raid) running at over 500MB/s disk write/read and 99.5% gigabit network transfer)

 

unRAID has no true raid feature (hence unRAID). It uses a parity system that has even less overhead.

the bottom line, for network speed. tossing a bigger CPU will not boost your speed.

 

A better CPU might help with add-ons like on the fly video transcoding, but the I3 should be good enough. I don't use those kinds of add ons to give you a solid answer for that.

 

 

Also would an SSD cache drive be ideal? I was also planning to put 2 Supermicro Add-on Card AOC-SASLP-MV8 sata Pci-e cards in my server, but is there an Sata-600 alternative that works with Unraid? Just to be future-proof?

SSD should work fine as a cache drive. I do know that the OCZ has put a flat temp of 128deg in the SSD's bios and unraid thinks the SSD is overheating. until they change that in a new firmware update, i'd avoid OCZ.

 

Yes, there are a few Sata3 HBA's at this point. there is a AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 that seems to be special order only at this point (new card). Several people are running LSI SAS2 cards with reflashed firmware.

One the cheapest ways to get one is to pick up a re-branded LSI card on ebay. The common one being the IBM M1015. those can be found for around $80 if you are patient. I have two of those myself.

Another Cheap LSI based SAS2 is the Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i. It needs a minor modification to fit into a normal PCIe slot. (the bracket is mounted backwards and needs some nylon washers and new screws from a hardware store to use the exiting bracket or possibly just a new bracket)

the not so fun part is reflashing the LSI cards into IT mode if you're a noob at things like that.

 

Again, I'll remind you unRAID is much slower then a RAID array. it is meant for massive, stable storage, not massive performance speed. The use of the cache drives helps to overcome this by giving you the feeling of a faster array by writing new data outside the protected area. while it is faster, the data is vulnerable.

 

The use of 7200RPM drives will also help speed the array up. 7200rpm drives are not needed for the data drives. for normal use, green drives are just fine. a 7200 RPM parity and cache will give a slight performance boost.

 

Like you, I came from a bunch of raid5/6 servers to unRAID. I slammed my head against the wall when I realized my new unraid server is only a fraction of the speed of my older raid arrays.. not to mention i come from an enterprise work environment that "if it is not fast enough, toss more money at it... make it go faster!".

 

In the end I found the strengths in unraid. I still have my raid5 servers for when I need massive speed or massive disk IO. In the end, my RAID servers are now app servers or short term storage servers instead of long term storage servers. most of them are now almost always in sleep mode while my unraid servers chug away 24x7 like the little engine that could . after moving most of my data to unraid, i am very happy.

 

[siamsquare]

So what speeds are you getting from your Goliath as I will be building a similar system in the same case?

[Johnm]

It is hard to give an exact number in speed. I have made so many changes to that system it is hard to tell.

 

I tested several configurations.

to the best of my memory, I was getting about:

75-95 MB/s write to 5400RPM cache.

80-110MB/s to 7200RPM cache

90-110MB/s to SATA2 SSD cache

90-115MB/s to SATA3 SSD cache

20-40MB/s write directly to protected array (all 3TB 5400RPM hitachis)

60-90MB/s read from array

 

This is all with sequential read/write using rars or movie rips.

Smaller files (1000's of gifs) were much much slower.

 

I am keeping my eye out for 3TB hitachi 7200's to go on sale for a new parity drive for this build.

I am not sure if it will help much. I know I have issues coping from 2 sources at once to 2 different drives on the server at once. I am hoping that helps with that.

 

 

 

[siamsquare]

thanks for all the good advice!

[ct1478]

I have been testing this board with a couple of the supermicro hba boards, it seems to work ok although it does have some quirks. I had one the other day where the drives connected to the onboard controller were missing in the array. I did some checking and come to find out they were missing in the bios screen, I rebooted the board but they were still missing, I finally enabled the hot swap option for each drive, rebooted then turned the option back off,and they were back. Could be a one time thing but I think I will be changing to a supermicro board just because. JoHnm what part number were the kingston ram modules you are using for the X9SCM-F board?

[siamsquare]

Yo,

 

Been reading alot and want my new rig somewhat future-proof so I'm hasitating on buying SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 (Sata-600 version of the AOC-SASLP-MV8) as I hear the old AOC-SASLP-MV8 had driver issues in Linux which I found here --> http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1615329

Any1 else here on the forum allready used this new card or has experience with the old one???

Glad to hear your comments!

 

gr33tz

[joshpond]

Haven't had issues with the older one on unRAID. Did have issues with it and booting with the latest firmware and my motherboard, propbably shouldn't with the supermicro board though.

 

 

The solution for the boot issues is here, see my post:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9488.30

 

For me it works fine and I think many here on unRAID.

 

Josh

[Johnm]

the AOC-SASLP-MV8 is pretty much the unRAID standard card.

 

Most of the modern builds are using that card. It is fairly inexpensive and easy to get.

 

I have some in 2 of my builds. I have not had a single issue yet.

 

The new version would have a slight performance increase parity check/rebuild operations.

In day to day use, it wont make a difference.

 

I have yet to see the new SAS2 version in stock anywhere. I am sure as time goes on, it will be easier to get.

 

Several people are also using Rebranded LSI SAS2 cards.

 

 

[siamsquare]

Owkie...

 

Thanks for all the good info...also am thinking about buying a Crucial M4 128GB SSD...wanna use it for cache....will this be a problem?

 

gr33tz

[Chris Pollard]

Look for an SSD with garbage collection,  unRAID does not support TRIM so your write speed will deteriorate over time without hardware garbage collection.  I believe the Sandforce chipset has it but you would need to confirm that.