Thx,

 

I'm not a huge fan of atom though and for expandability reasons I would like to go for G1610 or opteron 3350 HE.

 

G1610 has been tested on this forum in combination with consumer grade motherboard and has also got low power consumption (in idle that is) which is the most important to me.

Did anyone combine it yet with a supermicro or other servergrade motherboard to use it's ECC capabilities ?

On supermicro site the cpu isn't listed and they don't respond to email so I if anyone would like to share his findings here ?

 

I would also like to build a low power consumption unraid server and from what I've read here on the forum good choice's seem to be for now:

 

Hi cantharides999, we're happy to help you choose components, but I think we need some more info from you.  What size server, in number of drives, are you planning on building?  A microserver with 4 drives?  A medium sized server with 12 drives?  A gigantor server with 24 drives?  Something else inbetween?  Your answer directly affects the choice of components, primarily the motherboard and the number of SATA ports on it.  Up to about 8 drives, maybe a bit more, it will generally be more power efficient to run all ports directly on the MB.  Beyond a certain point, add-on controllers are required (be they PCIe cards or even built into the motherboard), and these all significantly increase power consumption but at the same time change your MB requirements (my 24-drive server only has 2 SATA ports on the MB, currently unused).

 

Or just wait for the AMD X2150 cpu integrated mobo's (which seem to be the wet dream for a file server according to specs).

 

Full disclosure here:  I own significant shares in AMD stock, and none in Intel.  At almost every opportunity I push AMD, because I want the company to succeed and make me rich.  I use to buy exclusively AMD, and recommend AMD exclusively to others.  So if I could, I really would recommend a X2150 for you.

 

But I see no published plans to produce a consumer grade X2150 motherboard, from anyone.  It seems that AMD is currently pushing these into high-density microservers.  If you've got a link to a X2150+motherboard that you're waiting on, please share.  Otherwise, I recommend moving on, nothing to see here.

 

I also find it sad to say that most of my recent chip purchases have been Intel & Nvidia.  When I built my 24-drive server a couple months ago, I really wanted PCIe 3.0 capability, something AMD hadn't made available at the time.  True, I ended up using a PCIe 2.0 x16 based controller card, which would have worked just fine on an AMD solution, but several of the cards I was contemplating used a PCIe 3.0 x8 connection, and running them at PCIe 2.0 x8 would have cut their bandwidth in half.

 

Hmmm, seems I'm kinda PO'd at AMD lately.  No surprise.  I think AMD makes great products for most situations, and it just upsets me when my own personal builds are having specific requirements that AMD can't meet.

 

I'm getting off topic, so what say you cantharides999?  What size server?

 

-Paul

Paul =>  somehow I overlooked this post.  I will do exactly that sometime in the next few days and post the results.

 

Is it sad that I'm waiting excitedly like a kid for Christmas.... 

I currently use a mid-size server (12 Drives), the hardware I'm using currently using is older previously used desktop equipment (socket 775 intel) together with a supermicro sas controller saslp-mv8. I used to shut down the server (properly) every day (during 1 year) so power consumption didn't bother me.

 

Lately I've started using it as a 24/7 always on server , so now power consumption does matter.

 

What I expect from a new config (otherwise it isn't worth the investment in new hardware).

1. Low power consumption in idle and in average use:

My old equipment uses 95 W in idle (with the 12 drives). So I would like reduce idle power consumption with 50% (if possible of course), maybe implement wake on  lan if I can't achieve the 50% less power consumption.

 

2.Usage: Standard unraid functionallity combined with:

Possible vmware (or equivalent) usage ,

cctv recording

firewall/vpn

No downloading or videotranscoding needed.

Max clients connected (3 to 4).

 

3. Low cost (who wouldn't)

 

So that's basically what I wan't to use the server for, no need to expand the number of drives either.

 

I only read about the X2150 on anandtech, which seemed very promising, if they don't want to develop any DIY mobo's for it, then it will be a missed opportunity for AMD, cause I think there will be more SOHO users interested in this

 

After reading the posts and researching a bit on the web my thoughts are divided between:

 

Opteron 3350 or 3320  available now combined with consumer grade mobo and ECC ram.

G1610 with server grade mobo so I can use ECC ram

 

Maybe there better (lower energy, cheaper, more reliable) solutions out there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think cutting your power in half is doable.

 

Hypothetically, if you used my exact configuration, but swapped the 24 drive 2760A for a 12 drive version, had half the cooling and only 12 drives, I think power consumption would be about 50 watts at idle.  I say hypothetically, because a 12-drive version of the 2760A doesn't exist (16 or 8, but not 12).  Besides, I think one of the options below will be even better.

 

Since 12 drives is your magic number, I think you got three configurations to choose from:

 

8 SATA port MB + 4 SATA port HBA

  OR

6 SATA port MB + 6 SATA port HBA

  OR

4 SATA port MB + 8 SATA port HBA

 

Either way, you're going to need an add-in card.

 

That last option is probably going to be easiest to source. 

 

On NewEgg I found one Intel MB, socket 1155, m-ITX format, with ECC support, 4 SATA ports, and a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. 

 

Combine that with one of the popular 8-drive controllers, and voila!  I'm not sure which is most power efficient... does anyone have numbers for some of these other controllers?  HighPoint does make a 2720SGL which is an 8-drive version of the 2760A, and by my reckoning it would consume about 12W at idle (purely a guess, but an educated guess).  The price isn't horrible either.

 

Actually, your current saslp-mv8 might be more power efficient.  Since you have one, you could test it.  I searched around and couldn't find any numbers.

 

If you're willing to go larger than m-ITX, there's 18 more 1155 + ECC + 4 or more SATA port motherboards to choose from on NewEgg.  Lot's of options.

 

Does any of this sound like a path you want to explore?

 

garycases motherboard is used by Lime-Tech for 14-drive servers (though others have commented that parity check performance suffers with more than 11-12 drives), though I don't know how suitable it is to VM.

 

Are you planning on running cctv recording apps on the server, or merely recording to the server?

 

Are you planning on running firewall and vpn software on the server, or merely having the server behind a firewall that you can vpn into?

 

-Paul

If I'm going to install vmware I will be would like to run firewall, vpn and cctv software on it.

 

I really like you G1610 cpu, but it isn't clear to me which motherboards on newegg will support this cpu (none of the server grade mobo's mention the G1610).

Can you point them out to me on newegg? (btw I will have to buy them elsewhere since newegg doesn't ship to Europe).

The motherboard you're using doesn't support ECC (or should I not bother with ECC compatibility at all?).

 

Alternatively AMD Opteron can be combined with consumer grade motherboards and support of virtualisation and ecc ram, which I can buy for approximately the same price.

 

 

If I'm going to install vmware I will be would like to run firewall, vpn and cctv software on it.

 

I really like you G1610 cpu, but it isn't clear to me which motherboards on newegg will support this cpu (none of the server grade mobo's mention the G1610).

Can you point them out to me on newegg? (btw I will have to buy them elsewhere since newegg doesn't ship to Europe).

The motherboard you're using doesn't support ECC (or should I not bother with ECC compatibility at all?).

 

Alternatively AMD Opteron can be combined with consumer grade motherboards and support of virtualisation and ecc ram, which I can buy for approximately the same price.

 

If you want to VM with all of that software, I would definitely advise staying above the Atom level - I don't think it has enough horsepower.

 

Also, if you are running all that software, I don't think you would ever be at idle, right?  Are you running these apps today?  Do you have any CPU utilization measurements to share? We might need to change your focus from efficiency at idle to efficiency at load.

 

Do you think there is any need for a higher end igpu to support the cctv software?  The G1610 is HD2500, so pretty low end, but I understand that the video subsystem is basically identical to the HD4000 - it really depends upon whether the cctv software is performing any advanced graphics calculations, or simply recording and streaming data.

 

Also, you didn't comment regarding whether you want to pursue using your current saslp-mv8, and if so I think you need to go ahead and get idle power measurements from it (boot one with nothing but MB/CPU/MEM and unRAID, then boot again with same + saslp-mv8, in both cases have zero hard drives powered up).  If this card turns out to be a good choice, then we know we only need a new MB with 4 SATA ports.  If this card sucks power like a banshee, then we have to consider the new MB and the new controller card together, and we have many more options.

 

I still think we need to do the homework above before zeroing in on the right MB/CPU combo, so it's a bit too early to sweat the details like which server MB supports the G1610.  And since you say you're not in a rush, I think you have the luxuries of contemplation and research.

 

Also, regarding ECC, here are my personal thoughts on the matter.  If you have data that lives in memory, ECC is critical.  If you have data that simply passes through memory on the way to/from storage, ECC is optional.  Example, if you had a 30GB database that you loaded into memory to improve performance, ECC would be critical to protect that data. 

 

On unRAID, the OS and unRAID app lives in memory, and if you are running CacheDirs, your keeping fresh copies of your directory structure in memory, but your actual data lives on the hard drives, not in memory.  I think ECC for unRAID is optional.  I've been running unRAID for 5+ years without ECC, and as far as I know I've never had a lick of trouble related to memory.  By all means, ECC is not a bad thing, and having it is definitely better, I'm just not convinced that unRAID defines the use case for ECC.

 

To me, more critical than ECC is a good quality pure sine-wave UPS.  I used to have frequent, random crashes on my unRAID box that were solved by a UPS.

 

-Paul

Pauven,

 

Preferably I would like to continue to  use my saslp-mv8 controller, simply to lower cost of having to buy additional required components.

Mobo's with 12 onboard sata connections are way to expensive anyway.

I will test power consumption my sas controller card when I have the time on my actual rig, just to be sure power consumption of this board isn't outragious.

 

As to the cctv funcionality, this is optional, I would like to run it when my unraid configuration is virtualised, which for now isn't the case, the camera's can record to their own built in storage cards anyway.  I also could use a small soho synology for this purpose, but the use of two devices will deffinately use more power.

Encoding of the videostreams will be done by the camera's themselves, so basically the cctv software would just be recording the streams onto a hard drive. This shouldn't stress an IGP or CPU much.

As for the firewall/vpn functionality this won't put a lot of stress on any cpu either.

 

As for ECC I'm not sure either, on my actual config I don't use it, didn't pose any problems for now, I just consider it because I will be upgrading, so I thought why not include it, if I don't, maybe I will regret it later.

If the ECC really isn't usefull, then perhaps I should just look for a config exactly like yours (with the only a difference being the sas controller), which will be a very affordable upgrade to newer technology and saves me a lot of effort in testing out different components.

Anyhow I thought the ECC would be usefull during writes to the array, rebuilds of replaced drives, and parity checks, but maybe you're right, and if a memory fault would occur this just would result in a crc error in perhaps one or two non critical files. So ECC would be a plus but maybe not required at all.