New to UnRAID; New motherboard with good potential?

[pyros03]

First off, hello! I have been looking at various solutions to safe-guarding my media data and UnRAID seems like a perfect fit. So I backed up all my data and have UnRAID up and running to see how everything goes. Your community seems excellent from what I have seen so far and I hope I can contribute. Now, on to the good stuff...

 

 

Parts list and links to where I purchased them from:

 

• Chassis: NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219033
  (with 3x120mm fan mod: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4816&start=34)
  Picked due to high amount of space in a (relatively) small footprint. I happen to have a 36U rack in the house for various servers, so this was ideal
   
  
• Fans: Scythe SY1225SL12M 120mm "Slipstream" Case Fan
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185058
  Much more silent than the included 4x80mm screamers that were included
   
  
• Rails: NORCO RL-20 20"
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811997302
  These were not fun to install onto my 4 post square hole rack, I don't really recommend them...
   
  
• HDD: 3x SAMSUNG EcoGreen F3 2TB
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152202
  Cheap, lower power, large size drives with a good rating. Also, I don't like to support WD because of their stance on TLER
   
  
• USB Drive: SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2GB
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171374
  Cheap, recommended by Lime-Tech
   
  
• Controller Card: 2x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Ports SAS
  http://nextwarehouse.com/item/?820745
  8 devices on one PCI-E slot? Yes, please. Also highly rated
   
  
• Cables: NORCO C-SFF8087-D SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Internal Multilane SAS Cable
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133034
  Cheap; they work
   
  
• Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O Xeon X3400 / L3400 / Core i3 series Dual LAN Micro ATX Server Board
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182211
  On board USB port (not header) means I plugged the flash drive directly into the board. 3 8x PCI-E slots combined with the Supermicro addon cards means plenty of room for expansion (could fill the RPC-4224 [24 bay] without using any of the on-board SATA)
   
  
• CPU: Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core Desktop Processor
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115222
  Low power, high speed quad core. Supprised it can be used on a server-class motherboard
   
  
• RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 Server Memory
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139041
  Motherboard requires ECC RAM. It was actually fairly inexpensive considering
   
  
• PSU: SeaSonic S12D 850 Silver 850W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Active PFC Power Supply
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151083
  High wattage with good efficeincy at a good price
  

 

 

Thoughts so far:

 

This is my primary media server used to share with various XBMC installs in the house for movies and TV with some music. It's used daily. This used to be a FreeNAS box. I moved to UnRAID for the parity protection as a first line of defense. I have a copy of all of my files on the two data drives and am using about half (2/4 TB) of space. UnRAID booted right up and was able to build parity with no apparent problems (took just over 5 hours to complete). Initial file write/read tests using Windows 7 file copy put it at about 10MB/s slower on writes and twice as fast at reads vs. FreeNAS (near 35MB/s write/85MB/s read over gig ethernet). I was able to stream two 1080p movies to two different media PCs simultaneously without issue. Overall, I'm quite satisfied. I'm currently performing a parity check (estimated speed is 80-105MB/s, time is estimated at around 300 minutes). As this motherboard is not on the hardware compatibility list, I'd appreciate it if someone would help me verify that this build is indeed functioning correctly and tips on what to look for problems-wise.

 

Thanks,

Brian

[Kode]

I'm actually thinking of using this motherboard myself, what are your first impressions of it? 

 

Have you used the IPMI functionality? Thoughts?

 

Impressions of the 530?  I'm not sure yet whether i'm going to go with the 530 or 550

[pyros03]

The motherboard itself is great. I love the features (on-board USB port, 3 PCI-E 8x slots, IPMI). It's pretty sweet using a low cost i3, but still using ECC memory (non-ECC isn't supported. You can use either unbuffered or registered RAM, however). The BIOS is fully featured, and I believe you could even overclock with it, if you wanted to.

 

IPMI has its own dedicated NIC port configurable through BIOS or IPMI. It works with Supermicro's own IPMIView 2.0 pretty well, but I haven't really extensively tested it. Do you know of any other clients that would be better? I'm quite new to IPMI.

 

The 530 seems speedy enough for UnRAID. The 550 is $35 more for an extra 270MHz/core. If you want more speed, the 540 is just $10 more (@newegg) and will give you an extra 170MHz/core. The 530 is still the cheapest $/MHz-wise.

[Kode]

I haven't used IPMI myself before, but i've seen a few people on this forum raving about it.

 

I also use my unraid server for sabnzbd/sickbeard and thought having a slightly more powerful cpu might help for unraring and par2, i will also probably use the server for a dev server (PHP, MySQL) and maybe run subversion as well, but the 530 is probably fine for all this as well.

[PeterB]

If you compare benchmarks for the 530 against the processor used in any of the 'standard' unRAID builds, you will see that it has computing power far in excess of anything you will need for unRAID.  Unless you intend to do lots of ripping or encoding in the background, or intend to run unRAID in a VM environment, I cannot conceive that you should need to go to a 540 or 550.  In any case, the gains in benchmark power of the faster cpus, are minimal.

 

top shows that my 530 doesn't drop to less than 90% idle, even while it is simultaneously running Squeezebox Server, serving a flac stream to a Squeezebox, and serving a 1080p stream to a Popcorn hour.  There's still lots of power in reserve!

[Kaygee]

I'm interested how you distributed your three drives for maximum performance. One per MV8 and one on the MB I assume?

 

 

BTW nice rig, [glow=green,2,300]very jealous[/glow].

[pyros03]

The backplane on the RPC-4220 uses SFF-8087 instead of individual SATA connections (reduces cable clutter quite nicely), so I have the 3 2TB drives all on one controller. This is because I've since added an additional 1TB drive and two 500GB drives since I received my pro license and put them on the other controller. I'm not sure if I want to put them all on as data drives, or use one of them for a cache. I haven't had much time to try different allocations for performance, but I may just have to do that  , Is there a standard way everyone here tests read/write performance?

[vexhold]

Rails: NORCO RL-20 20"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811997302

These were not fun to install onto my 4 post square hole rack, I don't really recommend them...

 

I will be getting the Norco 4220 and currently have a Compaq 9142 Rack which has the four posts with square holes. I was looking at the RL-20 and he RL-26 for rail solutions and have seen many people say they are impossible to install in these racks. What are people using instead?

[pyros03]

I also have a Compaq 9000 series rack and I was able to get them installed, but only with using some spare parts from another rail set and mounting it to the inside facing holes of the post. Not sure as to what others are using, but possibly a universal kit that doesn't slide or a sliding rack shelf of some sort?

[WannaTheater]

HI,

 

I am thinking about building another unRaid server.  I have heard this chassis (stock) sounds like a jet engine.  How loud is this box after the fan mods?  Can it be placed in an office, or does it require a basement (or datacenter )

 

Thanks!

[Rajahal]

I replaced the four double-thickness 80 mm fans with three cheap cooler master 120 mm fans and left the two rear single-thickness 80 mm fans stock.  The server definitely isn't silent, but it is much quieter.  I wouldn't mind placing it in an office, but I don't mind having a bit of background white noise like that.  If you need absolute silence to think, then you'll definitely want to place it in a basement, server closet, or similar.

[WannaTheater]

Thanks.  Any issues with drive temps?  With them all spun up for awhile, can you give me an average?

 

I currently have 13 drives, which when all spun up are in the high 30's.  During a rebuild or parity check I open the case and use an floor fan to help, since they would reach 45+ during these functions

 

 

[Rajahal]

My WD Greens (EADS and EARS) all run in the high 30's, maybe around 37C average.  My 7200 RPM drives (some Seagate, some Samsung, some WD) run in the low 40's, probably around 42C average.  I just built parity on a new drive last night and the peak temperature I saw was 44C.  I have seen 45C once or twice before on hot days.  I'm not exactly sure what the ambient temperature is, but I would estimate around 27C.

 

I do think my 4220 is running a bit hotter than I would like, even with the upgraded fans.  However, keep in mind that it is the hottest part of the year where I live, and the room where the server is located doesn't get very good AC or ventilation.  The server is currently sitting on the carpet as well, since I don't have room for it on a table.  I think addressing these environmental factors will drop my drive temps by a few degrees.

[jespeed]

Hello Brian (pyros03) and the rest of this awesome forum,

 

I have just recently learned of the unRAID system and have been reading up on it for the past two weeks. I am impressed to say the least.

 

I have reached a crossroads with my HTPC system where I need to migrate from multiple 400 disc DVD changers to a more modern system. I have looked at other media server systems but none of them seem to have all of the options I would want. No matter what I looked at I seem to always end up back on the unRAID message boards. I have built quite a few PCs in my time. In fact, I built my current HTPC server back in 2005 and its still running today (knock on wood).

 

Brian, after looking up each of the parts you listed for your build I would like to build a like system. Do you still like your selections after using it for a while? I am also curious about the Scythe SY1225SL12M 120mm "Slipstream" Case Fans you listed. The NORCO RPC-4220 4U case comes with 6 80mm fans, which I have read are really noisy, and I am wondering which fans did you replace with the 120mm fans. Could you tell me which fans you replaced and how you mounted them? I would appreciate any help you can provide.

 

Thanks to all and I am looking forward to building my own system and maybe being able to contribute in the future.

 

Have a great day,

 

Jim Spence

[pyros03]

Wow, has it been over a month already? Sorry to dig up an old thread, but I've been busy and wanted to answer your questions. At least I have a good amount of testing in now  .

 

WannaTheater, Rajahal:

My observed drive temps during normal operation are low to mid 30s (Celcius) with an ambient temperature of 25-30C for my low-power drives. During parity checks, temps get up to just over 40C. I do have one 7200RPM drive that gets quite hot during parity cheks (trips my temp alarm every time), but during normal operation it hovers around 35C. My server is in a rack with 5 other servers in an upstairs living room. As a note, my AC went out for a couple of days where it got to be 35C ambient and none of my drives triggered the temp threshold (luckily I wasn't scheduled for a parity check those days  ), so I'd say that's pretty good.

 

jespeed:

I would highly recommend my configuration, I haven't had any problems in the month+ it's been running. The stock fans really are gratingly loud. I bought a replacement fan board from http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=4816&start=34, but there's a fan board available from Norco now: http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=258.

 

Other thoughts:

I can stream two 1080p movies, a 720p movie, a 720p TV show, and copy files up to the server with no hiccups in any of the streams. Overall, I am completely satisfied with what I've put together. I believe I was able to get level 2 testing done for this motherboard: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8112.0. If I were buying this again, I would get the Norco RPC-4224 chassis for maximum expandability.

[jespeed]

Hey Brian,

 

Great to hear things are going well. Thank you for the fan information you supplied.

 

I plan on building my system this fall /winter. Can't wait.

 

Did you ever do any performance testing involving hard drive port usage (motherboard vs. Controller)?

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Jim Spence

[Matt Foley]

Was putting together a hardware list that was very close to what you have here.  Actually switched to the SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIL-F-O and the memory you have listed based on your experience.  Hopefully my build goes as smoothly as yours.

[smakovits]

Why the SAS card over the SATA ones?

 

Controller Card: 2x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 8-Ports SAS

http://nextwarehouse.com/item/?820745

 

vs.

 

http://www.buy.com/pr/product.aspx?sku=201962138

[Rajahal]

Two reasons:

 

1) PCI-X is not PCIe.  Most motherboards have PCIe, whereas only a few have PCI-X.  You can always run a PCI-X card in a standard PCI slot, but then you will be crippling its speed quite significantly.

 

2) Cable management.  2 SAS breakout or SAS-SAS cables support all 8 drives, instead of 8 individual SATA cables.

[Matt Foley]

My build hit a snag.  Bad 2TB WD EARS drive.  Not DOA and took a while to start misbehaving.  Ran it through a bunch of tests and it definitely isn't right.  RMA's it and running the other 5 drives through 2 more preclear cycles.