Help me decide

[Sumit Bajoria]

Hello and a Merry Christmas to all here.

I am from India and unlike the west, I dont have the luxury of getting my hands on server grade hardware for peanuts off fleabay. However, I am looking to treat myself with a few servers which will give me the reliability I am looking for. Nothing too fancy though.

Currently I make use of a 6 year old Dell laptop which runs Windows 7 to run my gpsgate server to track my vehicles. This same laptop runs utorrent which seeds about 100 torrents at any given time. I use various external drives to save what I need which are accessed using the many macbooks and iMacs I have in the house.

I am looking to get myself a freenas server, components for which have already been decided with help from the freenas forum.
Supermicro Server Motherboard X10SRI-F
Intel Xeon E5-2650V3 with Supermicro Heat Sink
4 x 16 GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM 2133 MHz
2 x 32 GB SSD Kingston
12 x 4 TB WD RED HDD Hot Plug
LSI 9211-8i HBA Controller with Cables
4U Supermicro Chassis CSE847E16-R1400LPB with Slide Rails

Now I am also looking to get myself a server to take care of the gpsgate/torrents/etc and after discussions with one of the authorised Supermicro Distributors of my country, zeroed in on the following:
Supermicro Motherboard X10DRH-C with
Supermicro Chassis SC826BE1C-R920LPB
1 x Xeon E5-2650V3 (2.3 GHz, 10 Cores/20 Threads, 25 MB Cache)
4 x 16 GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM 2133 MHz
LSI 3108 RAID Controller 12 Gbps with 2 GB Cache
Additional Dual Port i350 Gigabit Controller

I wanted to get a server which would allow me to connect a few extra drives for I wanted this server to help me backup any crucial and irreplaceable data from my freenas server like photos, documents and videos.

Other than this, at any time, this server will have 3 or at max 4 VMs running at any given time.

Now coming to my questions. How would a Xeon D-1541 perform with 64GB or 128GB RAM with 3-4 VMs running either Windows 7 or Windows 10? I can get two of these servers with the 2nd one exclusively for backing up all my data? This 2nd server will only come on once or twice a week and go back to sleep once the backup tasks are complete. I can get a 2U with 6 or maybe 8 drive bays for each of these two xeon based systems. Specifically, I am eyeing the Supermicro X10SDV-8C-TLN4F. Rack space is not an issue as I am also getting a 42U rack and neither is noise a problem.

So please advice what would be best for me.

 

[Biren78]

FreeNAS Box:
Why such a fast CPU for FreeNAS? It's much more than you'll need?
RUN FROM KINGSTON SSD!!!! They are terrible. I know a number of people on here will not touch them including myself. With the price of decent 120GB and 256GB SSDs there's no reason to use small cheap 32GB Kingstons. Get drives better suited for L2ARC and/or ZIL duties.

gpsgate/ torrents/ etc server:
What kind of drives on the second server? What kind of hypervisor?

The D-1541 will be OK for what you're doing. It's slower than the E5-2650 but lower power. You might be better running two in an active/ active or failover.

 

[Sumit Bajoria]

FreeNAS Box:
Why such a fast CPU for FreeNAS? It's much more than you'll need?

I was initially going with the 1650v3 but on the freenas forum, someone with the processor was having issues with emby/plex decoding when having more than 4 simultaneous streams of 1080p. I am planning to have atleast 4 simultaneous streams here too and two of these may be 4k streams. This person went with the 2650 and his issues were resolved. Thus the upgrade.

RUN FROM KINGSTON SSD!!!! They are terrible. I know a number of people on here will not touch them including myself. With the price of decent 120GB and 256GB SSDs there's no reason to use small cheap 32GB Kingstons. Get drives better suited for L2ARC and/or ZIL duties.

I would not have gone with kingston anyways but just put it there as this was what the vendor sent in his quote. We have Samsung SSDs available here readily. Should I go with those?

gpsgate/ torrents/ etc server:
What kind of drives on the second server? What kind of hypervisor?

Have not decided on this yet. May just make that into another freenas box and install 4 or 5 WD Reds.

The D-1541 will be OK for what you're doing. It's slower than the E5-2650 but lower power. You might be better running two in an active/ active or failover.

When you say slower, do you mean that this configuration wont be suitable for 3-4 Windows 7/10 VMs that I may be running on this system at any given time? It wont run even if I max out the RAM to 128GB? In this case, am I better off with the X10DRH-C and the 2650v3? I believe this is a dual processor capable board and this gives me the ability to add another processor in the future if I ever feel the need. If I go with this, how much RAM should I initially get? What should I use for my boot drives and should I go with a RAID setup for the boot drives?

I am sorry if I am overwhelming you with questions but I last "played" with hardware when I was doing my post-grads. When I was pursuing my studies, virtualisation was just possible on paper and not much was taught about it. Things have changed in the past decade and a half and I shifted to my family business and IT became just a means to get my work done. I will have to re-learn everything from a scratch.

I am currently thinking of going with hyper-v for my hypervisor.

 

[Jeggs101]

I think Plex doesn't support Quick Sync so I guess that makes sense. Samsung is much better, and given the size of the pool, I'd get 120GB+ SSDs. Kingston SSDs suck for reliability.

Xeon D is find for a few light VMs. I prob wouldn't game on a D-1540 Win 7 VM tho. Hyper-V is good with Windows and Linux guests.

I'd max a Xeon D to 128GB since you've only got 4 slots to use.

Going dual CPU board is a good idea with Xeon E5's. Cost is only a little bit more but you can add a second CPU later.

 

[Patrick]

I would probably agree on the 32GB Kingston after 8 Kingston SSD failures in datacenters out of 11 deployed.

 

[Sumit Bajoria]

I think Plex doesn't support Quick Sync so I guess that makes sense. Samsung is much better, and given the size of the pool, I'd get 120GB+ SSDs. Kingston SSDs suck for reliability.

Xeon D is find for a few light VMs. I prob wouldn't game on a D-1540 Win 7 VM tho. Hyper-V is good with Windows and Linux guests.

I'd max a Xeon D to 128GB since you've only got 4 slots to use.

Going dual CPU board is a good idea with Xeon E5's. Cost is only a little bit more but you can add a second CPU later.

Thanks for this. I think I'll go with the X10DRH-C and the 2650v3. Initially. I may get 128GB of RAM and if and when I feel the need for more, upgrade to dual processors.

I went back to the freenas forum and did some more reading. Many people are running the X10SRI-F with the 1650v3 and are having no issues with their plex encoding. Maybe that one person I made a reference too was a one-off case. Instead of the upgraded processor, I'll get 128GB of RAM and be done with it. I'll speak with my vendor and see if he will be willing to test me the system for a few weeks and if I need the upgrade, he'll let me swap out the processor, though the chances of this actually happening are very remote.

I may still get a 3rd server and use it only for freenas backup. Will schedule it so that it comes one once or twice a week, rsyncs everthing that needs to be saved and goes off to sleep again. I am way too paranoid about data losses as I have had bad experiences in the past. Won't take any chances with loosing the photos and videos of my kids.

Thank you all for the help and advice. Will get back here with details when the equipment is in place.