Need a New Mobo - Recommendations?

[sapper6fd]

Well I'm I've discovered my 4 x 2 TB drives in RAID 5 (5.8 TB usable) at its breaking point in terms of usefulness. The Mobo has a max drive capacity of 2 TB....

So I need a new motherboard. I want to use my current memory (DDR2 5300F) and my processors (2 X Xeon E5330's). Onboard video is fine, and at least 6 SATA ports onboard with PCI Slots for eventual expansion to 20 or 24 drives (The build is a NAS Server). I need a mobo that supports more than 2 TB more than anything. Do you guys have any recommendations on this one? I'm not really a server guy to be honest.

 

[PigLover]

In today's market it really makes little sense to try and get a new MB for Clovertown Xeons, especially for the specs you are after. It makes a lot more sense to come current on CPU technology, or at least get to one-behind.

At the end of the day you can probably do it, but for just a small amount more money you can match or exceed CPU performance and - more importantly for your NAS application - get far more PCIe 2.0 or even 3.0 lanes available than you will ever get in a socket-771 configuration. And it will use less power, which means less heat and less noise to deal with.

E/L55xx and 56xx CPUs are getting dirt cheap. Lots of mobos on the market that will fit your needs. Only downside is DDR3 ecc ram is currently a bit on the pricey side. But unless you are running ZFS with dedup turned on a NAS is not a ram hungry application so you shouldn't need much of it.

 

[sapper6fd]

I totally agree and would love to upgrade but it honestly is (and I can't believe I'm saying this) total overkill. I've got two quad core xeons running in the system right now and I could easily pull one of them and swap the other for a dual core and it would still be overkill. It runs FreeNas which serves my media centre so it only gets 2 hours of use each day. This is the primary reason I'm looking to stick with the current hardware and just upgrade the mobo. I have no real need to upgrade the rest at this point or any time soon

 

[Mike]

The power savings of a cheap $<200 desktop-grade server would break you even by the time your dual socket system is booted, and be way faster too.

 

[sapper6fd]

The power savings of a cheap $<200 desktop-grade server would break you even by the time your dual socket system is booted, and be way faster too.

Can you make a recommendation on that one? I'd like to check it out.

 

[dba]

Can you make a recommendation on that one? I'd like to check it out.

Have you seen the HP DL180 G6 threads on this message board? With a $35 Xeon L5520 it makes a great storage server platform.

 

[Patrick]

The HP DL180 G6 Review if you are interested. Lots of information on the forums.

 

[Toddh]

Have you thought about adding a raid controller. I would think that would bypass any 2tb limitation the mobo has and there are lot of good cheap ones out there.

 

[sapper6fd]

I have an HP DL380 in a data center already, great server and I'll have to read up on the DL180's. I eventually wan to port everything into a Norco RPC-4224.

As for the RAID Controlers and SATA HBA's, I've looked at them and don't quite understand them. One thing I've pondered is one particular 4 port controller was able to hand up to 128 or so drives? Are those "Virtual Drives"? Not quite sure how that works. I may go down that road though if I can figure it out.

 

[gea]

I have an HP DL380 in a data center already, great server and I'll have to read up on the DL180's. I eventually wan to port everything into a Norco RPC-4224.

As for the RAID Controlers and SATA HBA's, I've looked at them and don't quite understand them. One thing I've pondered is one particular 4 port controller was able to hand up to 128 or so drives? Are those "Virtual Drives"? Not quite sure how that works. I may go down that road though if I can figure it out.

There are port multipliers for Sata (avoid, lousy performance and bad compatibility) and expanders for SAS controllers (support SAS and Sata disks - but I would use them only with SAS disks) where you can connect a lot of disks.

But if you want to move from a quite small Raid-5 volume to a Norco 24 bay storage server where you can jump to around 100 TB raw storage wit 4 TB disks, you should think about a concept.

- with raid-5 and 24 disks, a total loss of all data is quite probable during normal usage time
- you need a backup (second box, second physical location) or you must lift quality of storage to the best available level
- if you need to backup say 100 TB, this can last a week
- with large storage, you have a bitrot problem (data corruption by chance without reason, you need checksums to detect)
- if you need to do a fsck on a 100 TB storage, this must be done offline and can last days without guarantee of a repair
(you need ZFS to avoid online fsck)

The best what I can suggest is:
- use a modern filesystem like ZFS that is build for large storage
- use software raid with pools build from several raid-6 (called ZFS Z2 vdev in ZFS)
- For pure storage, prefer Solarish, then BSD, then Linux (in this order) with ZFS unless you have special needs

A quite old mainboard is ok if you have some free PCI-e slots. Add 1-3 LSI HBA controller (the best for ZFS).
Cheapest option is a IBM 1015 (8 channel)

 

[sapper6fd]

Thanks Gea. This is exactly what I'm looking to do.

The Norco will be something I grow with over time. My current set up has the following.

HP XW8600
2 X Xeon E5440
8 GB DDR ECC 5300F
4 X 2 TB WD RED Drives (Raw Storage Drives in ZFS RAIDz-1, 5.8 TB Usable)
2 X 2 TB Barracuda Drives (Backup for the Raw Storage Drives)
1 X 250 GB OS Drive

I run a ZFS Scrub monthly on all drives in the system which I'm told helps a lot with preventing and repairing bit-rot, and a short SMART Scan every three days, with a bi-monthly long SMART Scan on all drives.

My eventual goal:

24 bay Norco Case
9 X 2TB Drives RAIDz-2 ZFS (Media)
9 X 2TB Drives RAIDz-2 ZFS (Media)
6 X 4TB Drives ZFS JBOD (Backup)

I don't want to make a massive 24 drive RAID 5 VD. I know that isnt a smart idea, so I'll will break it down into two smaller arrays with a third JBOD for backup. So this is why I'm looking for a montherboard that I can use for the time being which will eventually be ported over into a Norco case using my current parts. Like you said, an older montherboard will do just fine. I have no real need to upgrade. With the power consumption of my current system running, I draw very little power (and didn't even notice a jump on my utility bill when I turned it on along with a PE2950 III, both of which run 24/7)

I'll have a look at the IBM 1015 as well. With the SFF-8087 connections, each of those ports supports 4 individual drives if I recall so 3 of them will support the 24 drives that will eventually populate the new Norco case.

 

[PigLover]

Ok. So you really want to keep the E5330 CPUs. I assume your ram is FB? If so, take a look at the Supermicro X7DWE. Looks like you can still find them new a few places for just under $200.

Supports your CPU, 6 ports sata II on an intel controller. Should be able to support >2TB drives, but you need to check. Lots of PCIe for expansion. Plus PCI-X 64 bit slot just for fun (with those old CPUs you probably have some of that...).