Synology Replacement

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T_Minus

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Like so many others I'm looking to replace my Synology & my big home all in one, with something lower-power I can leave on all the time but I'd still like enough 'power' to do some misc testing for work so I want the expandability of mATX/ATX.


Motherboard: SuperMicro X11SSL-nF
RAM: Not sure yet. I'm thinking 2x8GB or 2x16GB to start, although likely both are more than enough.
AOC: Intel 2x Port 10GigE
Spinners: 6x WD 4TB (Raid Z2)
NVME: 2x Intel 750 400GB
SATADOM: 2x 64GB SuperMicro Mirrored (hopefully) for OS
Case: One of the many ATX cases I own.
PSU: One of the many ATX-home style PSUs I already own.
OS: ZFS On Linux (Ubuntu most likely)
CPU: Intel® Pentium® Processor G4500 3M Cache, 3.50 GHz


The CPU is def. a lower-end model -- hoping it could still allow full utilization of the Intel 750 NVME drives. I was looking at the 15w-25w models too, but I don't think the power savings is really that relevant compared to the # of HDDs I have, and may eventually upgrade to a Xeon model if needed, but other than NVME performance I don't see the a higher-end CPU needed for the purpose of this, thoughts?

I have everything except: CPU, Motherboard, RAM already too.
 

Evan

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Prefix this with my ZFS knowledge is almost zero but I would say you would be fine, when doing testing etc you may not see the best performance but to be honest the cpu should be cheap right ? So can always replace later if really needed.
My current test system is only 2-cores and for me is fine, power consumption and purchase costs matter more than having absolute speed.

I would be really interested to see power draw without the 10g and drives with that setup, I hope you would see with a right sized PSU under 15watt idle I guess?
I am about to try to replace my Synology as well (they are not even really that power efficient)
 

T_Minus

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Prefix this with my ZFS knowledge is almost zero but I would say you would be fine, when doing testing etc you may not see the best performance but to be honest the cpu should be cheap right ? So can always replace later if really needed.
My current test system is only 2-cores and for me is fine, power consumption and purchase costs matter more than having absolute speed.

I would be really interested to see power draw without the 10g and drives with that setup, I hope you would see with a right sized PSU under 15watt idle I guess?
I am about to try to replace my Synology as well (they are not even really that power efficient)
You're using NVME with 2 Cores over 10GigE? Or were you commenting about general Raid Z2 performance?

I'm not 100% set on using ZFS for the NVME, but I do know that NVME really likes CPU depending on usage, I've just never used a CPU with so little cores and nvme before ;)

Thanks for feedback :)
 

Navy_BOFH

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I did something similar - but a lot more "commercial" for my home. Moved away from a Dell R710 to a Mac Mini Core i5 with SSD boot drive, Drobo 5D with 3TB WD Se drives, all served up over LACP to an Asus router running DD-WRT. That made it so I can handle backups for both Windows and Mac, file storage, media streaming, and our own hosted calendar for the family with minimal effort. Gives me the opportunity to play with other tech and computer stuff outside my "production network".
 
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Evan

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You're using NVME with 2 Cores over 10GigE? Or were you commenting about general Raid Z2 performance?

I'm not 100% set on using ZFS for the NVME, but I do know that NVME really likes CPU depending on usage, I've just never used a CPU with so little cores and nvme before ;)

Thanks for feedback :)
Was just general feedback that for replacing a Synology and doing a few VM's for play a couple of high MHz cores will work.

If your really looking to push data from ZFS,NVME etc to 10G network in a continuous way Budget 0.5 core per GB bandwidth from my estimates. This is just based on what I see on my large AIX and Solaris systems when doing virtual networks and high I/O. I was recently doing some 10g max throughput tests for backups so could pull figures but they would be based on the n power7/8 cpu and in this case not ZFS but just straight jfs2 FS.
(I Guess this is why the higher core count E5's etc used in the SAN appliances like EMC) I could test some Intel systems but don't have anything really setup that would be Super relevant in terms of comparison.

Thing is in a home environment with half a dozen spinning disks sustained I/O would likely never run over 1G (except for copies). You would be how systems realy run over 1G iSCSI in an enterprise setting, not as bad a your would imagine since again most of the time is idle.
 
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Patrick

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@Evan - that would be super cool even for a main site article.

@T_Minus just seeing your posts over time, you might want to look at something like an E3-1270 V5. The idle power consumption is very low on those boards. The cost is a bit higher but at least you then get the headroom to work with.

I also really like the D-1518 platform. The 4C/ 8T, lower starting price point and etc make it a really interesting option and competitive if you need 10Gbase-T networking.
 
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JimPhreak

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Has anyone put together enough testing to give some raw numbers for recommending minimum CPU requirements to saturate 10G or is it OS/FS dependent as well?
 
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T_Minus

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@Evan - that would be super cool even for a main site article.

@T_Minus just seeing your posts over time, you might want to look at something like an E3-1270 V5. The idle power consumption is very low on those boards. The cost is a bit higher but at least you then get the headroom to work with.

I also really like the D-1518 platform. The 4C/ 8T, lower starting price point and etc make it a really interesting option and competitive if you need 10Gbase-T networking.
@Patrick I think you're right.
I also was thinking after posting I didn't want to separate my security camera system, and Blue Iris with ~12 cameras is going to require CPU no matter what, and 2 Cores def. will not cut it for that.

I have a E5-2670 v3 ES (single proc.) coming that I'm thinking of putting in a board with built-in NVME so I can run my 2x Intel 750s... but seeing @gea and someone else post about pass-through issues with the Intel 750 I'm now not too sure that will work although that would give me more than enough PCIE Lanes for the NVME drives, video card for HDMI->TV, 10GigE NIC, and whatever else I may need.


Question: Does anyone know of a single proc. 2011-r3 motherboard that supports 2x NVME devices built-in or works with the 'cheap' SM NVME AOC? The only SuperMicro board I've got with built-in NVME is the 2P board and I def. don't need 2 CPUs power.

I have a couple single proc 2011-r3 supermicro boards not in use so I may just snag one of them, and throw in an AOC for NVME as it may be cheaper that way, i'll have to check which boards I have and see if any will work. I also likely have a CPU (E5-1650 v3 retail) I need to sell too! So it may be a cheaper-than expected build.
 

T_Minus

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Has anyone put together enough testing to give some raw numbers for recommending minimum CPU requirements to saturate 10G or is it OS/FS dependent as well?
I'm more concerned about the NVME drive performance out of only 2 Cores, but for home it likely wont be that big of a concern... but throw in VM usage of say a test database and NVME and all of a sudden it won't be too well of a 'test' setup :) if it's crippled due to CPU + Storage waiting on CPU.

I think @Patrick is right even for my basic testing (and all my 'home file' and security needs) I really need more cores, ideally higher frequency, but for the price I'm leaning toward the E5 ES CPU I have on the way, that cost a bit less than the 1270, and a board I have already too. It won't be near as low powered as the 2 Core, but the Hard Drives are WD RE which don't idle low at all, so that's really my biggest power draw. If money was no object I'd run 6x 1TB SSD but for home the only benefit there is really just power usage, and that takes a LOT of power to make up for those drive cost ;)

I'll be able to recoup some of the $$ selling the 5 Bay High-Perf. Synology with 5x2TB RE/SE in it too. My "home file storage" is only using around 1TB but that excludes all my media that I have on disc still and other ISO I have on old DVDs I need to migrate. ~500 blu-rays, 300 DVDs, and maybe 50-100 DVD/Blu-Ray 'series' TV shows. So, my storage needs will go up a lot whenever I finish ripping those. One of those 'ill do it tomorrow' projects :D
 

JimPhreak

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I'm more concerned about the NVME drive performance out of only 2 Cores, but for home it likely wont be that big of a concern... but throw in VM usage of say a test database and NVME and all of a sudden it won't be too well of a 'test' setup :) if it's crippled due to CPU + Storage waiting on CPU.
I realize your use case. I'm just wondering if there are any general recommendations for the minimum CPU cores/frequency needed to ensure CPU isn't the bottleneck of your 10G network.
 

Evan

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Has anyone put together enough testing to give some raw numbers for recommending minimum CPU requirements to saturate 10G or is it OS/FS dependent as well?
I have not come across anything, lots of variables.
Just and ftp to /dev/null at 10g speeds between VM's uses a fair amount of cpu.

Let me see if I have any free e5v2 or e5v3 systems to do some Intel tests, even if I only have SAS SSDs they must have 10g cards. May be fun to compare some different cpu and so variations.

I can tell you that in terms of sustained throughput my AIX systems even with old PCIe v1 were much much better than PCIe v2 Intel systems running RHEL6 for SAN I/O.
 
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Patrick

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That seems like a underwhelming choice for CPU... I'm finding I5's to be sweet, the I3's acceptable most of the time, anything less...
Yea I find myself using the i3 less frequently just because at some point I tend to want to run something else on a box.
 

Evan

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I assume your using i3 for ECC ? so i5/i7 won't help you, have to step up to a Xeon.
 

T_Minus

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I assume your using i3 for ECC ? so i5/i7 won't help you, have to step up to a Xeon.
Correct.

My original thought was to simply replace my synology with a DIY solution but not the power of my current "AIO", but I forgot that I also do security on it which requires A LOT of CPU (relative to everything else running 24/7). The i3 would be more than enough for file serving only as the synology works great, but not nearly enough for just security cam duty + test VMs...

Looks like I'll be sticking with an E5, just not Dual E5-v1s, single E5-v3 with DDR4. I also found 5 WD RED drives I'm going to use instead of the RE to save about 50% power on the HDD side, which should put my idle power of the new E5 build right around the idle of my synology with the RE/SE drives which is rather awesome :) I just need to snag another WD RED so I have 6 drives so I can run RaidZ2.

I'll let you guys know which board I end up choosing, and do a build log on it.

I guess I'll still need to find a reason to build a E3 v5 though :) I might have to do a mini-AIO for a family member that I can use ;) LOL!
 

Evan

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Yep security cam processing will eat cpu.
You would run that direct to a single disk rather than your raid array right ?

Latest model year and your power budget will be way down. I was really surprised to see how much the power consumption dropped on enterprise servers (HP g7,gen8,gen9) between generations on light loaded systems so I assume the effect is even greater in the small server single socket without redundant psu etc.
I am thinking I will go Xeon-D for my new AIO build just because I can. (Going to see if I can make under 30watts idle with consumer Ssd and not more than a single 3.5" disk)
 

T_Minus

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Feb 15, 2015
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Yep security cam processing will eat cpu.
You would run that direct to a single disk rather than your raid array right ?

Latest model year and your power budget will be way down. I was really surprised to see how much the power consumption dropped on enterprise servers (HP g7,gen8,gen9) between generations on light loaded systems so I assume the effect is even greater in the small server single socket without redundant psu etc.
I am thinking I will go Xeon-D for my new AIO build just because I can. (Going to see if I can make under 30watts idle with consumer Ssd and not more than a single 3.5" disk)
My security cameras will record to enterprise SSD that are mirrored. Record on movement only, and living rural the most movement we get is wind moving the trees :confused: 99% of the time. LOL!!

My current AIO is pushing 400GB DDR3 LRDIMMs, (2x 8c) 16 Cores @ 3.0GHZ but, yeah, 2011-r1 CPUs! I thought I'd do more business development/testing on them but still end up doing that locally and then moving to my business servers to test/roll-out, so I really don't need the insane home AIO as I thought I'd take advantage of :D
 

Patrick

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@Evan I think you can do sub 30 watts if you are careful with PSU and cooling selection.
 

Evan

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@T_Minus that is a huge home system, I am lucky I can play with the high end stuff at work.

@Patrick it should be ok since the drive being Sata will need minimal cooling, just need enough to cool the board, was thinking a well ventilated case and a large 120/140mm fan directly towards the board rather than through the case. Looking at @JimPhreak Ncase I may even consider that.
PicoPSU for power supply will be the way to go I think.
 

T_Minus

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@Evan I really don't like to have to 'rebuild' things but I don't like to waste electricity if not needed. Lesson learned!!!