X9SRL-F w/E5-1650v2 or X9DRH-iTF w/dual-E5-2680v2 for FreeNAS?

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pcmoore

Active Member
Apr 14, 2018
138
48
28
New England, USA
I currently have a FreeNAS system running on a Supermicro X9SRL-F with a E5-1650v2 that is humming along just fine, but due to some unrelated lab upgrades and some dumb luck I now find myself with an extra X9DRH-iTF and a pair of E5-2680v2 processors, and I'm wondering if it is worth moving from the X9SRL-F to the X9DRH-iTF? The E5-1650v2 wins on single core performance with a 3.5 GHz base (3.9 GHz turbo) as compared to the E5-2680v2 with it's 2.8 GHz base (3.6 GHz turbo); however there is no contest when it comes to cores, with the E5-1650v2 having six and the pair of E5-2680v2 having 20 between them. The X9DRH does offer on-board 10 Gb links, but I'm unlikely to use those for the networking (see below). However, the X9DRH does offer additional memory slots (I'm currently maxed out on the X9SRL), which could be useful for future upgrades as I understand ZFS/FreeNAS loves RAM.

If it helps, the system serves up a variety of clients via CIFS and NFS shares; I don't run any additional services/plugins on the FreeNAS system (e.g. no Plex, VMs, etc.). The CIFS clients tend to all be 1 Gb links while the NFS clients are a mix of 1 Gb and 10 Gb links. I expect to add 40 Gb links for some of the NFS clients within the next month or so (just need to install the NICs and cabling). I do not currently have any iSCSI or WebDAV clients, but I may experiment with that in the future.

For reference, the system currently has 128 GB of memory and eight WD Red 4 TB drives in a single RAID-Z2 pool split into two four drive vdevs; the pool has a 500 GB NVMe cache/ARC disk (Samsung something or other) and a 280 GB log/ZIL disk (Optane 900p). The WD Reds are split evenly across two LSI 9211-8i cards (flashed to IT mode). Network connectivity is supplied by a dual port Chelsio T520, soon to be replaced by a dual port Chelsio T580. Everything listed above would stay the same if I switched from the X9SRL to the X9DRH.

Any input and/or experience you can share on the pros/cons of each board/CPU combo would be appreciated.
 

ljvb

Member
Nov 8, 2015
97
32
18
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Make the update and send me the old stuff for free :)

Honestly, I doubt you will see any performance gains, at least none noticeable. I have mine running on 32GB inside a VM with 2 HBAs assigned via pci passthrough, feeding around 10 other machines (via iscsi, mix of VMs and bare hardware, mix of gig and 10g links), as well as NFS and CIFS. 20 600GB drives with in a striped mirrored setup. None of the machines using the iscsi vdevs show any latency.
 

acquacow

Well-Known Member
Feb 15, 2017
784
439
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I had my X9SRL-F running FreeNAS in a VM hosted with an E5-2448Lv2 with no issues. Just used an intel X540 connected to VMWare to get 10gig capability. Used virtual VMWare nics for FreeNAS instead of a passthrough.

Didn't have any issues, but you running it on physical hardware w/o a hypervisor would be better.

Not sure you need dual CPUs for freenas unless you're running a ton of VMs.
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
3,184
1,545
113
There is no advantage to the upgrade if you are not running any plug-ins, VMs or containers (Docker) on the system. Your system is already pretty over-done for just FreeNAS, even if serving to a very large number of clients. And I don't get the sense from your post that you have a large number of clients.
 

pcmoore

Active Member
Apr 14, 2018
138
48
28
New England, USA
Thanks for all the comments. As I mentioned above, the current X9SRL setup has proven to be more than adequate for my needs, if I hadn't had the X9DRH/CPUs suddenly hit the "extra parts" bin I wouldn't have considered upgrading the system. However, with the extra parts available I felt it worthwhile to at least think about the swap.

Based on the comments here, and over on the FreeNAS forums, it looks like the X9DRH wouldn't really offer much (any?) improvement and would definitely result in a higher power bill. It looks like I'll be sticking with the X9SRL for the foreseeable future.

Thanks all.