After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

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Gruelius
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:51 pm

After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

Post by Gruelius » Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:39 am

Hi all,

Currently have a N36L microserver running a 5 disk raidz array and a 6th disk on its own (using a 2x3.5" to 5.25" adapter). After having a disk fail and reading the LLC count on my Green drives (I am one of those noobs that didnt hear about the idle timer problem till 3 years later) I have decided to move to raidz2 so I need to upgrade the enclosure and therefore the system. I could run the 6th drive with some sort of esata enclosure but thats no fun haha. Will likely use the N36L as a low power Vsphere host.

As the machine is powered 24x7 (and the n36l was capable of running it under load periods) my main priorities are as follows:

$ mentioned is AUD.

1. Power usage (every W saved nets about $2.50 per year saved here)
2. Performance
3. Cost
4. Noise
5. Form factor

Case:
So far i have been looking at the Fractal Define R4 and the Fractal Define Mini. Leaning towards the define R4 as if i want to have an additional striped + mirrored array in the future I could fit it in there. Are there any smaller cases than the Define R4 that hold more disks in tool-less bays?

CPU:
I am not up to date on the latest (or last gen, or the gen before that :cry: ) Cpus. From a bit of searching Intel Core i3 4130T seems to have the lowest TDP and cost, which cpus are reccomended for low idle power and the ability to perform when required? The CPU must support ECC ram

If the G3420 is better for power usage Ill go that as it is much cheaper.

As for undervolting I would only do it to the degree that I can set it and forget it as I wont be able to directly monitor instability. If the stock CPU gives good perfomance for Watt I wont even bother

Motherboard:
No special feature requirements here. Bonus points for Intel AHCI controllers and more than 4x sata ports. Again the preference is lower power consumption. The array disks will be run from a LSI HBA so I only really need 4 ports.

Memory:
8GB of ECC memory, are there any low voltage ECC sticks around that arent double the price?

PSU:
Efficiency is the primary goal here. As for wattage I am not sure much grunt would be required for 8 hdds...


Thanks for your help all

sjoukew
Posts: 401
Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2006 6:51 am
Location: The Netherlands (NL)
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Re: After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

Post by sjoukew » Thu Jan 30, 2014 1:25 pm

I would advice at least an intel i5, but not the I????k versions. The i5 has support for vt-d instructions, which are especially made for virtualization, it speeds up vm's a lot. Besides that it are quad core CPUs which offer a lot of calculating power. The intel i7 has 4 cores and hyper threading, this can help with running several vm's simultaneously.
All intel CPUs are power efficient at idle, Haswell CPUs ( newest generation) is designed for low power consumption at idle loads.
When running several vm's 16 gb of ram ore more can really help, and memory doesn't use a lot of power. It is probably more electrical power efficient to use more ram and save on disk io than the other way around, and a lot faster.
The sooner the CPU can go back to idle, the sooner it can go back into power saving mode.

There are a lot of different Psu's around with different efficiency rates. When running 24/7 it makes sense to buy an more expensive but more efficient psu, that will save you money in the long run.

Gruelius
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:51 pm

Re: After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

Post by Gruelius » Thu Jan 30, 2014 1:49 pm

Hey,

Thanks for the response. The workload will just be fileserving so there isnt much grunt required. Will be installed directly to the host, no virtualisation.

After finding out how expensive an EEC compatible haswell board is... I am thinking I might try to mount my n36L board in a tower chassis or just use some sort of Esata dock.

Would still be interested to hear what options there are around though

--edit


One thing I am actively interested in are cases that can store lots of HDDs, cool them well and are ok for noise and profile. Preference would be for MicroATX or above.

washu
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Ottawa

Re: After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

Post by washu » Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:40 pm

sjoukew wrote:I would advice at least an intel i5, but not the I????k versions. The i5 has support for vt-d instructions, which are especially made for virtualization, it speeds up vm's a lot.
VT-D is for I/O virtualization (passing real hardware through to a VM), it has nothing to to with a VM's processing speed. VT-x/AMD-v are the instructions that allow for efficient VM performance and are on pretty much all modern CPUs, including K versions.

washu
Posts: 571
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 10:20 am
Location: Ottawa

Re: After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

Post by washu » Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:56 pm

Some of the Supermicro workstation boards aren't that expensive compared to a higher end Z87 board. Take a look at the X10SAT for example. Or just google for boards with the C226 chipset. The Asus P9D WS is in the same price range as well, but has 2 fewer SATA ports vs the Supermicro.

A Pentium CPU like the G3220 would be more than enough for your build and supports ECC. Don't worry about the "T" versions, at idle they are the same power consumption which is what your server will be in 95%+ of the time.

Don't worry about low voltage RAM or tweaking undervolting. You are more than going to blow away any savings by adding an LSI HBA.

Gruelius
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:51 pm

Re: After help with Low Power Fileserver, N36L too small

Post by Gruelius » Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:07 am

Yeah unfortunately the HBA is required for data integrity.. as priority number 0 I guess...

Thank you for the advice.

Are there any websites that show a comparison of the idle and low workload power consumption of various CPUS? I can only find scatters of articles here and there, one single source would be good.

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