Via Nano fileserver mobo recommendations (NAS, ZFS etc)

Carpetsmoker said:
The new X7SPA series also look very interesting
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Hmm these do look nice. I like that they're aimed at the server market rather than the home entertainment market. I take it they're very new, I can't find any outlets for them in the UK at the moment.

Thanks for the heads up!

sim
 
vermaden said:
@aragon

Its not wrong that nVidia adds a graphic card to to chipset (if there is no other way), its fsckued that they tell you that ION2 is a chipset! While its definitely not even close. Same for rebranding, while AMD/ATI create new graphics cards, nVidia lately only take an old card, put new name on it and release as a new graphic card, that is unforgivable.
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What about the ION2 version that supports the Via Nano?
 
Not that I've been able to find. There's just press releases on the nVidia site saying that ION2 will support Intel Atom, Via Nano, and AMD something or other.

And lots of previews from Feb 2009 with initial details on ION2 that say the same.

However, ION1 with the original Intel Atom is a full chipset and not just a video card, providing audio, SATA, RAM, etc. For the new Atom, which is more of a SoC than a CPU, there's nothing for ION1 to do except video.
 
Well, the new Atom incorporates some features from the Nehalem cores such as integrated memory controller and GPU.

It doesn't integrate the NIC, (S)ATA, Sound for example ... I wouldn't really call it a SoC ...
 
phoenix said:
Not that I've been able to find. There's just press releases on the nVidia site saying that ION2 will support Intel Atom, Via Nano, and AMD something or other.

And lots of previews from Feb 2009 with initial details on ION2 that say the same.
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I also tried to goole that out, but have found same results as you, propably all this ION for VIA/AMD ended up by speculations only.

phoenix said:
However, ION1 with the original Intel Atom is a full chipset and not just a video card, providing audio, SATA, RAM, etc. For the new Atom, which is more of a SoC than a CPU, there's nothing for ION1 to do except video.
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Yes, but that does not justify nVidia from talking bullshit about ION2 (or many of their rebranded cards).

feralape said:
Look at this, it doesn't seem like the Atoms are that bad. They should work fine for a low load file server and/or firewall/webserver, etc.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+D510+@+1.66GHz
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
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Atom CPUs/systems are not that superior if you compare them to low power Core 2 sollutions:
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-efficiency,2069-12.html
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/Athlon-Atom-Nano-power,2036-13.html?xtcr=2
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/dual-core-atom-330,2141-10.html?xtcr=1

Newest Atoms are little more powerfull, but not very much.

If you take low power Core 2 chipset/motherboard (Q35/Q33/G33) twith low TDP CPU at 45nm process (e5200/e8200/q9400s), then you will get far more better Performance per Watt with similar idle power consumption.

199277aiuvc.gif


There is also other sollution, get some Mini-ITX motherboard taht incorporates mobile GM45 chipset and attach P8400 CPU to it, it will comsume even less power while being a lot faster then any Atom based system.
 
That's true, but there is also the matter of price, a p8400 will be significantly more expensive ;)

For my atom 330 server (Which runs daemonforums.org among other things) I payed a total of about 250 euro. This system is powerful enough for my needs, so why spend 200 euro more for a more powerful system?
Also, total power consumption is much lower (30W avg total), a P8400 CPU alone will use 25W ...

For my Atom 330 machine at home the hard drives are actually the biggest power consumers by far ... (I haven't completed this system yet, so no exact figures yet).
 
Carpetsmoker said:
That's true, but there is also the matter of price, a p8400 will be significantly more expensive ;)
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But Q35/Q33/G33 can be bought for less then $30 and e5200 for about $65, which should eng up even cheaper then Atom.

Carpetsmoker said:
Also, total power consumption is much lower (30W avg total), a P8400 CPU alone will use 25W ...
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Intel TDP are calculated over the actual TDP, for example e5200 does not cosume spread more then 35W TDP ever, you can even lower that with undervolting, but official sticker is 65W, same for p8400 (and yes these can be more pricey, but will definitely has best performance per watt here).

Carpetsmoker said:
For my Atom 330 machine at home the hard drives are actually the biggest power consumers by far ... (I haven't completed this system yet, so no exact figures yet).
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For such system I would use mirror of 2.5" driver or mirror of 3.5" WD10EADS whose also consume very small amount of power:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/1tb-2tb-hdds_16.html
 
But Q35/Q33/G33 can be bought for less then $30 and e5200 for about $65, which should eng up even cheaper then Atom.
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If you get the cheapest of the cheapest MSI board, yeah sure. But this is not the same as a SuperMicro board by a long shot IMO.

For such system I would use mirror of 2.5" driver or mirror of 3.5" WD10EADS whose also consume very small amount of power:
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See the thread @ Daemonforums for opinions of GP drives. In short, they suck. I have WD RE drives because quality and reliability is also important, not just power consumption.
 
Carpetsmoker said:
See the thread @ Daemonforums for opinions of GP drives. In short, they suck. I have WD RE drives because quality and reliability is also important, not just power consumption.
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Do you have a link? the only thread I could find was just a bunch of anecdotal evidence based on really small sample sizes.
 
vermaden said:
I
Atom CPUs/systems are not that superior if you compare them to low power Core 2 sollutions:
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-efficiency,2069-12.html
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/Athlon-Atom-Nano-power,2036-13.html?xtcr=2
http://tomshardware.com/reviews/dual-core-atom-330,2141-10.html?xtcr=1

Newest Atoms are little more powerfull, but not very much.

If you take low power Core 2 chipset/motherboard (Q35/Q33/G33) twith low TDP CPU at 45nm process (e5200/e8200/q9400s), then you will get far more better Performance per Watt with similar idle power consumption.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links, that is helpful; but don't know if I completely understand this.

For something like a file server or low load firewall/webserver; the CPU is going to be idle for a vast majority of that time.

So, I agree, if you are using lots of CPU it'd best to go to Core2s - but something low load, you probably want something that uses least watts while idle - which Atom would win hands down.

90% of the time my home fileServer/firewall/webserver is idle.
 
Carpetsmoker said:
If you get the cheapest of the cheapest MSI board, yeah sure. But this is not the same as a SuperMicro board by a long shot IMO.
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Maybe not Supoermicro, but I was able to get Intel boards with these chipsets for such money.


Carpetsmoker said:
See the thread @ Daemonforums for opinions of GP drives. In short, they suck.
Click to expand...
Havent been able to found that thread, link?

Carpetsmoker said:
I have WD RE drives because quality and reliability is also important, not just power consumption.
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WD RE* are meant for performance, not for power saving (and they do consume a lot more power then Green), while Green series were created to save power while providing lot of space for not very heavily used storage.
 
feralape said:
Do you have a link? the only thread I could find was just a bunch of anecdotal evidence based on really small sample sizes.
Click to expand...

There's also a long thread on the -stable or -current mailing list where pretty much everyone who has used the Caviar Green drives is ready to chuck them out the window.

The biggest issue with them is the 8 second idle timeout. If the drive is idle for more than that, the heads are parked and the electronics turned off, requiring 30s or more to spin it back up. Which is noted as a Load Cycle. Most drives are rated for 300,000-ish Load Cycles. These drives can go through 20,000 LCs in a month of normal desktop use. Which means, they won't last very long.

In a laptop, these drives would make sense. In a desktop? Not really.

The other features of the drive like the variable spindle speed are nice. But the whole park-the-heads-when-idle thing is stupid in a desktop drive (at least with an 8s timeout ... 5 minutes would be a better default for desktop drives).
 
vermaden said:
WD RE* are meant for performance, not for power saving (and they do consume a lot more power then Green), while Green series were created to save power while providing lot of space for not very heavily used storage.
Click to expand...

WD RE2 and RE4 (1 TB+) come in -GP (Green Power) variations, which use the same electronics and featureset as the Caviar Green drives. With two major exceptions: older drives are firmware-upgradeable to have a 5 minute idle timeout for parking the heads and the newer drives come with the updated firmware; and they support Time-Limited Error Reporting (super-short timeouts for use with RAID controllers).

What sucks is that you have to spend almost $100 CDN more for the RE version (compared to the Caviar), and all that's different is the firmware (the Caviar isn't firmware upgradable).
 
phoenix said:
There's also a long thread on the -stable or -current mailing list where pretty much everyone who has used the Caviar Green drives is ready to chuck them out the window.

The biggest issue with them is the 8 second idle timeout. If the drive is idle for more than that, the heads are parked and the electronics turned off, requiring 30s or more to spin it back up. Which is noted as a Load Cycle. Most drives are rated for 300,000-ish Load Cycles. These drives can go through 20,000 LCs in a month of normal desktop use. Which means, they won't last very long.

In a laptop, these drives would make sense. In a desktop? Not really.

The other features of the drive like the variable spindle speed are nice. But the whole park-the-heads-when-idle thing is stupid in a desktop drive (at least with an 8s timeout ... 5 minutes would be a better default for desktop drives).
Click to expand...

hrm, there is no way to modify the idle time out?

Why not have a script that touches and deletes a file every 7.5 seconds? :p
 
phoenix said:
There's also a long thread on the -stable or -current mailing list where pretty much everyone who has used the Caviar Green drives is ready to chuck them out the window.

The biggest issue with them is the 8 second idle timeout. If the drive is idle for more than that, the heads are parked and the electronics turned off, requiring 30s or more to spin it back up. Which is noted as a Load Cycle. Most drives are rated for 300,000-ish Load Cycles. These drives can go through 20,000 LCs in a month of normal desktop use. Which means, they won't last very long.

In a laptop, these drives would make sense. In a desktop? Not really.

The other features of the drive like the variable spindle speed are nice. But the whole park-the-heads-when-idle thing is stupid in a desktop drive (at least with an 8s timeout ... 5 minutes would be a better default for desktop drives).
Click to expand...

Nice :/

You got any links to these threads on lists@, or even maybe a name of the thread/mailing list name where it was discussed?

I havent heard before about RE GP drives, just checked again wdc.com site and they are really there, thanks for info mate.
 
freebsd-stable mailing list, subject "immense delayed write to file system (ZFS and UFS2), performance issues", started by O. Hartmaan on Jan 18, 2010.
 
phoenix said:
On amd64, you don't have to tune anything. Depending on your workload, though, you may need to tune the arc size.
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I had to tune kmem_size/kmem_size_max to 1.5 GiB on 8.0-RELEASE/amd64 with 3 GiB RAM, because it was crashing because of 1 GiB kmem_size not being enough (3 zpools, 67 zfs', thousands of snapshots, 12 local disks + 1 iSCSI, ~10 TiB total).
 
vermaden said:
While ION was a chipset with integrated Geforce graphics, ION2 is just an additional discreate graphics card addon to current Intel chipset, to be precise, its G218 nVidia GPU, stay away from this as far as possible if you want to have low power consumption, its a lot better to connect some ATI Radeon 4670 to save power (and have superior to G218 performance at the same time). (...)
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... to continue, IOS2 is 15% SLOWER then original ION:
http://www.netbooknews.de/13698/ben...2-zusatzgrafik-enttauscht-noch/#comment-41383
 
Hey. On a slight tangent, I was wondering what miniITX cases there are out there for building a small, cube style NAS with custom components? Something with 4-6 hotswap bays that can fit an Atom board. I'd dig to build a custom NAS in a similar form factor to those QNAP devices.

All I've found so far is this mod and this beauty (a bit on large side).
 
Hi again

Well I finally bit the bullet and went for a Zotac D510 / NM-10 board (DTX form factor). It's a bit pricier than most of the Atom boards (although a lot cheaper than the impossible-to-find Supermicro board) and ticked most of my boxes, insofar as it has 6 sata ports, no fan, modern chipset (NM10), crap graphics, 2 PCIe slots (1x, 16x), bigger form factor (but still small) and a few bonus items such as mini-pci based wifi (could use the slot for something else) and an e-sata port. An old-skool IDE port would make the transition easier, but I won't miss it once I'm up and running.

The main downside of this particular boards is that it's DOA, so I can't tell you how well it works :( Still, after *much* faffing about I connected the two 2.5" 640GB SATA drives to another machine and got them set up - one as system boot & root on ZFS, and the other as ZFS-on-GELI full disk encryption. I just wish I had a board to run them on!

sim
 
the new D5xx Atom CPUs are nice.

64-bit.
2 cores + hyper threading = 4 threads.

Some come with dual Intel nics and 6x sata ports.

13w TDP and heard that you can idle them down really well.

The only downside is it's limited to only 4 gigs of ram and I also tend to like ECC memory in my home servers (not sure how much difference that really makes though).

Most only come with 1 expansion slot (plus maybe a 'mini' port). :(

Also not a lot of selection when it comes to cases.

this board seems to be a winner: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPE.cfm?typ=H&IPMI=Y

With this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811123128
 
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