Via Nano fileserver mobo recommendations (NAS, ZFS etc)

sim

sim

Hi all

I seek advice!

I want to rebuild my FreeBSD 8 home file server using a more modern, ultra-low power platform. I like the idea of the VIA Nano, but am struggling to find a mobo with the right combination of features. Most of the offerings seem to be obsessed with miniscule form factors at the expense of connectivity and expansion. Plus I don't want to waste money/electricity on accelerated graphics - my system runs headless with occasional old-skool VGA console only. Ideally, something like:

  • VIA Nano CPU or something similar (64bit)
  • 2GB RAM
  • integrated VGA, but lowest of the low spec
  • Plenty of SATA connections
  • At least one PATA connection, two would be ideal
  • gigabit lan, x2 would be a bonus
  • PS/2 keyboard connector would be welcome
  • at least one PCI-e, pref more
  • no HDMI, no serial, no parallel, no multimedia guff!

I'm hoping this CPU/RAM combo can cope with ZFS, is that realistic?

I'm not too familiar with this part of the market - any suggestions?

All advice welcome!

Thanks

sim
 
Apologies, I meant to post this in Off-Topic as it's not strictly FreeBSD related. If someone could move it...:r
 
when i purchased one of the first via boards with a nano cpu, freebsd wouldn't work in 64bit mode. Had to patch bootloader, and things were unstable. Went for a low-power AMD solution instead.

Please doublecheck if a Nano CPU works in 64bit mode before you buy one.
Edit: and if you want to use ZFS, stuff in some more ram. more ram never hurts.
edit2: some awful typo's.
 
The System Hardware forum looked/looks like a better place to me .. unless you're not planning on running FreeBSD on it.
 
When choosing motherboard, look carefully on chipset capabilities. Not all embedded VIA chipsets support SATA natively (some use PATA->SATA bridges) and not all of supporting SATA, support AHCI. AHCI support could allow you to significantly improve disk performance under high load by using NCQ.
 
DutchDaemon said:
The System Hardware forum looked/looks like a better place to me .. unless you're not planning on running FreeBSD on it.
Click to expand...

No that's fine - I am planning to run FreeBSD on it. I just thought as it was more to do with the hardware market rather than specific FreeBSD issues... :)
 
Thanks for the notes of caution guys... The last thing I want is to end up with a (relatively expensive, for the power) mobo that's not going to do the business.

Further investigation has brought the AMD Neo series to light, although info seems pretty scarce at the moment. Atoms seem just a bit too underpowered for a non-mobile system, just to gain another couple of watts energy saving.

The search continues!

sim
 
You probably shouldn't run zfs unless you have more than 4 GB RAM available. zfs wants 4GB, and the other things you server will do (serving files, samba?) will also require RAM.
 
While ZFS works better the more RAM you can put into the system, it will run just fine with less than 4 GB. It'd be nice if people would stop with the "you can't use it with less than 4 GB" crud.

I use it at home on a 32-bit system with only 2 GB of RAM, serving media files via Samba and NFS, while running ktorrent 24/7, and the system is rock solid. Running FreeBSD 8.0.

Many others on the FreeBSD mailing lists run it on systems with as little as 512 MB of RAM.

Yes, the sweet spot is 4 GB, but that's not a hard requirement.
 
Thanks - I'd hope that 2GB would be enough. It's only a home server for mp3s etc. The current incarnation - AMD Sempron 1GHz, 512MB, UFS, never skips a beat.

sim
 
sim said:
Atoms seem just a bit too underpowered for a non-mobile system, just to gain another couple of watts energy saving.
Click to expand...

Hm... why do you think so? I recently bought an ATOM 330 system (dual core 1.6GHz) and I think it's fine. I must say, that I don't use ZFS on it, I'm still using my old 3ware 9500 with four 1TB WD-green attached to it running in a RAID-5 configuration. But overall I'm happy with the performance.

System info:
http://olli.homeip.net/LAN-Configuration/systems/nudel.salatschuessel.net.html

The power consumption of it might be a bit high but I've not checked it if this is because of the number of hdd's or the 3ware eats much power....
 
phoenix said:
While ZFS works better the more RAM you can put into the system, it will run just fine with less than 4 GB. It'd be nice if people would stop with the "you can't use it with less than 4 GB" crud.
Click to expand...
My understanding is that if you have less than 4 GB you will have to manually tune zfs. Is that not correct?
I use it at home on a 32-bit system with only 2 GB of RAM, serving media files via Samba and NFS, while running ktorrent 24/7, and the system is rock solid. Running FreeBSD 8.0.
Click to expand...
Without tuning?
Or with trial and error to tune it?

The point is that zfs is so new, it is very hard to find simple setups / configurations that will work for any size system, without a lot of trial and error (at least for us who aren't zfs experts).

Compare it to old ufs, which I have used for more than ten years now, and never had any need to configure anything, just install and go (ok, there was the time when softupdates came out).
 
tingo said:
My understanding is that if you have less than 4 GB you will have to manually tune zfs. Is that not correct?
Click to expand...

On i386, you have to manually tune kmem and arc sizes, no matter how much RAM you have. The less RAM you have, the more you have to tune, and the more trial and error it takes to find the perfect settings for your workloads.

On amd64, you don't have to tune anything. Depending on your workload, though, you may need to tune the arc size.

Without tuning?
Or with trial and error to tune it?
Click to expand...

With trial and error. But it's not like it's rocket science. You set the amount of kmem based on the amount of RAM you have and the version of FreeBSD you have (up to 7.1 has a max of 1956 MB, 7.2 and above has a max of 5 GB), and set the arc to around 1/2 of that. If it locks up, you reduce the arc size. Repeat until it doesn't crash anymore.

The point is that zfs is so new, it is very hard to find simple setups / configurations that will work for any size system, without a lot of trial and error (at least for us who aren't zfs experts).
Click to expand...

There's no such thing as "a simple setup that works for any size system". You have to know how you will use it, how much RAM it has, and how much caching you want to do. And then you tune it to work for your specific setup.

Compare it to old ufs, which I have used for more than ten years now, and never had any need to configure anything, just install and go (ok, there was the time when softupdates came out).
Click to expand...

If you've never tuned a UFS filesystem, then you've probably never (really) taxed a UFS filesystem. :) There's a reason there's a bunch of flags for use with newfs(), and a bunch of options to mount(8), and kernel options for UFS_DIRHASH, and add-ons like geom_journal(). :D Or, you've never had the awe-inspiring task of waiting to fsck a multi-TB (or even multi-100s-of-MB) filesystem.

UFS is good, UFS works, but it's nowhere near as fun and exciting as ZFS, nor as capable.

Neither is perfect for every situation. You pick the right tools for the job. Afterall, no one is going to put ZFS onto a 2 GB USB stick to transfer files around. ;)
 
oliver@ said:
Hm... why do you think so? I recently bought an ATOM 330 system (dual core 1.6GHz) and I think it's fine. I must say, that I don't use ZFS on it, I'm still using my old 3ware 9500 with four 1TB WD-green attached to it running in a RAID-5 configuration. But overall I'm happy with the performance.
Click to expand...

That is interesting. I just got the impression that, compared to some of the other low-power rivals, Atoms (quite legitimately, considering their anticipated use case) sacrificed a bit more performance to bring the consumption down a few more watts, which in the context of a home server with disks and stuff would not be significant. Still, I take your point, and also accept that even the lowest Atom is probably significantly more powerful than my current 5yr old Sempron (1.3Ghz, underclocked to 1GHz :) )

It also seemed that Atom-based mobos tend to be quite limited with their expansion options. Whether that's a side-effect of the architecture, or just the manufacturers targeting a specific market (ultra-compact, ultra-low power) I can't be sure. If you know of any 330 systems with reasonable drive expansion options, do tell :)

sim
 
The Atom CPU isn't completely horrible. The Intel chipsets that come with Atom CPUs, are. Especially the graphics. Pair an Atom with a good chipset, like the nVidia ION, and you have a decent, low-power-using system. For example, the Acer Revo (dual-core Atom + ION) can do full-screen 1080p H.264 decoding.

The VIA Nano CPU has more CPU power than the Atom, and uses less power due to its better chipsets, but isn't as readily available. Once ION2 is released, with support for Nano, then things should get really interesting. :)
 
sim said:
Still, I take your point, and also accept that even the lowest Atom is probably significantly more powerful than my current 5yr old Sempron (1.3Ghz, underclocked to 1GHz :) )
Click to expand...
It also was much faster than my previous used Dual PIII-850 ;)


sim said:
It also seemed that Atom-based mobos tend to be quite limited with their expansion options.
Click to expand...

I'm using an ASUS AT3N7A-I. It is "important" to get a board with an nVidia ION (9400) chipset because they save significant more power and have more features (4 SATA ports instead of 2 and so on). Look at mine
http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/misc/fileserver/
I've 7 harddisks connected to it (6 internal, one eSATA) and still have one SATA port free. For more PCI-Slots: There are flexible Riser-Cards existing who will give you two PCI slots out of one. With flexible I mean Riser Card with flexible cable so you could place it next to your board. It is also important to get the "right" of those two-slot Riser board because there are different implementations and some of them are mainboard-specific. I always planned to try one of those but never did so far. I'll do when I need a second slot but right now the board has everything I need. My old board needed an USB 2.0 Controller, a SATA Controller, a Soundcard (musicpd) - the new one got everything on-board - except my 3ware RAID but thats what the PCI slot is for :) PCIe solutions also available.
 
I'm currently running a recent FreeBSD7 snapshot on a Jetway mobo with a Via C7 with only 1 Gb RAM and 3 1TB HDs in a Raid-Z running netatalk, transmission and some other services without any problems at all. I'm getting up to 25MB/s through netatalk.

But in the last weeks I've been looking for a new motherboard, too. I want 64 bit, a bit more power, more RAM and pref more SATA ports ( I have 6 at the moment).

I'm not yet shure if I prefer Atom (dual core) oder Nano (Padlock).

I like the Jetway boards because they normally have one (the old ones two) IDE ports, two SATA ports and the possibility to plug in a daughter card (one is 4 SATA ports is available, should be supported by the current FreeBSD 8 Stable Branch, but I ordered one last week and will test it) and of course a PCI(express) card. And you can get them with VIA Nano or Intel Atom.
 
When searching for a low power server board, this was the best I could find a few months ago:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/atom.cfm

I have two X7SLA-H boards, both work excellent, I like them because they are server oriented, not desktop oriented like most other Atom boards. Accessing the BIOS thought serial cable is i infinity more useful then a HDMI interface with full HD Support when your server is in a data center ;)

The new X7SPA series also look very interesting, the chipsets are a lot newer (ICH9 vs ICH7), and the NIC's are also better (intel vs realtek), but I have no direct experience with these boards yet ...
The D510 does seem to use more power, 13W TDP vs 8W TDP for the 330, I wonder what the chipset uses...

Annyway, my server in a datacenter with two 2.5" hard disks uses about 30W average: http://mrtg.coloclue.net/power-watt/dcg-rpb-4a/dcg-rpb-4a_kwh_5.html

As a sidenote, Soekris will also be releasing Atom boards in the next few months ...
 
Carpetsmoker said:
The new X7SPA series also look very interesting, the chipsets are a lot newer (ICH9 vs ICH7), and the NIC's are also better (intel vs realtek), but I have no direct experience with these boards yet ...
The D510 does seem to use more power, 13W TDP vs 8W TDP for the 330, I wonder what the chipset uses...
Click to expand...
These look very nice. ICH9 means AHCI support, and that old realtek NIC is really cr*p, so good riddance. D510 is slightly faster than older 330 from what I've read, and altho the CPU is more power hungry, it includes the memory controller and VGA controller on a 45 nm process. The older Atoms loose a lot of efficiency from the (old, dated) external memory and graphics controller (chipset has the biggest heatsink there, ironically). Overall that D510 board should be less power hungry than an Atom 330 board, and faster.

This new atom arch is what the first Atom arch should have been IMHO.
 
that the old intel 945GC chipset is a power killer should be well known. Thats why I've chosen the nVidia ION chipset (SATA is AHCI there as well ;)). Comparing it's power usage to the new ICH9R would be interesting. The 945GC is old and bad anyway. (The only good thing about the old 945GC board from Supermicro is that it has more than one slot...)
And then comparing the power saving of the new board with it's higher prices would be interesting also. Saving 10W but paying 100EUR more - most times this does not match. This is e.g. why I still use my old PSU for my Atom instead of getting a Pico-PSU. The power saving would just not justify it's cost ;)
 
oliver@ said:
Thats why I've chosen the nVidia ION chipset (SATA is AHCI there as well ;)).
Click to expand...

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).

http://semiaccurate.com/2009/12/31/nvidia-ion2-g218-gpu-not-chipset/

&quot said:
Now comes the funny part. Nvidia is claiming that Ion2 is a chipset, not just a G218 with a few bits added to it. If you look at the part name, it is GT218-xxx-A3, not MCPxx like Nvidia GPUs. On top of that, wait for it, it is connected to the Intel Tigerpoint chipset, not to the CPU. To make matters more laughable, it is connected over a 1x PCIe2 link.

When was the last time a chipset was defined as a GPU connected over PCIe to a real chipset again? Do you sense that some company is taking liberties with the truth here? Me too. Furthermore, that PCIe2 1x link has 'Nvidia bandwidth optimizations', Nvidia's term for overclocking the link. No, really, it is claiming that jacking up the PCIe2 link clock beyond its recommended specs is a technology. Then again, Nvidia still tries to claim driver blacklisting to be advanced 'SLI technology', and this 'technology' isn't nearly that egregious. But whatever it wants to label this, overclocking will burn more power.

So, in the end, Ion2 is G218, also known as G210 or G310 on the desktop, nothing more. It uses a clock-jacked PCIe2 1x link and has some pretty curious power claims on top of that. I guess the surprises Nvidia keeps talking about will be seen on purchasers' faces when they realize what happened to their battery life.
Click to expand...

Generally, nVidia is making shame of itself with lots of rebranding, talking bullshit, etc, just not making new graphics cards ...
 
Well, there's not much room for nVidia to do anything useful with the new Atom CPUs. For one thing, the important chipset bits are now embedded in the CPU, and ICH9 is pretty decent if you ask me. The new Atoms don't have an FSB exposed to the outside world for nVidia to use as an interface... only the DMI bus linking to the I/O bridge is exposed, and nVidia don't have rights to make chipsets that connect via DMI. Their only legal option is pciE... and Intel know this. :)
 
@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.
 
vermaden said:
its fsckued that they tell you that ION2 is a chipset! While its definitely not even close.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I haven't seen them doing that, but I guess just the Ion namesake suggests it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top