SOLVED Replacing my motherboard/cpu/memory on old system - need advice

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You get an HBA card, you do not tweak the BIOS for that.

For typical home use the board brings more than enough ports. If you need a platform with more CPU power, PCIe x8 with bifurcation etc. there's the X10SDV line by Supermicro.

 

[chuck32]

For typical home use the board brings more than enough ports.

Just wanted to mention an expansion method in case the onboard ports are really not enough and be clear that you do not need to modify/tweak the BIOS for that. Although 12 onboard is a lot. OP probably didn't spot them on the pictures and just counted 4.

 

[jordanthompson]

I'm used to tweaking bios via an attached monitor and keyboard (that's the only reason I would need any video). I have an hba card (I'd need to have video to tune and upgrade bios on that, but if it has vga, I believe that would work.) I had an issue with hba and a new motherboard only working with a video card installed (it works fine on my old motherboard.) @chuck32 is correct, I only saw the four in the picture. I actually have 14 drives that I am currently accessing from my hba.

I have TrueNAS and three jails (to be converted to a virtual machines whenever I switch to TrueNAS Linux.) One is basically a web server (very lightly used with a couple of chrons that run python scripts hourly and daily), a Plex server for home movies for our family, and a database, again lightly used.

Do these boards come with the atom processor installed?

 

[ChrisRJ]

I actually have 14 drives that I am currently accessing from my hba.

I had overlooked that number before and it seriously changes the game. With that number of drives you will never be able to have a low-power (as in less than 50 Watts) system. You did not specify the drives, but I would assume their idle power draw is at least 70 Watts already, going up to ca. 140 under load. Adding an HBA, which you will likely need, puts another 10-20 Watts on top. So looking for a board that is power efficient, while the market for such boards is quite limited, seems a waste to me. Unless I completely misunderstand something, of course.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I'm used to tweaking bios via an attached monitor and keyboard (that's the only reason I would need any video).

Server systems generally come with VGA and USB for a local console.

I have an hba card (I'd need to have video to tune and upgrade bios on that, but if it has vga, I believe that would work.)

Of course - it's not fundamentally different from a discrete graphics card.

I actually have 14 drives that I am currently accessing from my hba.

I overlooked that, sorry. In that case the X10SDV series might be better for you. The A2SDi all have only PCIe 3.0x4 while the X10SDV have x16. So you could keep your HBA.

E.g. https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SDV-4C-TLN4F

Do these boards come with the atom processor installed?

Yes. And the X10SDV come with the Xeon D processors installed. If you go with the Xeon D you might want to consider active cooling and order an SNK-C0057A4L. Depends on the airflow in your case.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[Etorix]

I overlooked that, sorry. In that case the X10SDV series might be better for you. The A2SDi all have only PCIe 3.0x4 while the X10SDV have x16. So you could keep your HBA.

12 data drives (8+4) could still fit on a typical A2SDi-8C / A2SDI-H-TF board, moving the OS to a non-redundant M.2 NVMe drive.
Or with the HBA in the open x4 slot.

There is also an odd Gigabyte C3958 board with 16 SATA ports, onboard SFP+ and eMMC for boot:

GIGABYTE MA10-ST0 ATOM C3958 32GB EMMC ASPEED AST2400 MOTHERBOARD MA10-ST0-SI | eBay

SR381 Processor 32GB eMMC Aspeed AST2400. Storage Interface: eMMC, SATA 6.0Gb/s. Storage Capacity: 32GB. Mini-ITX Server Motherboard MA10-ST0-SI. No cables, fan’s mounting backplate, fan’s bracket or any other accessories!

www.ebay.com

Of course, having that many drives still negates much of the benefits of having a low-power motherboard.

 

[jordanthompson]

The four Plex and two boot drives are SSD's, and the other eight are WD Red Plus.
I do have a two-port elcheapo PCIe card (BEYIMEI PCIe SATA Card 2 Ports, PCI-E to SATA Expansion Card,6Gbps PCI-E (2X 4X 8X 16X) SATA 3.0 Controller Card for Windows10/8/7/XP/Vista/Linux,Support SSD and HDD https://a.co/d/4zhlVn3) I could use to boot... It's pretty basic and I don't think it gets too hot.

@Etorix had a good idea putting the OS on a M.2 NVMe,but I do like the idea of a redundant boot pool if I can get away with the cheap sata card.

I'm really excited about these gigabyte motherboards! I'd never come across them before.


If the atom can handle the few VM's I have and the dual sata port card will work, I think I'm leaning towards the A2SDi-8C-HLN4F as it has more cores and supports more memory.

Any thoughts on ECC vs non-ECC?

 

[Etorix]

@Etorix had a good idea putting the OS on a M.2 NVMe,but I do like the idea of a redundant boot pool if I can get away with the cheap sata card.

You might get away with an ASM1067 without port multiplier, but don't quote me on this… and read here if you really want a robust redundant boot drive strategy (only time you'll be advised to get a hardware RAID controller here):

Highly Available Boot Pool Strategy

I've pounded a few versions of this out over the years, but I hate explaining over and over. TrueNAS allows a ZFS boot mirror pool to be created to increase the reliability of the NAS. This sounds great in theory, but there's a flaw. Due to...

www.truenas.com

For a home NAS, it's not really worth the hassle compared to just replacing a failed boot device and loading the duly archived configuration file.

I'm really excited about these gigabyte motherboards! I'd never come across them before.

Caveat: I've never seen or used one; there are few user reports on them, the layout leaves little for expansion, and it could well be that IPMI is solely of the dreaded Java variety.

Any thoughts on ECC vs non-ECC?

There's no valid reason to skip ECC for a ZFS server. Especially if the platform supports RDIMM, as is the case for these lovely Atom C3000.

 

[jordanthompson]

With everyone's help, here's what I was thinking about:

1x Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F Motherboard https://a.co/d/hKmFoOE

2x Samsung M393A4K40BB1-CRC 32GB DDR4-2400 LP ECC Reg Server Memory https://a.co/d/5qHhgCY

1x LEVEN JM600 M.2 SSD 256GB 3D NAND SATA III 6 Gb/s, M.2 (22 * 80mm) Internal Solid State Drive https://a.co/d/9vw3761

Please let me know if I am missing something here...

I have never had anything to do with these types of motherboards before, so any help here would be most appreciated

 

[Etorix]

Motherboard, RAM and small-n-cheap boot drive (second-hand works great for the last two). Add chassis and PSU and you're set.
But consider carefully whether you'd like 10 GbE at some point (-H-TF variant?), or whether you're happy to put a SFP+ NIC in the x4 slot. As these embedded boards have limited expansion possibilities it's important to get the on-board configuration right.

I have never had anything to do with these types of motherboards before, so any help here would be most appreciated

Well, these are… motherboards. What's intimidating?
To setup you can plug a keyboard and VGA monitor, or use IPMI: Plug a RJ45 cable in the management port, query your DHCP server to find out what address it got, and then point your browser to this address.

 

[jordanthompson]

Well, to be FAIR (to me ;-) ), I've never dealt with PMI, M.2 SSD's, ECC (registered or not), or using SSH or HTML to update motherboard BIOS...

My home network is just gig-e and internet is only 350 MBS, any of the RJ-45 connections are overkill :-D

 

[jordanthompson]

I just noticed that the I/O shield is on the left of the motherboard (I'm used to seeing it on the right for ATX cases...) Am I going to need a new case for this class of motherboard? So it seems that this is a mini-Itx motherboard and from here, it looks like a mini-itx motherboard *should* fit in an ATX case (more new-to-me stuff) ...

 

[chuck32]

I'm not sure I follow. All the boards on your link have the IO on the left, same as the Supermicro board.

Yes smaller form factors fit, just mind the stand off positions. I haven't see a atx case that didn't fit a smaller size.

 

[jordanthompson]

Maybe this is a topic for another thread, but would now be the time to switch from Core to Scale? Would I be better off with a clean install?

I currently have a jail for Plex and another that I could easily replicate as a VM as itonly consists of a few scripts and a web server.

I may be even able to do a clean install and rsync the files over (if I can find enough drives).

 

[chuck32]

Would I be better off with a clean install?

Personally I would start fresh.

I may be even able to do a clean install and rsync the files over (if I can find enough drives).

No need, you could export your pool and reimport it on the new system.

 

[jordanthompson]

Personally I would start fresh.

No need, you could export your pool and reimport it on the new system.

I like the idea of starting fresh, but to export the pools, I'd need somewhere big to put them. I have a bunch of 2tb drives laying around that I can use to build the new system and rsync the files to. Then, I can replace the drives one at a time with the new(er) drives from the current system.

I've been reading about the new Linux version, and although I find BSD cumbersome to use compared to Linux and see the handwriting on the wall that it will be phased out at some point, it seems there are some serious performance losses moving to it. With a less powerfull CPU and fewere cores than I have currently, I'm afraid the best solution for me may be to stick with BSD for a while. Am I wrong on this?

 

[chuck32]

I like the idea of starting fresh, but to export the pools, I'd need somewhere big to put them.

No you can just use your existing drives with your existing pool.
Exporting is just a step to take before importing on another system.

 

[jordanthompson]

Any thoughts on upgrading (or not?)

 

[chuck32]

If it's just two jails probably stay on core. I've been running scale for a year now and while it has been stable there are a lot of bugs / issues currently.
I run 6-8 VMs that's why I switched to scale.

 

[Ericloewe]

VGA *is* video. Or am I missing anything? A board completely without would need to be setup via serial console. Even IPMI connects to the video console via your browser. So I consider an assumed complete lack of video to be a valid concern.

But of course more or less every server platform today still comes with VGA on board. Exception being smaller embedded devices like firewall appliances etc.

Some pre-built servers are moving to DisplayPort and I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad. I hate VGA (mostly the connector), but DisplayPort means upgrading stuff that otherwise works.