I'm planning a NAS build and I would like your suggestions about cheapest yet decent quality motherboard for my box. Since SAS expanders cost too much and RAID cards with JBOD capability even more, it has to have 7+ SATA3, that's 6Gb/s, ports, preferably on same controller for maximum compatibility. It should also support ECC memory.
Tek People have made numerous FreeNAS videos, but that's not what I'll be using. It will be a XPEnology box. If that should matter anything. Currently I have found this thing: ASRock X99M Extreme4
Looks like Skylake and B150 chipset are the way to go. Skylake i3 support ECC. So you would have to get your hands on that. SATA Express is also able to power normal SATA right?
Well the pricey part is DDR4 ECC RAM. Well pricier than DDR3 at least.
Scratch that idea: The Skylake boards support ECC but they do run it in non-ecc mode.
I use this. It's awesome. ECC, super low power, plenty of SATA and it includes the processor.... you'll be tough pressed to find a board, cpu, and heatsink for less.
Or just fuck the money and buy this thing..... DAMN.... I just need to keep telling myself, "there's no need to upgrade, there's no need to upgrade, there's no need to upgrade........."
if you want 17 SATA3 ports this Supermicro has you covered, both these boards have Supports for up to 64GB DDR3 ECC and IPMI, and i would also recommend a Xeon e3 system, if you don't need more than 32GB.
@Garfield: As you mentioned, 1151 runs ECC memory as non-ECC. @JohnMatt: I saw this awesome board in one of the Wendell's build videos, but unfortunetaly I would have to import it from US, which would cost me around $320. The cheapest board I found myself, the ASRock X99M Extreme4, costs around $247 here. I say around, because I'm converting the prices to $ from €. @thomas9151: My goal was to find if there was a cheaper board available for me than the one I already found :D
I live in Estonia, Europe btw, our micro market sucks :(
@sirius4k Sadly it seems to me that even socket 1155 boards (3rd Gen Intel i-Something CPUs) with the required amount of SATA ports and ECC compatibility cost 200+€ new. There might be some deals out there but server equipment tends to be run longer.
Returning to the "silly" AM3+ solution: The cheapest boards are something like the ASUS M5A78L-M and that could be paired with a FX-8320E. Although you would have to get a RAID controller card. Getting an 990X or 990FX motherboard would cost around 100-120€ more. That gets you up to three 4 port RAID controller of the XPEnology compatibility list (they have a compatibility list btw). The AMD FX are closely related to the Opterons so they are not the worst one could choose for this project. Cost would be ~270€ for the triple combo of motherboard, CPU and raid card. Virtually the same as the C2550-D4I if you can source that.
I'm going to suggest the C2550 or C2750 CPU/boards too. They may seem expensive but when you consider that you're getting ECC support, the board and CPU and you don't have to buy a RAID card it's actually pretty cheap. And low power too so it'll save you money in the long run for 24/7 use.
I had to get mine from the US too and bought it on amazon.
But a general question, why would all 1151 boards only support ECC memory in non-ECC mode? ECC support by 1151 Pentium or i3 processors is explicitly stated on intel ARK.
There are motherboards for 1151 that support ECC running in ECC mode. But they are not really consumer motherboards that's why you do not find them listed in the normal vendor listings. Supermicro has 1151 boards with ECC support. But they start at 200€ and only go up.
Thanks for pointing that out :D There's a reason why there is a saying "Assumption is the mother of all fuckups". I assumed that I would have to buy a CPU aswell for the C2550D4I, thus making a very bad comparison between a motherboard with onboard CPU and a motherboard for which I would have to buy a separate CPU, without even thinking about that. In that light, C2550D4I will be cheaper than ASRock Socket 2011-3 X99M Extreme4 + Intel Xeon E5-2603v3 combo.
Now another concern I don't know much about. C2550D4I has SATA3 ports thrown across 3 controllers. I'm not expecting you to have in depth knowledge of XPEnology, but has any of you had any experience with filling ports with different controllers in terms of software RAID, which is what I would do once XPEnology is set up ? Could I run in to some anomalies ? Sounds a bit risky. And I wouldn't want to risk with my data :)
Yeah that's right, I was just remembering from the layout of the board where the intel and marvell connectors are separated, forgot that there were two marvell controllers. Either way for software RAID you shouldn't have any problems using multiple controllers.
I can confirm that it should not cause any problems :P
One of the Marvell controllers is on the shit-list since (or up to?) version 5.2 of Xpenology so the motherboard would be no bueno for it. Look it up here.
One question: Is xpenology somehow related to the Synology Disk Station Manager?
Yes, it's sort of a port of Synology's DSM, since Synology doesn't sell its operating system separately, a group of people have... freed it from its physical shackles and are offering it as a separate component for your very own grown NAS. You would be running it from an USB stick. More of it on their web. I haven't tried it yet. I'm currently using an ancient 2-bay Synology DS211+ in 2xWD Red 6TB Raid 1 configuration, which is full. I love Synology DSM, it's simple, nice and powerful. DSM 6.0 will be released in 2016 and it will add ALOT of new awesomeness.
A port? As far as I've understood it (after a bit of googling) DSM is released under the GPL license so that would make Xpenology a fork or something. It's not ported since DSM is written with x86_64, x86 and Arm in mind. And since it's GPL one cannot sell it (rather provide paid technical supprot). Ahhh ... technicalities. I would have to be a lot more drunk to have fun discussing the details of GPL and other licenses with you :)
Well. One of the controllers is marked non-compatible for the DSM version 5.2 upwards. So I would research the matter further because you do not want to sink 250+€ into a board with a non-compatible controller. So in short. The C2550-D4I is out due to an incompatible controller.
I have some experience in Synologys DSM (a DS414 at a remote location and two DS2XX I helped a friend set up for on-site data storage and off-site backup.
Here is what I would do: I would use the compatibility chart and search for RAID cards with the compatible controllers. I do not think there will be any difference whether the secondary SATA controller is on the motherboard or on a PCIe card. Compatible raid cards cost from 15 to 50€. I would get an AM3+ board with onboard video and two to three of those cards and put a FX-8320E on it. And then the required amount of ECC RAM. Since the RAID cards are on the compatible list I would use them.
Apart from that: Have you had a look around on the Xpenology forums for builds that members of that forum did? Additionally you could post your questions there since they are the experts. I mean: I like informing myself about the topic (I study computer engineering after all) but I have no hands-on experience with the thing (apart from some Synology boxes I helped set up).