Homemade NAS Upgrade help and advice

[Ganet]

Hi,

I am looking to upgrade my NAS, one of the main reason is to speed up the network connection between it and my main pc, I had also planned to have a separate server as and VM host using iSCSI to the NAS (also I may have an iSCSI drive on my main pc for data storage), my main pc is Windows 7 (I hate win 10).

Now after thought I am going to make the NAS and VM host the same server and either use esxi and have the NAS as a VM or use freeNAS’s VM stuff for the VM host and your options on which are very welcome.

Oh and i’m poor so cheapest solution possible.

Previous threads that helped me come to my current conclusions.

infiniBand Cabling and Switching

Hi, I have a few questions regarding infiniBand cabling. First does it have to be one complete non interrupted cable for both copper and fibre, or can I say have a fibre cable going in to a lc keystone jack through trunking and then out the other side in the same way. I have fibre lc cabling already as a few years back I wanted to use 4gb fc and do ip over fc but I ran into issues which made it not usable (I can’t remember what they were but windows driver related issues comes to mind). Second if I get a qdr fibre switch does it matter the protocol used via the connection, i.e. can I only have it in 40gb infiniband and not 10gbe even though 10gbe is supported by the adapter or does it completely not matter. Thanks in advance for any help. Mark

Ocp mezzanine to pcie 16x adapter

Hi all, I’m looking to see if it possible and also if its available to adapt an opc mezzanine card from a server to a 16x (or less) pcie slot in my pc and in another server. I have searched and not been able to find anything of use on it and I don’t know if this is even possible but from the limit amount I know I can’t see a reason its not. Thanks for any and all help Mark

My current setup is as follows:-

Network:
Cat 6a through out the house.
lc fibre cabling available and I can get lc keystones so cheap for me to setup.
Router: Home made pfsense server (asus N3150M-E 4gb ram 2 x intel 1gb nics)
Switches: 3com 2948-sfp-plus (not currently in use, made quite using noctua fans)
Netgear GS108T v2
Netgear GS108P
I also have loads of 4gb fibre channel stuff both switches and adapters that I had bought a few years back to make a faster network but this didn’t work.

NAS (current)
ASRock E350M1
4gb non ecc ram
AMCC 9650SE-16ML adapter in JBOD mode (I think its not copletely IT mode but if I move a drive to the motherboard its fine and stays in the pool with all data there
5 x 3tb non enterprise drives
4 x 2tb non enterprise drives
1 x OCZ Agility Sata II SSD (I think its 32gb, its attached to the mb and is used for OS)
Standard 4U rack case
1000w Thermaltake slientpro m2 (overkill but I had it to use)

Main pc (needs an upgrade but that will happen at a much later date)
Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0
AMD 8350
Rx480 GPU
24gb ram (2 x 8gb + 2 x 4gb)
256gb nvme on a pcie adapter (boot drive)
2 * 1 tb enetrprise drives (if the connection speed is good enough i’ll replace with an iSCSI drive

I also have a 2nd pc in use that will be virtualised which is a am3+ mb ddr3 ram, I did look into getting a low power am3+ opteron to use in this for the nas but the only ones available were like £300 which is to expensive.

I have managed to get 2 x FS12-NV7 units both with 64gb ram and all drive caddies for £25 each which was a result and I will be using one of these as the case and psu for the new nas (I know the backplane is only 3gb but so is my adapter so its fine), I did think of just using this but that generation and the ddr2 isn’t very good for power and as I intend to have it on 24/7 going forward thats important to me.

While searching for low power am3+ opteron I managed to get 2 x Opteron 4365 EE for £18, there 40w tdp which is more than the 25w am3+ ones I was looking for but as there 8 core and use ddr3 ram instead of the ddr2 they should be much better for power consumption and also as they can go up to 70c rather that the 55c of the 2373ee chips in the FS12-NV7’s it makes cooling the case quietly much easier.

I need a socket c32 motherboard for these cpu’s one or both some possibles are below.
Supermicro H8SCM-F https://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron4000/SR56x0/H8SCM-F.cfm
ASUS KCMA-D8 https://www.asus.com/uk/Commercial-Servers-Workstations/KCMAD8/

Now for the questions other than just recommendations.

firstly if I have a pcie gen 1 8x card and I put it in a gen 2 slot 16x electrically but running at 4x will it run at full speed or gen 1 4x speeds?

second as some network connections are cpu bound and my new cpus are fairly low base clock speeds what would be the best for speed out of the networking options.

third anything I have missed or I am being stupid about (i’m sure there will be something). with this question I know about the adapter I am using and I know that ecc ram is highly recommended for freenas but the data I have is just media that I can re rip and all the iscsi and vm stuff I will do in the future I will backup.

Edit: I forgot I will be getting 4 x 10 tb enterprise drives or 5 x 8tb enterprise drives to replace my current drives in the NAS but this is a lot of money so not sure exactly when and I understand my current drives are not rated for 24/7 use.

Thanks all for reading this massive message and thanks for all the help

Mark