[OmniOS-discuss] OT: Similar hardware like MIcroserver Gen8

[Saso Kiselkov]

On 12/20/13, 3:22 PM, C. L. Martinez wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 2:53 PM, Saso Kiselkov <skiselkov.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 11:02 AM, C. L. Martinez <carlopmart at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Thanks jimklimov, but my idea is not to use a microserver box due to
>>> problems with SATA disks in AHCI mode under Gen8 series ... And Gen7
>>> is too slowly machines ...
>>
>> Gen7 too slow for you? Didn't you say you're doing a home NAS? Don't
>> underestimate the venerable MicroServer, it's plenty fast enough to
>> saturate its Gigabit NIC, even while transparently compressing:
>> https://www.illumos.org/attachments/822/lz4_compression_bench.ods
>> (This is a set of ZFS LZ4 compression benchmarks I ran on my old Gen6
>> MicroServer box, so a Gen7 is even faster than this.)
>>
>> Unless you're doing some serious compute or web serving I wouldn't worry
>> about it. It's only 25W TDP, so you won't break the bank running the
>> thing 24x7 at home, and it's multi-core and has HVM and ECC memory support.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> Saso
> 
> Thanks Saso ... I have discarded Microserver N56L due to the reports
> provided by people in their blogs about poor performance with AMD cpu
> using it with ZFS (most of them with FreeNAS).

That's strange. Can you point me to these reviews? Sure it's not fast
enough to do a full Illumos nightly build on the spot, but it's plenty
fast enough for serving files and even standard web server usage (been
toying with the idea of replacing some old power-hungry clunkers with it).

> But, if I buy a Microserver N56L, do I need to buy some additonal
> storage adapter or it is ok with the default??

Never had any trouble with the on-board AHCI one, though you may want to
reflash the BIOS if you want to use the 5th SATA port in AHCI mode. If
you plan on using SAS drives, you can just get an OEM-branded LSI card
(they're much cheaper than buying LSI-original ones, despite having the
same components:
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&sku=405-11540
) and just replug the SFF-8087 multi-link drive-bay connector from the
motherboard into your HBA. Alternatively and if you're going for some
really crazy deployments, I've used an external micro-JBOD
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Icy-Box-IB-545SSK-5-Bay-Channel/dp/B006BQYSFA)
with two MicroServers talking to it over external LSI HBAs
(http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1&sku=405-11482&ref=2531xC)

> And another point, I need to use this NAS with OmniOS to serve iscsi
> disks for one KVM host (CentOS).

Just use the COMSTAR iSCSI target as usual.

Cheers,
-- 
Saso