Silverstone DS380 + ASRock C2750

  • Prior to OMV I have never used a dedicated NAS OS before. I've been through several iterations of dedicated servers running arch, debian or ubuntu and have always configured my services manually. I have now seen the light!


    Hardware







    Case: Silverstone DS380
    This all started when I fell for the Silverstone DS380 case. It's an absolute beaut and I had to have it.


    Motherboard: ASRock C2750D4i
    Mini-ITX, 12 SATA ports, 8 Core 2.4GHz Intel BayTrail in a 20watt SOC (passively cooled), 1xPCIe 8X slot, 2 gigabit NICs.
    The DS380 has been paired up with the ASRock C2750D4I on several tech sites, but when I first started I thought it was crazy to spend $400 on a motherboard - especially given the mixed reviews and the fact that I am not a big fan of ASRock (bad previous experiences). I tried to find better combinations of pci-e sata cards and mini-itx boards and no matter which way I turned I kept coming back to the ASRock board. IPMI was the deciding factor.


    Memory: Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3L 1600MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 ECC UDIMM 240-Pin Server Memory CT2KIT102472BD160B
    I didn't really need ECC memory, but the fact that I could use it and that I use snapshot raid sold me.


    Drives:
    OS: OCZ Vertex Plus 120GB - One of the most condemned SSDs. I've abused it for 3 years and it still performs decently.
    Storage:

      4*Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 - Terrible reviews but I have been using them for two years with no problems. Update: 3 out of 4 died after 2 years 4 months.
      2*Toshiba 3TB HDKPC08 - Brand new, slower than the Barracudas.


    Expansion Card: PCI-E: Generic Low Profile USB3.0 and eSATA card. (Amazon B00F920IYW).
    The DS380 front panel requires a USB3.0 header which the C2750 lacks (I thought they were made for each other!). This card provides the 20 pin header and extra USB ports on the back (the C2750 only has 2). eSATA is provided via passthrough from one of the internal SATA ports.


    Software


    Virtualization: KVM via Ubuntu Server 14.04
    I wanted to keep NAS functions separate from other server duties so I needed to maintain separate VMs. I am new to type 1 (hypervisor) virtualization and spent some time researching ESXI, XEN and KVM. In the end I settled on KVM and have managed to figure everything out so far. I found that KVM is often treated/confused as type 2 virtualization due to the install/management mechanism. As I understand it the initial install OS (in my case Ubuntu Server) is not the host, but rather a client on the hypervisor with management hooks installed.


    NAS OS: OpenMediaVault 0.5.48
    I installed OMV on an 8GB volume on the SSD using virtio. I am concerned this volume may be too small. I really have been blown away with the ease with which I can configure services, for example CIFS and AFP compared to my old process of manually editing the config files. I was up and running in hours rather than days. Performance has been great.


    Storage: Direct Access
    I have passed the drives directly through to OMV which KVM advices against. I wanted to be able to pull the drives and view the partitions on remote machines without having to worry about volumes inside KVM images. Maybe LVM makes this irrelevant? Initially I passed through the raw device mapping (e.g. /dev/sdb) but a small disaster after I pulled a drive made me change to use the /dev/disk/by-id mapping.


    Comments and Questions


    So far the system has been rock solid. Due to some reports of the Marvel controllers dropping out under load I dd'd /dev/zero to all the drives at the same time for a while and didn't see any issues. Aside from that I have made 100+ gigabyte transfers across the network onto the NAS without any failures.


    I had issues with the RAM slots. Perhaps one channel (blue?) has to be populated before the other will work, but it took a little swapping around before the system successfully booted (it's been solid through multiple power cycles since).


    IPMI is a fantastic feature and I can't believe I never knew it existed. My server is hidden away far from any display, so the ability to remote control was particularly useful when I managed to screw up my "/etc/network/interfaces" and the server had no network access.


    I don't get the same performance writing to disk on OMV on KVM as I do in the Ubuntu OS from which I installed KVM. We are looking at 180MB/s versus 140-160MB/s. This isn't a huge deal but I was under the impression the performance would be closer to native using virtio. I have Cache and IO mode set to default.


    I haven't looked into enabling drive spin-down, they don't spin down automatically.


    I was really surprised at how quiet this thing is. I think you could be comfortable using this as an HTPC in your living room.


    Is an 8GB OMV partition enough?


    Am I correct in thinking the SnapRAID plugin requires manual Syncs?


    Despite the fact there isn't much airflow and there are 6 hot drives spinning away I haven't seen the CPU temperature go above 44°C (under significant load). With 2 VMs running it idles at 36°C. I am very impressed with avoton/baytrail.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Beautiful case :)


    None of my five systems use 5gb so an 8 gb OS partition is enough. Snapraid does require manual syncs but it is very easy to set a cron job to do it.


    Suggestion... Use Proxmox instead of Ubuntu for KVM. Otherwise, I would wait until OMV 1.0 comes out and use it (and 3.14 backports kernel) with the virtualbox plugin. Much easier to manage (including your hard drive spindown) and virtualbox has good enough performance for most guests.

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • I've also fell in love with this case and was contemplating building almost this exact same system to replace my OMV that is running right now on reclaimed parts.


    Server motherboards are on sale at Newegg right now for 20% off which is a significant discount on this board...


    Is anyone else also using this board?


    It's a little pricy, but it seems like a great deal for around $320 USD.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Not using it but I doubt you would have any issues with OMV 1.0 (release is this month).

    omv 7.0.4-2 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.10 | compose 7.1.2 | k8s 7.0-6 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • I really love this setup because im also running an Asrock C2750 in the same case...the only change to my setup is im using an WD Red and an DVB Sky 952 Dual DVBS2 Tuner Card.


    But i had to change the fans, cause the stock ones are pretty load with 35db during load.

    Software:
    OMV 3.0 / Plex / Snapraid / Tvheadend / ecoDMS / sonar / sabnzbd
    Hardware:
    ASRock C2750D4I / 2x Kingston KVR16E11/8 / Dell PERC H200 Crossflashed / 8x WD Red 3 TB / 60GB TeamGroup Dark L3 SSD / Samsung 750 EVO 256 GB SSD / Sundtek Sky TV Ultimate 6 DVB-S2

  • Well I've been running with this setup for 5 months now. I experienced intermittent (i.e. once every few weeks) stability issues that stemmed from the C2750 motherboard. These issues went away when I disabled various power stepping & sleep options in the bios. I understand there is a 1.1 revision of the board that doesn't have these problems but I'm not sure I can be motivated to replace mine. Update: The stability issues are gone as of the latest BIOS update. I can now leave speed stepping and C states enabled.


    Other than that this setup has been a real work horse. I recently updated to OMV 1.031. I have all attached drives using the VirtIO driver with writethrough caching. CIFS/SMB transfers run at a solid 112MB/s through two switches and ~100ft of CAT5e cable.


    I've never been a fan of Plex, but I one click installed Plex server using the plugin and I was very impressed with how seamlessly streaming to Plex clients worked. Light testing indicated the processor is capable of transcoding to two clients at once.


    I installed monitorix on the KVM host and highly recommend it. It has support for KVM and provides usage information on the individual guests as well as the host. Monitorix indicates that the cores have never gone above 37 C - and that was with snapraid syncing and plex transcoding at the same time. In general the Toshiba 3TB's run a few degrees cooler than the Seagates. One ST3000DM001 mysteriously runs a full 6 degrees hotter than the others.


    Overall I'm happy with the hardware, despite the stability issues, and I'm still very happy with OMV.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    That is a nice case. Really thought out well for a NAS.


    I like it as well. I wish they made the exact same case, but as a 4-bay version. Something like the u-Nas 4-bay case.. but that will fit an SFX power supply and will somehow allow you to mount a normal cooler into the case.

  • OMV is still purring along beautifully, I just wanted to update about the Seagate Barracudas.


    I had 3 * Seagate Barracuda 3000GB ST3000DM001-9YN166 bought at the same time (from TD on Buy.com) for $109.99 each in August 2012. (My fourth Seagate Barracuda 3000GB ST3000DM001 was bought later and has a different part number).


    All three drives failed over the last two months, despite relatively different usage characteristics. They all were kept at very healthy temperatures (<40C) and had APM disabled. I've heard horror stories suggesting you should avoid buying drives from the same batch, but I've not seen anything like it personally before. If you have any matching drives I'd suggest you make sure the data is protected. Luckily I was able to restore using snapraid each time.


    SN: S1F0T***
    Model: ST3000DM001
    PN: 9YN166-570
    FW: CC9F (I never changed this firmware as it is newer than the one on their website, maybe this was my mistake)
    Date: 13017
    Site: SU


    Product of China.

  • I stumbled upon this and I couldn't believe that I have almost a 1:1 copy of your system except data raid drives, I am running SAS RAID drives for my data parts. Yes the best features of this board is it is designed as a real server board. So it has all the features you would expect from an enterprise class server, the most important being BMC/IPMI. If you have never used BMC/IPMI before it will quickly become you favorite feature and you will not want to live without it. I would def recommend this board and its little brother I have not had any issues after a month or so of playing around with it. I am waiting for Ubuntu server 15.04 to be finished, to use that for the software I need to run. I have on a few occasions dealt with ASRock Support and I give them 2 thumbs up, the only thing I was amazed about was tracking down and purchasing TPM module for the board, can not find it anywhere so I contacted ASRock support and found that I can buy it strait from them. But and a big "BUT" you can only buy it from them with check/money order through snail mail. That amazed me but whatever.

  • hey, i only want to know if the case and the backplate could handle spindown. i had 8 drives and i want to install omv only before freenas because of energysaving with spindown of the drives....

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