Will upgrading MB on RB-1200 improve performance significantly?


timz

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... It is still working great.

 

Nice to know.  And clearly that means you don't really need to upgrade the whole system unless you just want to.

 

 

... Will upgrading the motherboard or SATA cards increase performance at all?

 

Absolutely -- ESPECIALLY the SATA cards.  In fact, your performance bottleneck at this point is ENTIRELY due to the SATA ports, not the CPU at all.    From what you've outlined, there's no real reason to do a full system upgrade at this point.    By FAR, the #1 thing you need to do is get rid of the PCI SATA cards.  Your motherboard has a PCIe x16 slot, which I assume you're not using (there's no need for an add-on video card in that configuration), so you can install a good 8-port SATA card like the SAS2LP [ http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-AOC-SAS2LP-MV8-8-Channel-Adapter-Channel/dp/B005B0Z2I4 ] and you'll be amazed at the difference in your parity check speeds !!    Even your normal access is being throttled by the PCI cards, which can't even keep up with a single modern drive's sustained transfer rate on the outer cylinders.

 

Note that even if you choose to eventually do an entire system upgrade, you'll almost certainly want a nice 8-port card anyway, so that card could simply be moved to your new system.

 

 

... I have 10 disks in the array and it takes about 2.5 days to perform a parity check (1 6TB, 3 4TB, and some smaller disks).  I am not sure what the limiting factor is in my performance, is it the MB or harddrives themselves ...

 

As already discussed, it's NOT your drives -- it's the bottlenecked SATA interface.  Just get rid of that and your drive performance will improve dramatically.

 

 

Bottom line:  If you just want to do a full system upgrade, then by all means go for it.    But since you're happy with your current system, except for the parity check performance, I'd just do the following:

 

(a)  Buy the SAS2LP-MV8

(b)  Upgrade the CPU to a Core 2 Duo E8500 ... available on ebay for ~ $15  [ http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313&_nkw=Core+2+Duo+E8500&_sacat=0 ].  This will double your CPU performance, and supports both vt-x and vt-d, so it'll work well with virtualization.    [Your Celeron supports vt-x, but not vt-d.  The E8500 also more than doubles the CPU "horsepower" (PassMark 2313 vs 1126 for your Celeron)]

 

I think with those changes you'd easily "feel" like you had a new system entirely.  ... for perhaps $150 total  :)

 

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... by the way, note that with the Newegg "deal" you referenced, you'll still need to add an additional SATA controller (e.g. a board like I just suggested), and buy new DDR3 memory.    That $550 deal will easily top $750 when you're done.    As already noted, the $350 CPU in that package is definitely overkill for UnRAID ... although it's certainly a nice CPU  :)  [i definitely understand a bit of CPU overkill -- I always use high-end CPU's for my systems, whether they're needed or not  :)  ]

 

 

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Thanks, I have put the 6TB drive on the MB and started a parity check, still gettting around 17MB/sec.

 

Not surprising at all.  There are still drives on the PCI cards that are bottlenecking this.  If you let this parity check continue until it's past the 4TB point, where the only drive involved is the 6TB drive,  THEN you'll see how well the 6TB drive can perform on the motherboard port, as it will then be the only drive still involved in the parity check.  But until there are NO drives left in the check that are on a PCI card, nothing will speed up.    Also, when that happens, the 6TB drive will be approaching its inner cylinders, so it won't be nearly as fast as it would be on the outer cylinders -- but you'll still see a BIG difference compared to what it would have been on one of those PCI cards.

 

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... Took a look at your drive complement => if you want to see how well your parity checks CAN run, I'd connect the 3 4TB drives and the 6TB drive to your motherboard ports; then run a parity check.    It will (as usual) be VERY slow until the check passes the 3TB point in that configuration ... and then you'll see a big jump as none of the PCI cards are involved in the check anymore;  then it will slow down a good bit as the 4TB drives get to their innermost cylinders (probably around 3.5TB or so); and then it will jump back up after it passes the 4TB point ... slowing down again when the 6TB gets to its innermost cylinders sometime after the 5TB point).

 

But that's just an academic exercise -- if you simply get a good 8-port PCIe x8 SATA card your parity checks will be just as fast as they would be with any new system.

 

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... by the way, note that with the Newegg "deal" you referenced, you'll still need to add an additional SATA controller (e.g. a board like I just suggested),

 

This is incorrect.

 

8 SAS ports.

4 SATA 3GB/s ports.

2 SATA 6GB/s ports.

 

That's 14 sata capable ports.

 

If the drive complement is still 10 drives, that leaves room for 4 more SATA drives.

 

and buy new DDR3 memory.    That $550 deal will easily top $750 when you're done.    As already noted, the $350 CPU in that package is definitely overkill for UnRAID ... although it's certainly a nice CPU  :)  [i definitely understand a bit of CPU overkill -- I always use high-end CPU's for my systems, whether they're needed or not  :)  ]

 

The ram will drive the price up. Since you're already used to 2GB of ram, you can expand later on. However I personally usually drive it up to the limit where I can get a no interest finance.  Yes, if you max out this purchase, you can easily hit the $800 mark (I did).

 

The hefty CPU price is partially because it's the one with embedded graphics, Choose the one without and it drops to $450.

Where the beefier CPU matters is when you virtualize a number of operating systems especially a windows one.

 

For years I ram VMware Workstation on a linux server. I had windows under the VMware workstation instance for over 10 years.

Since I do not play games it worked out really well. I had a number of windows instances. Where I've always seen the biggest bang for the buck and jump in performance was a cache increase. I went from dual 2.4 to dual 3ghz with a much larger cache. Yes there was a speed increase, but the cache changed it all. When I ran the workstation in full screen mode I could no longer tell I was virtualized.

This is back when cloverton processors were the new.

 

ESX virtualization with the AMD dual core N54L vs the newest HP GEN 8 1220L was a big improvement. 

The clock speeds are pretty close, but the cache structure and hyperthreading help a great deal.

The larger cache helps if you are going to virtualize anything other then linux.

 

If you weren't going to virtualize I would say, maximize your current hardware investment with the controller.

(Heck, I could sell you an LSI controller and cables that I thought I would use later. LOL)

 

 

The impetus for the upgrade suggestion is virtualization.

Add to that a motherboard/configuration that's 5 years old.

Plus the additional memory availability in 64 bit mode is going to help with caching directories.

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Bottom line:  If you just want to do a full system upgrade, then by all means go for it.    But since you're happy with your current system, except for the parity check performance, I'd just do the following:

 

(a)  Buy the SAS2LP-MV8

(b)  Upgrade the CPU to a Core 2 Duo E8500 ... available on ebay for ~ $15  [ http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313&_nkw=Core+2+Duo+E8500&_sacat=0 ].  This will double your CPU performance, and supports both vt-x and vt-d, so it'll work well with virtualization.    [Your Celeron supports vt-x, but not vt-d.  The E8500 also more than doubles the CPU "horsepower" (PassMark 2313 vs 1126 for your Celeron)]

 

I think with those changes you'd easily "feel" like you had a new system entirely.  ... for perhaps $150 total  :)

 

 

There's incidentals that are being missed.

1. The cost of SFF 8087 cables and shipping.

2. The cost of thermal material if it's not available.

3. The potential cost of a new CPU fan if the current Celeron Fan is not adequate to cool the E8500

4. The desire to virtualize. (The biggest impetus since this was mentioned as a goal).

5. The current board only supports 4GB. What is being virtualized? and How much ram does it need?  What software will be used?

You cannot pass through anything on the current board.

6. The current configuration is almost 5 years old.

 

 

A new 8 port SAS controller is an easy fix. The SFF8087 to SATA cables a dream for neat cable arrangements.

An E8500 is a sweet CPU upgrade a few years ago.

I think I did the E8600 back in 2007/2008. I was very happy with it, but it did produce allot of heat. I found I had to get a beefier CPU fan.

These upgrades will be ~ $150 that you could invest into a system overhaul.

The controller will probably not be needed until much later since the newer supermicro board will have additional sata ports. Either for spinners or SSD's.

 

 

While you could get the controller now and upgrade later, ask yourself if the current case can handle 22 drives later.

Ask yourself do you want to own that many spindles?

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So based on a search of the forums I don't think I will get much improvement if using this "as is" for a NAS only, however if I plan on doing any virtualization (which I am), it is worth upgrading.

 

I'm going to re-iterate the obvious here.

The x8 SAS controller LSI or Supermicro plus Cables will definitely provide NAS only improvement. Without a doubt.

 

I don't think you'll be happy with virtualization of anything other then a light linux system given the limits of ram on the motherboard.

Docker will probably be fine, but you'll need to buy more ram.

I'd probably add, if you do want to virtualization, you'll probably want to put the VM's on an SSD or dedicated cache/spinner.

 

To get the best bang for buck, that needs to be on a fast SATA port.

You could put it on the x8 controller, or get an x1 two port controller.

The numbers start to increment with incidentals.

 

Additional ram for virtualization. Plus shipping (unless you or a buddy has it around or someone trades with you)

Additional controller for for potential SSD to house VM's or a cache drive.  (the cost of cache drive or SSD is a given in both situations so i'm not counting that).

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Whoops !!    In a quick scan of the Newegg specs I missed the SAS controller ports -- scrolled down to the Storage Devices and saw the "4 x SATA 3.0Gb/s + 2 x SATA 6.0Gb/s"  and didn't scroll another couple lines where it shows the SAS ports.    Clearly you're right ... the 8-port card wouldn't be needed.

 

But I still think a simple upgrade for the existing system is a good choice.    The SAS2LP card is routinely available at nice discounts -- here's the card with 2 breakout cables for $125.58:  http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-AOC-SAS2LP-MV8-8-Channel-Adapter-Channel/dp/B005B0Z2I4/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A1SRBXAC9A7XOB  [see the "Frequently Bought Together" link]

 

As for upgrading from a Celeron E1500 to a Core 2 Duo E8500 => Both are 65w TDP processors, and shipped with the same heatsink ... so the heatsink will work fine.  I agree he may need a $3-5 tube of thermal compound  :)

 

As for virtualization performance -- clearly it would be better with a new system ... but an E8500 works quite nicely as long as you're not running more than a couple VM's simultaneously.    The system I'm typing this on has an E8400, with a collection of 70 virtual machines ... virtually every Windows OS since '95 (including every different version of Vista and '7 -- both x32 and x64) and quite a few Linux versions.    They all run just fine -- even a Windows 10 VM.    Host OS is Windows 7 x64.

 

They DO run better on my Core i7-4790 system ... but the most notable difference is in the "boot" times for the VM's and how many I can run at once [The i7 system has 16GB of RAM).

 

I'm not suggesting that a complete upgrade is a bad idea -- it would indeed be a very nice improvement.  But it would NOT yield any significant benefit in terms of basic NAS performance beyond what could be done by simply adding the SAS2LP card.    And since Timz noted that his system  "... is still working great..."  I thought he should at least consider the less expensive option.    In fact, for purely improving the NAS performance, that's all that needs to be done.    Bumping up the CPU to an E8500 would give him reasonable virtualization performance as well ... clearly not as good as a complete new system ... but certainly good enough to try it out and see what he thinks.

 

I'm certainly not opposed to nice, new hardware -- when I replaced one of my HTPCs a few months ago, I used an i7-4770 "just because";  when I built a new system for my wife a couple months ago I used an i7-4790;  when I build a new system for one of my grandkids last week, I used an i7-4790 ... but MY system is still my trusty old E8400, simply because it runs just fine and I haven't felt the urge to get a new CPU  [it DOES have 2 500GB SSDs and 3 4TB spinners and a nice graphics card ... and access to over 50TB of storage on my UnRAID boxes  :) ]

 

My point is simple:  For what was asked here, I think Timz can be VERY happy with the improvements he can get for $150 without the need to spend $750 or more on new hardware.  Note also that if he buys the SAS2LP card, he could then, if he later decided to upgrade, buy one of the SuperMicro cards without the LSI SAS ports for ~ $80 less than the card with those ports and just use the card.

 

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But I still think a simple upgrade for the existing system is a good choice.    The SAS2LP card is routinely available at nice discounts -- here's the card with 2 breakout cables for $125.58:  http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-AOC-SAS2LP-MV8-8-Channel-Adapter-Channel/dp/B005B0Z2I4/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A1SRBXAC9A7XOB  [see the "Frequently Bought Together" link]

I don't disagree with this, if it's only going to do NAS things. Quickest and most cost effective way to get performance if only doing NAS things.

 

As for upgrading from a Celeron E1500 to a Core 2 Duo E8500 => Both are 65w TDP processors, and shipped with the same heatsink ... so the heatsink will work fine. 

 

This hasn't been my experience. The fans for each were different when I had these processors.

In addition, adding virtualization is going to work the processor harder.

 

As for virtualization performance -- clearly it would be better with a new system ... but an E8500 works quite nicely as long as you're not running more than a couple VM's simultaneously.    The system I'm typing this on has an E8400, with a collection of 70 virtual machines ... virtually every Windows OS since '95 (including every different version of Vista and '7 -- both x32 and x64) and quite a few Linux versions.    They all run just fine -- even a Windows 10 VM.    Host OS is Windows 7 x64.

 

I think this is a casual use case. How many of them run simultaneously and all the time? Plus this is windows 7 with a swap file. You're not comparing apples to apples here.

 

With the current ASUS motherboard, the ram limit is 4GB. Virtualizing enviromnemt hasn't been defined.

Let's say a typical use case is running a plex or XBMC along side unRAID, I'm not sure you can pass through the video card on the ASUS board.  unRAID has no swap, so that has to be taken care of, which is going to require another SATA port somewhere be it shared with cache or what ever. Then you need another SATA port for the VM's wherever that's going to be hosted. This could be shared with cache/swap.  It also needs to be a fast SATA port or performance will suffer.

So the cost is not just $150 card + cables + $15 CPU, There's the requirement of another fast sata port, let's say $20 for a SIL3132 or something else in the x1 slot.

 

 

My point is simple:  For what was asked here, I think Timz can be VERY happy with the improvements he can get for $150 without the need to spend $750 or more on new hardware.  Note also that if he buys the SAS2LP card, he could then, if he later decided to upgrade, buy one of the SuperMicro cards without the LSI SAS ports for ~ $80 less than the card with those ports and just use the card.

 

This is actually a use case where buy now - reuse later comes into play. So the funds spent on a card for now and mobo/cpu/ram upgrade later can come into play.  The X9SCM-F becomes a worthy candidate later on. (Also another board I own and can say works well).

 

I believe lime-Technology used the X9SCM-F for some builds too.

 

I'm sure there are other boards besides the supermicros that might be cheaper, however there's allot of experience with these boards on the forum and that counts for something too.

 

So $150 (card + cable) + (x9scm ~ $180) = $330 vs $234 ($249 - $15 newegg discount card.)

While there is a newegg discount for the x9scm or equivalent now, that may not be available later on.

Then there is the $15 cost of a cpu which will eventually be tossed (E8500).

Then the cost of a supplementary SATA card for dedicated virtualization use which will probably go into parts bin later ~ $20

(The cost of the extra drive is the same in ANY build so that's a wash here).

let's not forget the jump to 4GB  ~ $25-$30 for the ram chip.

 

So now it's really $150 + $15(cpu) + $20(another sata controller) + $25(ram upgrade)

Now were at $210 to add ports and do NAS and virtualization with $15 + $20 + $25 in throw away parts later.

 

Add to that the motherboard later  $200 + $180 = $380. and it starts to climb more with incidentals.

That $454 - $15 gift card starts to get more attractive at $439.  So the real end cost incremental is ~ $60 + new ram which can be low to start with and upgraded easily later on.  In the end, the server will be up by 4 sata ports.

 

 

Man I bet all those old parts can probably be sold used on ebay to make up some of that $60 cost.

 

You really have to put every single item being paid for + tax + shipping + rebates/gift cards to get a proper picture of outlay to reach a goal.

 

Don't get me wrong, I waste allot of money at times, but it's to either learn or reach a forward moving goal.

Rarely do I purchase older hardware to reach a forward goal unless I have to.

 

As far as I can see it's not a full $750 unless there is a commitment to expand memory and do virtualzation right from day one.

 

Purchasing a limited amount of ram with Mobo/CPU combo achieves high NAS performance today, with expanded SATA ports, IPMI capability. Once the commitment exists to do virtualization, the ram expenditure/upgrade comes into play.

 

This has been a most interesting debate.

Buy for now with excess parts later, or buy for future goal and pay interest on finance(or get a finance free option) which achieves the end goal.

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We're violently agreeing  :)    I completely agree a nice new motherboard, CPU, and memory with enough SATA ports (either on the board or via a good PCIe 8-port card) is a much better upgrade.    It's simply also much more costly ... and for a system that seems to be primarily used as a NAS and may be used for some light experimentation with virtualization there is a much more cost-effective path.    Only Timz knows if that characterization matches his likely use case.

 

As I already noted, the E8500 works well for virtualization "...  as long as you're not running more than a couple VM's simultaneously."    As long as there's adequate RAM for the hypervisor to allocate the memory assigned to the running VM (or two), the lack of a swap file is irrelevant.

 

Note that the $150 INCLUDES the CPU & thermal compound [$125.58 for the SAS2LP with cables, $15 for the CPU].  Only about $25 of that is "throw-a-way" money that wouldn't be useable in a new system.

 

Agree that if the current system only has 2GB he'll need an extra $25 or so to double that [easily doable for that price on e-bay] ... so the throw-a-way $$ become $50.

 

I doubt there's any market for the current "stuff" that's worth the bother.    Celeron E1500's are listed for $2 with no bids, and "buy-it-now" for $7.99 with no takers.    The motherboard might bring $30 or so (looking at current closed auctions they tend to sell between $30 and $40 WITH CPU and memory).    Not hardly worth the bother to list, pack, & ship ... and in any event will probably bring about the same now or later -- so upgrading later would still let him recover that bit.

 

In terms of out-of-pocket dollars NOW the choice is about $125 for a NAS-only improvement (the SAS2LP card with cables); or $175 for the same with an upgraded CPU and memory to better support virtualization.  In either of those cases, ~ $75 will eventually be saved when upgrading because he won't need the board with the built-in LSI ports, so at most he's "tossing" $100 ... of which he can recover $30 or so by selling the used parts on e-bay.    ... vs at least $500, and more likely $600 or so for a new motherboard, CPU, and memory.  [Minus the same $30 or so he can recover.]

 

If it was me, I'd just buy a whole new system and populate it with 6TB drives ... copying all the data from the old system (which I'd keep for additional backups) => but that cost of that is clearly beyond what I think Timz wants to spend here  :)

 

 

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As I already noted, the E8500 works well for virtualization "...  as long as you're not running more than a couple VM's simultaneously."    As long as there's adequate RAM for the hypervisor to allocate the memory assigned to the running VM (or two), the lack of a swap file is irrelevant.

 

I disagree, the performance will not be there without adequate ram if running windows.

Swapping support is not irrelevant.

It is needed to push unused pages out of ram because the motherboard will not support more then 4GB of ram.

unRAID itself doesn't require all that much, but unRAID 6 changes expands on that.

Then there is the fact that very little on the main ramdisk can be swapped out to save ram. So it's unused program data that has to be swapped. If even,  Which means that either the hypervisor has to simulate ram with swap space and/or the virtualized environment needs to have swap ability.

 

Note that the $150 INCLUDES the CPU & thermal compound [$125.58 for the SAS2LP with cables, $15 for the CPU].  Only about $25 of that is "throw-a-way" money that wouldn't be useable in a new system.

 

That doesn't include the 2 cables which will come out to about $30. Maybe in the used market, but now new.

 

The CPU is useless without the ram.

The ram is useful, but then comes the requirement of a $20 or so supplementary controller for storing the VMs and/or swap location.

If I remember correctly, the ASUS boards at that time were very finicky about matched ram.

 

The incidentals costs are being minimized, when if they are all put on a balance sheet it becomes apparent what the final outlay is.

It's a cascade effect that at the end of the day reaches the goal minimally and with very little growth.

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... That doesn't include the 2 cables which will come out to about $30. ...

 

Yes, it does.  The $125.54 link I provided at Amazon is for a SAS2LP with 2 breakout cables.

 

I agree that if he upgrades the CPU, he should also bump up to 4GB of RAM (I already noted that).

 

As I noted earlier, we're in violent agreement that an all-new system is a much higher-performance alternative.    My point is simply that it's also a good bit more costly  :)

 

... really just depends on how much virtualization he plans to do -- and only Timz knows the answer to that.

 

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... That doesn't include the 2 cables which will come out to about $30. ...

 

Yes, it does.  The $125.54 link I provided at Amazon is for a SAS2LP with 2 breakout cables.

 

What are you drinking over there?  I'm going to have to order a case of that!  ;)

 

That price keeps changing, every time I checked it shows $150 with cables.

neweggnog is the same.

 

God knows what you are going to get with the luck of the draw.

Then if each of these comes from different sellers, there is tax and shipping for each. Jeeze.

 

I just went to buy a 128GB SDXC and the price changed out from under my just as I was going to proceed through the shopping cart.

 

Frequently Bought Together
Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 Add-on Card, 8-Channel SAS/SATA Adapter with 600MB/s per Channel   +   3WARE Cable Multi-lane Internal Cable (SFF-8087)   +   3WARE Cable, 1 Unit Of 1 Meter Multi-lane Internal (SFF-8087) Serial Ata Breakou
Price for all three: $151.06 
Add all three to Cart  Add all three to Wish List
These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item: Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 Add-on Card, 8-Channel SAS/SATA Adapter with 600MB/s per Channel $122.70
3WARE Cable Multi-lane Internal Cable (SFF-8087) $16.37
3WARE Cable, 1 Unit Of 1 Meter Multi-lane Internal (SFF-8087) Serial Ata Breakou $11.99

 

Better off buying used from someone on the forum.

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Thanks for all the great advice. I really have been wanting to virtualize with the unraid box so I will probably go with the SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O uATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C222 DDR3 1600.  It seems to have everything I need. I am a avid linux user. All I have is a linux laptop, a mac (for the wife) and the unraid (and a few ipads). This motherboard should fit all my needs. Thanks.

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Plenty of neat toys to spend money on these days  :)

 

My wife was complaining a couple months ago about how a few Photoshop operations were taking a bit longer than she liked ... so I built her a new system with a Core i7-4790 and a 1TB (well, nearly ... it's actually 960GB) SSD.    Power button to desktop is 8 seconds  :)    ... she's not complaining these days  8)

 

I could probably speed it up a bit with a PCIe M.2 ... but probably won't bother  :)

 

... perhaps on MY next system !!

 

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I am leaning towards XEN since I like to keep it as a headless server. The main thing I want to do is set up a two NASs. I want to keep unraid but also try out a ZFS setup.

 

The top uses of the unraid box are:

1. Time Machine.

2. Laptop Backup (BTSync)

3. Movies/Music server (NFS)

 

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With that goal, you could get away with the current hardware, CPU upgrade, memory upgrade, Controller upgrade and supplementary controller then.

It would work, just not as fast as you might want due to the limited ram.  There's something to be said for the ability to buffer data.

 

With the new board, it has IPMI, so you can also uses ESX, manage the bios remotely and then use the vsphere client and workstation 11 to help manage it.

 

With XEN it'll probably scream. Plus with the new board you'll have gained 4 ports from the get go.

 

My friend has a VPS business built on XEN, so it will work out nicely if you go that route.

 

Hardware to peek at. (I don't quite remember the RB-1200).

You'll probably want to use an SSD somewhere to cache or hold VM's

 

This allows 2.5" SSD's to be mounted in unused PCI slots. I have this and I'm about to use it on my newest build.

 

StarTech S25SLOTR 2.5in SATA Removable Hard Drive Bay for PC Expansion Slot

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998052

 

 

This allows mSATA's to be put in a 2.5" device (There are others that are nicer too, but it gives ideas).

You can raid the mSATA's or use PMP.  I have this, it works nicely on a HP Gen 8 machine.

None of the X10SL7 ports support PMP, so you can do RAID0, RAID1 or get a supplementary controller if desired.

StarTech 25SAT22MSAT HDD Accessory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998231

 

There's a nicer version by another company on Amazon.com that has a better form factor for 2.5s.

 

 

This is similiar to above using 2.5"s in a 3.5" format. I have this but have not really used it yet.

KINGWIN HDCV-2 Dual 2.5" to 3.5" SATA HDD Converter w/ Raid

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817990020

 

 

Addonics Quad mSATA PCI SSD - Sure wish I had this!!! LOL!

http://www.addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2.php

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