AMD E-350 and RaidZ1, will the cpu be powerfull enough?

S

s0lid

Limp Gawd
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Apr 17, 2011
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Planning to build a low power iSCSI host for my ESXi server and i've the following plan for the machine itself:
Mobo + cpu: Asus E35M1-M. http://geizhals.at/eu/a615033.html
Memory: 2x 4GB DDR3
Nic: Intel PRO/1000 PT. http://geizhals.at/eu/a180035.html
Mirror pool: 2x 640GB WD Blues (OS + VM Backups)
Raidz1: 4x 640GB WD Blacks (iSCSI)

OS will be either OI or Nexenta.
But the important question is before i start ordering anything: will the cpu be enough powerful for managing iSCSI and ZFS RaidZ1 same time at decent speeds (over 100MB/s) ?
 
Well you've already got an E350 running a RaidZ1 setup, right? And you said it was going at 90MB/s R/W?

I wouldn't imagine adding more burden would make it faster.
 
Errr, looks like I either wrote that really unclearly or you misunderstood me:
Planning to build a low power iSCSI host for my ESXi server and i've the following plan for the machine itself.

No I don't have any of that HW except HDDs, case and psu. So I'm asking is that board worthty investment.
 
I see a slight problem (maybe?). You want to use 6 total hard drives but the motherboard you chose has only 5 internal SATA. The 6th port is eSATA! Perhaps you knew this already? Further you choices for adding additional SATA HBA's is severely restricted because you want to use an Intel server NIC which is PCIe x4 which MUST go in the x16 PCIe slot.

Did you consider the Asus E35M1-I instead? (NOT the E35M1-I Deluxe)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732&Tpk=N82E16813131732

This board gives the full 6 SATA ports internal. Still have x16 for NIC (is x4 electrical like the other board). No other slots available but it sounds like you are not using them.
 
Silenus said:
I see a slight problem (maybe?). You want to use 6 total hard drives but the motherboard you chose has only 5 internal SATA. The 6th port is eSATA! Perhaps you knew this already? Further you choices for adding additional SATA HBA's is severely restricted because you want to use an Intel server NIC which is PCIe x4 which MUST go in the x16 PCIe slot.

Did you consider the Asus E35M1-I instead? (NOT the E35M1-I Deluxe)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732&Tpk=N82E16813131732

This board gives the full 6 SATA ports internal. Still have x16 for NIC (is x4 electrical like the other board). No other slots available but it sounds like you are not using them.
Click to expand...

it shouldn't be a problem to just use an eSATA-SATA cable and route it in a hole in the back. That's what I do since the ASRock board I use only has 4x internal SATA and use them for my HDD zpool and then I have a SSD for my OS drive on the eSATA.
 
s0rce said:
it shouldn't be a problem to just use an eSATA-SATA cable and route it in a hole in the back. That's what I do since the ASRock board I use only has 4x internal SATA and use them for my HDD zpool and then I have a SSD for my OS drive on the eSATA.
Click to expand...

Good call. Should have thought of that!
 
You may also want to look into the boards with a mini pci-e slot on them as well. There are 2 port HBAs that are mini pci-e(1x) that support port multiplying- they would be bandwith starved pretty quickly though.
I have the Asrock version E350M1 and have a few different disk configurations as well. I was going with the Samsung HD204UI's but performance was never my main concern (using onboard gigabit, so it was going to be bottleneck).
Otherwise I do have 2x4gb mem, 640's (WD6401AALS), 1TBs(HD103SJ), and 2TB disks to test with. Open Indiana and SE11 have pretty good support for the board with everything being detected out of the box. If you have a specific test you want to run, I should be able to set it up on Friday when I'm back in the office.
 
in case of interest here are my bonnie++ benchmarks from the e-350 with 4x 2tb hitach 5k3000, no compression, no dedup:

ekjSx.gif


data 7.25T start 2011.05.18 15608M 38 MB/s 94 195 MB/s 71 130 MB/s 66 25 MB/s 98 322 MB/s 57 658.9/s 6 16 10035/s 5510/s
 
Silenus said:
I see a slight problem (maybe?). You want to use 6 total hard drives but the motherboard you chose has only 5 internal SATA. The 6th port is eSATA! Perhaps you knew this already? Further you choices for adding additional SATA HBA's is severely restricted because you want to use an Intel server NIC which is PCIe x4 which MUST go in the x16 PCIe slot.

Did you consider the Asus E35M1-I instead? (NOT the E35M1-I Deluxe)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131732&Tpk=N82E16813131732

This board gives the full 6 SATA ports internal. Still have x16 for NIC (is x4 electrical like the other board). No other slots available but it sounds like you are not using them.
Click to expand...

Well i tried to find mini-itx board with 6 sata 3.0 ports but couldn't find any and that E35M1-I isn't available in EU and i may have need for those extra expansion ports in future.

Besides eSata port should work just fine if i use a esata -> sata cable :)

s0rce said:
in case of interest here are my bonnie++ benchmarks from the e-350 with 4x 2tb hitach 5k3000, no compression, no dedup:

data 7.25T start 2011.05.18 15608M 38 MB/s 94 195 MB/s 71 130 MB/s 66 25 MB/s 98 322 MB/s 57 658.9/s 6 16 10035/s 5510/s
Click to expand...

Thanks! Those numbers seem very promising for such a little board :)
Just wondering is Dedup very CPU power oriented or is it limited by ram. But it would be just icing on the cake, no real need for it anyways.
 
s0rce said:
in case of interest here are my bonnie++ benchmarks from the e-350 with 4x 2tb hitach 5k3000, no compression, no dedup:

ekjSx.gif


data 7.25T start 2011.05.18 15608M 38 MB/s 94 195 MB/s 71 130 MB/s 66 25 MB/s 98 322 MB/s 57 658.9/s 6 16 10035/s 5510/s
Click to expand...

Total usable disk space of 7.25T makes me think that you've just got a big old zpool with no redundancy (raidz1,2)? If you do indeed get this throughput with RaidZ1 that's quite impressive from the E-350.
 
@antioch

I'm not sure what the best way to get the actual space is but

df -h reports 5.4T and zpool status confirms raidz1-0
 
195MB/s seq write, 322MB/s seq read in raidz1 is *incredibly* faster than the "90MB/s R/W" you quoted in a different thread.

Amazing with the E-350 if it's true.
 
I will do 2 tests tomorrow using parts from my Server and my HTPC (both in sig)
Here is how the 2 test machines will be setup:

Athlon X2 Setup:
Athlon X2 250@3GHz, Asus M4A78LT-M LE, Mushkin <M 2x4GB DDR3, 2GB Flash Drive (OS), 4x WD 2TB EARS (Raidz1), ZFSguru 0.1.8 RootonZFS

Zacate Setup:
AMD E-350 @1.6Ghz, MSI E350IA-E45, Muskin <M 2x4GB DDR3, 2GB Flash drive (OS), 4x WD 2TB EARS (Raidz1), ZFSguru 0.1.8 RootonZFS

I will be using my main storage drives and pool in these tests so I can't do anything destructive but both setups will be tuned for 8GB ram and I will be using the non-destructive benchmark that is built into ZFSguru. I will do a few different benchmarks of different sizes and sources. If the Zacate setup is fast enough it will be my new storage server and my Athlon will become a VM Server.
 
antioch said:
195MB/s seq write, 322MB/s seq read in raidz1 is *incredibly* faster than the "90MB/s R/W" you quoted in a different thread.

Amazing with the E-350 if it's true.
Click to expand...

The 90 MBs R/W was over gigE to my laptop (ubuntu) via NFS
 
jtg1993 said:
I will do 2 tests tomorrow using parts from my Server and my HTPC (both in sig)
Here is how the 2 test machines will be setup:

Athlon X2 Setup:
Athlon X2 250@3GHz, Asus M4A78LT-M LE, Mushkin <M 2x4GB DDR3, 2GB Flash Drive (OS), 4x WD 2TB EARS (Raidz1), ZFSguru 0.1.8 RootonZFS

Zacate Setup:
AMD E-350 @1.6Ghz, MSI E350IA-E45, Muskin <M 2x4GB DDR3, 2GB Flash drive (OS), 4x WD 2TB EARS (Raidz1), ZFSguru 0.1.8 RootonZFS

I will be using my main storage drives and pool in these tests so I can't do anything destructive but both setups will be tuned for 8GB ram and I will be using the non-destructive benchmark that is built into ZFSguru. I will do a few different benchmarks of different sizes and sources. If the Zacate setup is fast enough it will be my new storage server and my Athlon will become a VM Server.
Click to expand...

This sounds great - can't wait to see the results.
 
antioch said:
This sounds great - can't wait to see the results.
Click to expand...

Second :]
Getting a sub 80W system for iSCSI server would be just perfect and with capability to run it nearly passive!

Also when using zfs I could retire my current perc5 controller to my overgrown lan rig. OT: qx9650, rampage formula, 4gb, 9800gx2, 1kw coolermaster. Couple TBs of HW raid? why not :D
 
antioch said:
Hmm, I wonder why the disparity? Why so slow to Ubuntu? Can you try NFS to Windows? I've heard that linux NFS is slow.
Click to expand...

my only windows computer is old and is only 100mbit ethernet so no benchmarks from it. Also SMB on linux is slower. I figured it was just overhead, the best I could possibly get was 125MB/s on gigE anyways so 90 seemed quite good.
 
s0rce said:
my only windows computer is old and is only 100mbit ethernet so no benchmarks from it. Also SMB on linux is slower. I figured it was just overhead, the best I could possibly get was 125MB/s on gigE anyways so 90 seemed quite good.
Click to expand...

So what where those bonnie benchmarks doing? Reading and writing to locally?
 
antioch said:
So what where those bonnie benchmarks doing? Reading and writing to locally?
Click to expand...

They were run locally (via the Napp-it web interface).

The 90 MB/sec was via dd over the network from my laptop. I ran netperf too but I can't remember the result off hand.
 
The pool has compression and access times turned off and has over 1.4TB of movies and files on it. All the tests are done using the ZFSguru non-destructive benchmark.

Test 1 using Athlon:
Size : 16GB
Source : zero
Read : 177 MB/s
Write : 162 MB/s

Test 2 using Athlon:
Size : 16GB
Source : random
Read : 130 MB/s
Write : 79 MB/s

Test 1 With Zacate:
Size : 16GB
Source : zero
Read : 200 MB/s
Write: 139 MB/s
Hmm read is faster but write is slower.

Test 2 with Zacate:
Size : 16GB
Source : random
Read : 172 MB/s
Write : 28 MB/s
Wow that write is low. I should of checked top, the cpu was probably pegged.

Test 3 with Zacate with an 8GB test size:
Size : 8GB
Source : zero
Read : 128 MB/s
Write : 171 MB/s

Test 4 with Zacate;
Size : 32GB
Source : zero
Read : 192 MB/s
Write : 137 MB/s

TLDR; An AMD E-350 is more then fast enough for a 4 disk Raidz1.
 
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jtg1993 said:
TLDR; An AMD E-350 is more then fast enough for a 4 disk Raidz1.
Click to expand...

Those numbers are impressive! They beat out every dual-core Atom based NAS out there for 4-disk RAID5 (And those Atoms have Hyper Threading while the Zacate doesn't!). True, you do have more RAM than the NASes do, but I don't think for the software NAS the RAM increase would make as dramatic a difference.
 
Good thread, I am thinking about getting one of these for my server. An 18watt APU is awesome.
 
Red Falcon said:
Good thread, I am thinking about getting one of these for my server. An 18watt APU is awesome.
Click to expand...

Do you have any numbers to support that claim? The only E-350 board review I saw had the system idle at 25W which I think is pretty high... I'd love to get one that idles in the 10's.
 
antioch said:
Do you have any numbers to support that claim? The only E-350 board review I saw had the system idle at 25W which I think is pretty high... I'd love to get one that idles in the 10's.
Click to expand...

Servethehome reported 18-32W for the E-350.

My system uses about 45W idle, which seems pretty reasonable. Each of the 4 5k3000 use 4.4W according to the hitachi datasheet. The SDD (Kingston SSD now) uses about 1W idle. So 18+4*4.4+1=36.6. 36.6/45 is about 80% which is pretty reasonable for a PSU efficiency value. With a pico-PSU I might get it sightly lower, or if the drives could sleep but its pretty good. Also, the Hitachi Ultrastar (enterprise) 5k3000 drives appear to have some sort of lower RPM idle with is only 3.2W but they are more expensive compared to the Desktar brand consumer drives.

refs:

http://www.servethehome.com/amd-zacate-e-350-16ghz-fusion-apu-brazos-benchmarks-review/

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/02D9197756A273D0862577D50024EC1D/$file/DS5K3000_ds.pdf

http://www.kingston.com/channelmarketingcenter/ssdnow/literature/MKD_169_SSDNow_v100.pdf

edit: this is probably somewhat wrong as the 18W watts for the e-350 reported by serve the home might have been measured at the wall so includes some of the PSU overhead and had a different amount of RAM.
 
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That power usage seems promising :)
Too bad that my WD hdds use 8.3W in load according to WDs product site. 7.7W in idle...
So that makes it 49.8w just for hdds that are in use :E

But i can live with that :p
 
antioch said:
Do you have any numbers to support that claim? The only E-350 board review I saw had the system idle at 25W which I think is pretty high... I'd love to get one that idles in the 10's.
Click to expand...

It was on wiki, look up the E-350 to find it. btw, it was the APU which ran at 18watts, not the board on a whole, though 25watts sounds about right.
 
antioch said:
Those must be some old HDs!
Click to expand...

Yeaah 2x WD6400AAKS and 4x WD6401AALS, i may upg the AALS to 1-2TB Hitachis if needed but i'm going to setup a second fileserver to my ESXi host using a IO and BR10i controller with 8x 5K3000 2TB drives :)
 
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