AMD A8-7650K Home VM Sevrer Build

M

messerchmidt

Gawd
Joined
Nov 2, 2005
Messages
615
Hello,

A family friend asked me on advice for upgrading thier home server. currently a core 2 e6300 @ 2.8, gigabyte DQ6 board, and 2gb ram. They have a dual nic intel pcie card. This is a rig that I build it for them many years ago when they upgraded to an i7 920 using their old parts and some.

It runs pfsense and windows server 2008 r2 in a vm. They want to add a file server for movies,etc

I am just going to swap the internals.

would a:
AMD A8-7650k apu
GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3H (8x SATA, sufficient PCIE slots)
8gb or 16gb ddr3L

some 3-4TB HDs for movies,etc (TBA)

be sufficient for their needs?
it is about 160$ CDN cheaper than a similar intel build using an i3.
Has anyone played the AMD fm2+ as a home server?

It needs to work so they do not call me all the time, etc

Edit: sorry it has 2gb ddr2 and not 4gb of ram
 
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Uhm...
Care to explain what the current hardware can't do?
The current hardware can saturate a gigabit just fine and that includes firewalling.
//Danne
 
needs more ram and a bit more cpu to add a few more vms.

hd above 2tb do not seem to work well on this sata controllers on the current board

either an i3 or a8 apu. the a8 setup is significantly cheaper
 
go walk around some businesses and government buildings around upgrade times and do some 'dumpster diving'. I picked up a Lenovo Thinkstation x58 quad xeon (minus hard drives) and then scavenged about 60GB of ram but couldn't only get 22GB in the thing. Also picked up a couple sandy bridge desktops.

works great running server '12 DC in a home lab.

You'd be surprised what people throw away after they're out of warranty
 
Hold on here, there are several things here that makes me go this doesn't sound right.

1. What does this "server" actually do apart from firewalling?
The reason I'm asking is because if you ditch Windows 2008 it's perfectly capable to do both that and do SMB. You can run FreeBSD or whatever your prefer and it'll more than sufficient for a busy home network and it'll run just fine. However, if you want to use ZFS you should have at least 4Gb of RAM but 8Gb will be more than enough.

2. The DQ6 board or rather the chipset (ICH9/ICH9R) handles +2TB drives just fine, what "issues" are you seeing? Have you update to the latest BIOS? You can probably find a modded BIOS with even more current ROM-modules ("drivers/firmware") for that board.

3. If you care about the data non ECC is a bad idea. If you don't, well go ahead then.

4. AMD is just a bad idea for this overall, go all Intel and it'll work fine.

5. If you're dead set on getting new hardware...

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116950&_ga=1.22113403.134120536.1432062557
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157415&_ga=1.22113403.134120536.1432062557
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239370&_ga=1.22113403.134120536.1432062557

Before you ask, this mobo actually does ECC and I've also taken in consideration that it may come with release firmware (CPU support).
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=Q87WS-DL#Memory

If you want an i3 CPU instead, http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116945

..and if you don't care and want to go the non ECC route (still everything all Intel)

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116945
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130798
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148540

6. Run plain FreeBSD 10.1 and pf, Samba for sharing, NFS(d) and MiniDLNA if needed. If you want a frontend for torrents use Transmission etc. Everything is in ports so it's really easy to install. I still think I have a good guide about pf too aroud if you want one. bhyve is also available if you need VMs for some unknown reason.
//Danne
 
hello

thanks for the replies

they will not be storing anything of value, just some movies and other junk. ZFS and such are thus not a concern.

i was looking at an i3 with a supermicro board and ecc ram, or an atom c2000 series for them. They want to do this for as little money as possible, and the amd route seems to fit the bill.

frankly, it would save me a lot of work if they just purchased a qnap or synology nas and did not touch anything else.:eek:


maybe it is the bios. windows server is not formatting any drivers over 2tb that are connected. might be old software and/or a bios.
 
Use GPT partitions *sigh*

Just go for the cheap Intel build and the Pentium CPU, run FreeBSD or whatever you prefer. It'll save you a lot of hassle compared to Windows and the AMD route and a lot of VMs and the performance will be just slightly lower despite 2 cores....

..or just reinstall it as in that case the current hardware will do fine, FreeBSD 10.1, re-partition the HDDs to use GPT and use UFS2 without journaling. Done

//Danne
 
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i did not setup the VMs, just the hardware.

another family friend was going to do the VM setup using win2012 r2 server and hyper v.

i am going to put it to them.

win2012 r2 as a windows server sharing a printer,etc

pfsense 2.2.2 as the router/dhcp and a openvpn server

xpenology on unraid to store the media files as a nas

some other vm to act a proxy for their vpn service

quite the mission to figure this out
 
That has to be the most overly complex setup ever for a home network...

A simple example on how to do this...

OS: FreeBSD 10.1
Firewall: pf/ipfw (builtin) - altq (builtin) if you need traffic shaping
DHCP: isc-dhcpd (ports) or dnsmasq (ports)
VPN: OpenVPN (use ports)
File sharing: Samba (ports), NFSd (builtin), minidlna (ports)
Printer sharing: CUPS (ports) and/or p910nd (ports)
If VMs are needed: bhyve (builtin)

Tell the person in question not to make stuff overly complex, the current hw (the c2d) will do this just fine without breaking a sweat.

Backup configuration -->
make a copy of:
/usr/local/etc (directory)
/etc/rc.conf
/etc/sysctl.conf
/boot/loader.conf (if modified)
/etc/pf.conf

Done
//Danne
 
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i built my dad a new pc for his office using an athlon 5350, and its great. vmware workstation 11 works great for the odd program that needs xp
 
why is there so much AMD hate out there? lol

looks like an i3 is fine. now i need to pick a board

no one seems to have the c2250s supermicros here. the 8 core is overkill
 
Because they're slow, expensive for what it is and dispatch a lot of heat.
Just go with something that has much Intel controllers as possible, LAN etc and preferable Realtek audio as they have the best support in Windows and Linux/BSD too AFAIK.
If you don't want the MSI board you also have Asus H97M-PLUS which is available at around the same price. I take it you wont go the ECC route anyways.
There's no point in going to for something that is ridiculously slow and overpriced, hence why no one is going the Atom route.
//Danne
 
The AMD quads are really hyperthreaded dual core when it comes to floating point, and with all those VMs the scheduler performance of the host OS must be REALLY optimized for the AMD clustered SMT setup or performance will suck.

Just drop a Core 2 Quad in there. All over ebay for $50.

My Server 2012 R2 box has a Q6600 in it and I run tons of Hyper-V linux machines without problem.
 
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