Re: Question on hardware upgrade path....

Hi,

I do not have a 'direct' reply but some leads.

When I searched for hardware for this one:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/freebsd-enterprise-1-pb-storage/

Three companies stood out - especially with FreeBSD support.

Supermicro:
- https://supermicro.com/en/products/motherboards/matrix

ASRock Rack:
- https://asrockrack.com

TYAN:
- https://mitaccomputing.com/en/products/motherboards

Even if - for example - TYAN - did not mention FreeBSD as supported system on their page - when I asked them directly over email - they were very friendly and like "We just tested to boot FreeBSD ISO on that server and it boots/installs ... what else you want to know/test?".

As a general rule - take AMD Ryzen (Embedded or not) or AMD EPYC.

Intel was OK before AMD introduced ZEN architectures - after that - its just more 'bad' in all metrics (power/speeds/efficiency/...) for any Intel offerings.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
vermaden



    
  
  


> I asked this once before ~10 years ago and got good answers, so
> back to the well :-)
> 
> I have a production machine that is on a Supermicro board with
> integrated BMC/IPMI (important, as I have to be able to get to an
> actual console remotely if it needs to be rebooted and a competent
> human isn't always where it is operating) and currently is a Xeon
> E-2146G processor. Moderate RAM by modern standards (64Gb);
> it is mixed compute and file service with a Mellanox card in it to get
> into the 10/40Gb network range, plus a LSI 3224 card for SATA/SAS
> attached stuff. There are also 8 SATA ports on the motherboard
> itself and most are in-use, plus a couple of (Gen3) nVME slots.
> 
> I'd like to improve compute performance however energy efficiency
> when idle, which it often is, is important as well. As it stands
> right now it idles on a "full system" basis with the spinning rust
> drives spun down (which they often are as the OS and high-use
> stuff is on SSD or nVME) at a very low power consumption, but
> obviously when highly-active either for compile or I/O that goes
> up a bunch which is fine. Losing the current very low idle power
> consumption (on a comparative basis) is not a trade I want to
> make.
> 
> Existing server case (4u rack) is where this thing will live.
> 
> What I'd LIKE to find is a board with one or more SFP+ (or QSFP)
> ports on it but it appears everyone has decided 10GigE copper is
> what they're including. Its not the same thing because for in-rack
> and close-in interconnect a direct-attach cable runs a LOT cooler
> on BOTH ends to the switch(es) in question, and for longer
> distance I'd prefer to stuff a fiber transceiver in the port
> rather than do copper anyway as glass (and the transceivers) at
> reasonable speeds have gotten quite-reasonable in recent years.
> I'm ok with sticking with the Mellanox card as the answer to that,
> but a "skinny" slot board runs into trouble because I need the SAS
> card so I need at least two reasonable-lane-count pci slots (and
> would like more in order to retain expansion capacity)
> 
> I'm not picky about either AMD or Intel but ECC RAM is necessary
> as this is a ZFS box and data corruption is unacceptable,
> obviously, thus in the Intel world anyway this points at somewhere
> in the Xeon line.
> 
> GPU/AI stuff is irrelevant to this machine's use case.
> 
> Upgrade suggestions aimed toward the CPU arena? This may wind up
> deferred due to RAM shortages and resulting prices right now, but
> I'm exploring it anyway.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> -- 
> Karl Denninger
> [email protected]
> The Market Ticker
> [S/MIME encrypted email preferred]