It seems I cannot use registered ECC RAM in ASUS M4A79T Deluxe m/b.

So I’m going with Patriot Signature 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) for $130 instead.

The parts I ordered last week arrived on Friday. Unfortunately I forgot to order the RAM. It turns out the RAM I had selected was the wrong RAM; it was DDR2. The m/b takes DDR3. But I didn’t find that out until after I ordered it on Saturday, along with two small SATA drives for the OS. I had thought I had several spare SATA drives here, but it turns out I don’t. I didn’t notice that until after I’d ordered the RAM.

First thing Monday morning, I’ll call Newegg and cancel the RAM order and the SATA order. Then I’ll place a new order.

What’s in the new order?

1. WINTEC 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1333 $152
2. Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD $40
3. Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380215AS 80GB 7200 RPM SATA HDD $35
4. ENERMAX INFINITI EIN720AWT 720W PSU $150

Why a new PSU? I think I’d like something with a bit more power. The above PSU is modular and I can add more cables as required and route them as required.

Why two different HDD for the SATA? Why not?

Tonight I purchased the following items:

1. ENERMAX ECO80+ EES620AWT 620W for $120
2. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
3. ASUS M4A79T Deluxe m/b for $180
4. AMD Phenom II X4 945 CPU $150
5. 2x SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II 4 port at $60 each for $120
6. Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97
7. Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express for $31
8. HITACHI Deskstar HD32000 IDK/7K (0S00164) 2TB 7200 RPM 5 @ $155
9. Nippon Labs SATA Adpater Molex 4-Pin PC power cable to 2 x SATA Converter Cables 2 for $7 each

Total cost is about $1430 with shipping.

I would like to buy, but it’s not available:

1. LIAN LI PC-A71F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case $240 (from mwave)

HAST has just been added to FreeBSD:

HAST allows to transparently store data on two physically separated machines connected over the TCP/IP network. Those two machines together will be called a cluster and each machine is one cluster node. HAST works in Primary-Secondary (Master-Backup, Master-Slave) configuration, which means that only one of the cluster nodes can be active at any given time. Active node will be called Primary node. This is the node that will be able to handle I/O requests to HAST-managed devices. Currently HAST is limited to two cluster nodes in total.

Imagine putting PostgreSQL on a FreeBSD system running ZFS within a cluster running HAST.

Now that’s a great combination of open source solutions.

The liveusb-creator is a cross-platform tool for easily installing live operating systems on to USB flash drives. It runs on various operating systems and allows you to create a bootable device from an ISO image.

This could be useful for advocacy purposes.

Interesting posts here on ZFS tuning, espcially posts #34 and #35.

Post #37 has an interesting perl solution.

I recently wrote about a tower case solution which sliced $500 off the cost. Last night we found an ASUS m/b for a Phenom II which supports ECC. This will be a cheaper faster solution. I will, however, have to buy a NIC. This NIC runs a Realtek chipset. No thanks.

1. LIAN LI PC-A71F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case $240 (from mwave)
2. Silencer 610 EPS12V from PC Power and Cooling for $99
3. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
4. ASUS M4A79T Deluxe m/b for $180
5. AMD Phenom II X4 945 CPU $150
6. 2x SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II 4 port at $60 each for $120
7. Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97
8. Intel EXPI9400PTBLK 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit for $76

You will notice the new RAID cards don’t need special SATA cables.

Total cost is about $1040 with shipping.

This is the same cost as the previous Intel board, but the Asus motherboard and CPU combination would have more power and I/O. Thus, we have increased the power of the system without increasing the price.

I had been looking at Intel EXPI9301CT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit NIC for $40 but preferred the above NIC because it has Wake On LAN. Or perhaps use this cheaper Intel EXPI9301CTBLK card for $31 that jbeez is using on his gateway box, which is running ZFS.

For the HDD, I’ll buy 5x SAMSUNG F1 RAID Class HE103UJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ at $150 each: their TLER/ERC is set to 7 seconds.

Change of mind: I’ll probably buy the HITACHI Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA3302TB 7200 RPM 32MB drives. Double the space, for the same price; just not RAID-specific HDD. For the same price, I’ll have a 6TB system, assuming raidz2.

However, I may go for raidz1, which will allow for one disk failure. This would give me an 8TB system with 5HDD. Again, reliability rules, so I’ll probably go with raidz2.

That puts the total cost for a 3TB system at $1770. Or a 6TB system if I buy the Hitachi drives.

NOTE: This was previously mentioned as a 4.5TB system. I mistakenly thought the Samsung F1 was a 1.45TB drive. It is not: it is a 1TB drive.

I’ve started seeing these messages recently:

openvpn[2688]: latens.example.org/10.99.36.17:60467 Authenticate/Decrypt packet error: bad packet ID (may be a replay): [ #999 ] — see the man page entry for –no-replay and –replay-window for more info or silence this warning with –mute-replay-warnings

After reading the man page, I decided to add the following and restart openvpn:

replay-window 64 20

We’ll see….

Based on several recent posts, I found a new case, which I like quite a bit. My thanks to Dan Naumov for the concept.

1. LIAN LI PC-A71F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case $240 (from mwave)
2. Antec EarthWatts EA650 650W PSU $80
3. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
4. Intel S3200SHV LGA 775 Intel 3200 m/b $200
5. Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU $190
6. SATA cables $22
7. Supermicro LSI MegaRAID 8 Port SAS RAID Controller $118
8. Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97

Total cost is about $1020 with shipping.

Or, perhaps the Silencer 610 EPS12V from PC Power and Cooling.

I could also do this M/B and CPU. However Newegg doesn’t mentioned ECC for this board. Moses has this board. ASUS has issued an updated BIOS that handles ECC. He will try ECC soon and report back.

1. AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad CPU for $150
2. MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard for $170

That motherboard/CPU would have more power and I/O compared the Intel board.

This would be $320 versus $390, a savings of $70. That savings might go towards a better NIC. The M/B has a Realtek built-in. I’d rather have something like an Intel or a Broadcom.

I could also go with two SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II 4 port for $60 each for roughly the same price as the Supermicro RAID card.

Wes Morgan suggested this:

1. Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Pedestal case $270
2. Antec CP-850 850W PSU $109
3. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
4. Intel S3200SHV LGA 775 Intel 3200 m/b $200
5. Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU $190
6. SATA cables $60
7. Supermicro LSI MegaRAID 8 Port SAS RAID Controller $118
8. Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97

Total price with shipping $1100 roughly.

And like Wes says, $400 less than the Supermicro.

I also like the above with this Supermicro case:

1. SUPERMICRO CSE-743T-645B Black 4U Pedestal Chassis w/ 645W Power Supply $320
2. Samsung SATA CD/DVD Burner $20 (+ $8 shipping)
3. Intel S3200SHV LGA 775 Intel 3200 m/b $200
4. Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU $190
5. SATA cables $60
6. Supermicro LSI MegaRAID 8 Port SAS RAID Controller $118
7. Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC $97

Total price with shipping, roughly $1,040. The main difference, you get a Supermicro case with a PSU.

Another interesting SATA card is the SYBA SY-PEX40008 PCI Express SATA II 4 port card for $60.

Moses/Amertrash also has this SAS3042e (pdf) which contains the LSISAS1064 chipset and can support up to four SATA devices. It is, more or less, this card from Newegg.