Xeon e5503 for NAS cpu?

[KontonNoUmi]

I have an old server lying around with a xeon e5503 (nehalem cpu, 2x2ghz)  in it. Would that be usable as a base for a NAS? From what I've read, any cpu is fine, but I am a bit sceptical, since this cpu is 13 years old. The server would mostly be used for serving files with Linux + ZFS + Samba.

[Agall]

17 minutes ago, KontonNoUmi said:

I have an old server lying around with a xeon e5503 (nehalem cpu, 2x2ghz)  in it. Would that be usable as a base for a NAS? From what I've read, any cpu is fine, but I am a bit sceptical, since this cpu is 13 years old. The server would mostly be used for serving files with Linux + ZFS + Samba.

Are you running the RAID locally on the machine or is it just an SMB host for another device?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

nehalem is ancient and ridicolously inefficient just buy a cheap (~50$ or atleast <100$) ivy bridge or haswell i3/i5 prebuilt since those will be alot more efficient and a ton faster than that slow nehalem, efficiency matters if you wanna run it 24/7 cause that power consumption adds up over time and those newer prebuilts will pay for themselves in reduced power bills

[LIGISTX]

49 minutes ago, KontonNoUmi said:

I have an old server lying around with a xeon e5503 (nehalem cpu, 2x2ghz)  in it. Would that be usable as a base for a NAS? From what I've read, any cpu is fine, but I am a bit sceptical, since this cpu is 13 years old. The server would mostly be used for serving files with Linux + ZFS + Samba.

It would work perfectly fine, but it will use A LOT of power to do 0 work. But yes, it would be fine. It takes almost no CPU power to run a ZFS array for a home environment. But that server I bet will use 200+ watts at idle…. A newer system would use 20. 

[MG2R]

It'll be fine. I'm running ZFS+nextcloud+Plex+linux iso acquisition system+borg backup+docker swarm on an Intel e5620. Idle power with 8 HDDs of the R520 server it is housed in is about 90W, so there's that.

 

The only thing I wouldn't expect with that specific CPU is Plex transcoding. I can barely transcode a single 1080p stream on mine and it has double the cores and quadruple the threads of yours.

 

Simple file serving though will not be a problem. My system basically runs at idle except for plex.

 

Edit to add: if you have it lying around, just set it up and test? At worst, you'll spend an evening of tinkering with computers.

[KontonNoUmi]

11 hours ago, MG2R said:

Edit to add: if you have it lying around, just set it up and test? At worst, you'll spend an evening of tinkering with computers.

I tried, but all of its drives seemed to be broken; only one of them showed up in the Linux live environment at all, and even that failed to mount (though having slept on it once I realised that it may have just been in a RAID array or similar with the other two, and thus would now require formatting - I'll check that when I get home). Thus, having had no spare disks lying around and not wanting to spend money on new ones until I had a concrete plan, I was kind of stumped.

[LIGISTX]

2 hours ago, KontonNoUmi said:

I tried, but all of its drives seemed to be broken; only one of them showed up in the Linux live environment at all, and even that failed to mount (though having slept on it once I realised that it may have just been in a RAID array or similar with the other two, and thus would now require formatting - I'll check that when I get home). Thus, having had no spare disks lying around and not wanting to spend money on new ones until I had a concrete plan, I was kind of stumped.

How are they plugged in? Are you using a RAID controller? Ideally for testing, plug them directly into mobo SATA ports. 

[KontonNoUmi]

1 hour ago, LIGISTX said:

How are they plugged in? Are you using a RAID controller? Ideally for testing, plug them directly into mobo SATA ports. 

I think they are sas drives, and they are plugged into a daughterboard, so unfortunately I can't... Also, now none of them are showing up...

[LIGISTX]

11 minutes ago, KontonNoUmi said:

I think they are sas drives, and they are plugged into a daughterboard, so unfortunately I can't... Also, now none of them are showing up...

Need to figure out what board they are plugged into exactly. 

[KontonNoUmi]

2 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Need to figure out what board they are plugged into exactly. 

https://parts.metservers.com/46m0816-ibm-x3200-x3500-m2-m3-sas-sata-3.5-backplane

[LIGISTX]

42 minutes ago, KontonNoUmi said:

https://parts.metservers.com/46m0816-ibm-x3200-x3500-m2-m3-sas-sata-3.5-backplane

I have bed cell service at the moment so googling info is not really working. But I’d advise trying to determine if this is a RAID card or a simple HBA. If it is a RAID card, you would want to make sure RAID is disabled, and also see if the card itself is seeing drives or not. 

[KontonNoUmi]

19 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

I have bed cell service at the moment so googling info is not really working. But I’d advise trying to determine if this is a RAID card or a simple HBA. If it is a RAID card, you would want to make sure RAID is disabled, and also see if the card itself is seeing drives or not. 

From what I can tell it seems to just be a backplane that splits the SAS coming from the mobo to four, and combines it with the power connector from the psu. Also, I got my hands on an old laptop hdd which I can reformat; I plugged it in to the daughterboard and it shows up in the Ubuntu live environment, and I can even read the files, but the gui druve partitioner kept crashing. I didn't have the time try doing it from the terminal, so it might be the installer's fault, but it definitely doesn't seem like a good sign.

[MG2R]

Just as an addendum: My server is currently serving a video over plex and moving files in my library, power usage is 150W. Peak wattage is 210W for my configuration. Again, Poweredge R510, 8 HDDs, 2x8 GB DDR3, Intel Xeon E5620, single PSU in use (don't have redundant power), HBA, not RAID controller. 1 SATA SSD.

 

Take maybe average 110W, that means about 1MWh or 1000kWh per year. For me, that's roughly 300-500 euro/year of electricity, depending on wheteher or not we're currently in a pandemic. I'm fortunate enough to have family with a surplus of solar power.