To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by si-ghan-bi » Fri Sep 28, 2012 4:25 pm

mkush wrote: flash the firmware to make it think it's a 2010, and put in a 3.33GHz six-core chip


Source?
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by elfpltfn » Fri Sep 28, 2012 6:46 pm

mkush wrote:Wow... 10 3.5" drives? How'd you fit those in there? Or external?


Image
I had to custom make the mounting rails- but it works pretty well. (Yes- I know there are only 9, 10 is the external time machine drive)
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by mkush » Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:08 am

Awesome job!
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by mkush » Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:02 pm

si-ghan-bi wrote:
mkush wrote: flash the firmware to make it think it's a 2010, and put in a 3.33GHz six-core chip


Source?


http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,852.0.html

You have to create an account on their board and log in, then if you look at the bottom of the first post in the thread above, you can download the utility. It downloads the firmware straight from Apple when it runs.

Executive summary: 2009 and 2010 Mac Pros are virtually hardware identical. With the firmware update, a 2009 machine (MacPro4,1) thinks its a 2010 (MacPro5,1). You can then install Westmere Xeons.

If you get an 8-core 2009 machine, you can install a pair of 6-core chips and get a 12-core machine. This however is slightly challenging because the 4-core chips you're replacing in the 2009 machine did not have integrated heat spreaders like the "normal" Intel chips have. That means that the heatsink does not fit correctly. There seem to be ways around this (hardware tweaks) but I did not feel like going that route because (1) it looked more challenging/risky than I felt up to, (2) the base price of a 2009 8-core machine was (duh) higher than a 4-core and (3) the CPUs are still expensive, say around $1200 each.

The route I chose was to buy the cheapest 4-core 2009 possible (2.66GHz). After the firmware flash, you can put in a 6-core 3.33GHz (W3680) which can be had for around $550, or a 6-core 3.46GHz (W3690) which uses the same power and dissipates the same heat as the W3680. The downside is that the W3690 costs more like $1050, so it's a $500 premium. I went that way although I'm still not sure it was the right choice. $500 is a pretty big difference. Anyway, important to note that going the single CPU route, you do NOT have the issue with the heatsink like you do if you want to upgrade dual CPUs: both the old CPU and the new CPU use the integrated heat spreader, so all is compatible, just drop in the new CPU and put everything back together.

The Mac Pro I found on eBay was $1300 shipped. There were ones slightly cheaper, but they did not include shipping and did not include the original box which I like to have. So if you want, you can get the equivalent of a $3000 new 3.33GHz Pro for under $2000.

Finally, the memory is important. If you get 1333MHz memory and your CPU supports it, so does the 2009 Mac Pro. I ordered Kingston KTA-MP1333DRK3/24G, which is 3x 8GB modules. Was $191 on Amazon.

I have not received any of this yet. I will report back once all is done.
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by si-ghan-bi » Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:22 pm

Yeah, it seems here as well the price is 1000+600 Euro for the machine and new processor (and not, I don't think the faster ones was worth the price :).
I think it's still a lot of money for a 6-core machine.

I'm also looking for a machine to build my first NAS and I surely need ECC memory and space for some disks (ok, 6 are for me enough). Power consumption should not be too high (€ 15 for each 10 W idle).
I was thinking about either a custom build with FreeNAS/Solaris or a Mac (my current iMac 2007 or a used Mac Pro). The first option is far cheaper and very probably better performing (I have nothing against ZEVO, but I don't think it's faster than a Solaris machine), however the second option gives me all the OS X features (Spotlight server for example) and maybe more software (e.g. Plex Media Server is available only for mac, win, linux).
Still, 1600 Euro is far too much and I cannot convince myself for it (the iMac would be cheap, but then I have only one FW800 bus that means about 80 MB/s and lots of external drives).
Another option is an hackintosh, it would lower the price while keeping OS X. However, I plan to expose the machine to the Internet (or something similar) and I'm not sure I can trust OS X enough (however a VM would do).

Summary: why do you really need a OS X system?
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by flight16 » Sun Sep 30, 2012 10:27 am

mkush wrote:
flight16 wrote:bought a Mac Pro, and haven't looked back
Good to know. So your Mac Pro setup has how many drives? Four in a RAIDZ or are you running more? I think my idea of six should be fine.


Just RAIDZ with 2TB x 4 drives.

If you're thinking about a 2009, you may have to get the server edition of the OS to get a 64 bit kernel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro#Specifications.
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by elfpltfn » Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:09 am

I'm not sure that's true, you can force the kernel to 64 by using the kernel flag -force64 in com.apple.boot.plist (as long as the hardware supports it)
(or hold down 6 and 4 during boot.)

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/ ... ist.5.html
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by strangeluck » Tue Oct 09, 2012 12:36 pm

elfpltfn wrote:
mkush wrote:Wow... 10 3.5" drives? How'd you fit those in there? Or external?


I had to custom make the mounting rails- but it works pretty well. (Yes- I know there are only 9, 10 is the external time machine drive)


Wow, that's a great looking mod! I'd love to read about how you did it. Please consider blogging about it somewhere! Oh, and don't forget to post a link here! :)

Craig
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by engineer » Wed Oct 17, 2012 5:26 am

Mac OS 10.8 (Mountain Lion), ZEVO CE, MacPro Late 2008 (4 disk bays, 16 GB ECC RAM) - would like to use it for a raidz configuration.
Machine has USB2, FW400, FW800 - so FW800 is the best option for external expansion (I do not like to put more than 4 disks with a hack into the machine, because that changes the heat flow).
I have been using ZEVO with single disks with great success and no failures whatsoever ever since it had been released. Thank you for such a great port of ZFS.
What are the recommended configurations of disks (assuming 2, 3 or 4 TB disks with 4 KB sectors, I have a bunch of 2 and 3 TB ones, and within the limit of ZEVO CE 16 TB limit) for raidz, raidz2, raidz3?
And what external enclosures would allow use of multiple 3.5" disks as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) and work with ZEVO CE? I guess FW800 is the way for its data transfer rate, or installing an eSATA card and using eSATA).
Another option for part of the problem would be using two LaCie big2 Thunderbolt double disk enclosures connected to my MacBook Pro in a raidz configuration - does that work?
Thanks for any pointers and experiences.
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Re: To Build a Mac Pro ZFS Machine or Not?

Post by grahamperrin » Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:12 pm

RAID-Z and enclosure: some discussion under Performance Observation.

Order of things on a bus, with ZIL, L2ARC and solid state in the mix: Performance issue with FW800 connection order?
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