# New server - suggestions for experiments welcome



## Savagedlight (Nov 11, 2013)

Hey!
I'm receiving a new storage server early this week, and am going to play/experiment with it before I deploy it. 

I'm going to do performance tests on various ZFS RAID configurations, with and without GELI, as well as testing how fast the CPU can eat through various ciphers with the OpenSSL suite, as well as a GELI-encrypted md-backed file system, if I can. There's also going to be some extensive testing of bhyve.

I'm wondering if you guys have any other suggestions for things to do with it? This can involve other operating systems than FreeBSD.

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Specifications:
Chassis: Supermicro SuperChassis 826BE16-R920LPB (2x 2.5" bays in back, 12x 3.5" bays in front)
Mainboard: Supermicro X9SRL-F (Intel C602 chipset)
Network: 2 onboard 1Gbps ports (IntelÂ® 82574L), one 2-port Intel i350 Gigabit Ethernet LAN card
RAM: 64 GB DDR3-1866 EEC
CPU: Intel Xeon E5-1620v2 (3.7GHz, quad-core)
Storage I/O:
- 8x SAS2 (connects the front drive bays) (Supermicro PCIe SAS 6Gbps contr, 8int (LSI2308))
- 2x SATA3 (onboard) (connects to back bays)
- 4x SATA2 (onboard)
Storage media:
- 2x Samsung SSD SM843 Series 2.5" 120 GB (located in back bays) Used for OS, L2ARC and ZIL.
- 12x Western Digital Enterprise 7200 RPM 2 TB (spec/WD2000FYYZ), located in front drive bays (Only 6 available until deployment)
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PS: Its name is H.O.M.E.R. (*H*eavy *O*verkill of *M*andatory *E*xpectations and *R*equirements)


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## Anonymous (Nov 11, 2013)

Please can you check, whether the machine would run with default BIOS settings?

The reason for this question is explained here: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=43130

Many thanks!

Rolf


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## Savagedlight (Nov 11, 2013)

@rolfheinrich: Will do!

I'll also try to compare Dragonfly BSD + HAMMER vs FreeBSD + ZFS.


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## Savagedlight (Nov 23, 2013)

Anyone have any tips on which tools to use for the disk benchmarks?


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## ondra_knezour (Nov 23, 2013)

The benchmarks/bonie++ is often mentioned on this forum.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Nov 24, 2013)

Savagedlight said:
			
		

> Anyone have any tips on which tools to use for the disk benchmarks?


benchmarks/iozone has an optional graphing add-on (contact the IOzone author for more information). It produces nice graphs like this. The complete report that image is from (15 MB PDF) is available here.


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## cpm@ (Nov 24, 2013)

A nice list of UNIX disk I/O benchmarks.


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## Ben (Nov 24, 2013)

Interesting, I have almost the same system. I really would like to see your dbench-Benchmarks.

I ran `dbench -D /mnt -t 30 12` against ZFS configurations.


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