oldria is the name of the gateway machine I retired on Mar 14, 2017. It replaced ams.

oldria came about as the result of my desktop machine at the time (gwydion) giving up the ghost after 8 years. It was my fault, I fritzed the motherboard while flushing the watercooling system. ams was a dual Xeon machine that's perfectly capable of acting as my desktop machine. Hence I repurposed ams as my desktop machine and replaced it with oldria.

oldria was also part of my plan to downsize and simplify my computing resources. I wanted to get to the point where I had only two or three machines in the rack, all low-power (MiniITX or MicroATX form factor). Preferably all using similar hardware, all with dual LAN and at least 4 on-board SATA ports.

ria hardware

• Part	Description	P/N	Qty.	Unit Price	Total
  Supermicro MBD-X7SPA-H-O	Mini ITX Intel Atom D510 motherboard, 6 SATA, 2 LAN	MBD-X7SPA-H-O	1	$199.99	$199.99
  SUPERMICRO CSE-731i-300B	pedestal MicroATX server case	CSE-731i-300B	1	$89.99	$89.99
  Western Digital WD1001FALS	1TB 7,200 rpm SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" hard drive	WD1001FALS	2	$87.99	$175.98
  Western Digital WD1500HLFS	150GB 10,000 rpm SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" hard drive	WD1500HLFS	1	$79.99	$79.99
  Seagate ST31000528AS	1TB 7,200 rpm SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" hard drive	ST31000528AS	1	$69.99	$69.99
  Patriot PSD22G6672S	2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM 667 (PC2 5300) laptop memory	PSD22G6672S	2	$34.99	$69.98
  Lite-On iHDS118-04	18X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA DVD-ROM drive	iHDS118-04	1	$19.99	$19.99
  Noctua NF-R8	80mm Noctua fan, 31cfm, 10dB, 1800 rpm	NF-R8	1	$18.99	$18.99
  Noctua NF-B9	92mm Noctua fan, 37cfm, 17dB, 1600 rpm	NF-B9	1	$18.75	$18.75
  Nanoxia PWMX	4-pin PWM to 3-pin fan controller	PWMX	1	$12.99	$12.99
  Xion XON-DRBY525MB	5.25" driver bay cover kit, mesh, black	XON-DRBY525MB	1	$9.99	$9.99
  Nippon Labs SATA-L0.5-R	18" long SATA-II data cable	SATA-L0.5-R	1	$6.99	$6.99
  Link Depot SATA-12	12" long SATA-II cable, straight to straight	SATA-12	4	$4.49	$17.96
  Athena Power YSATA290	6" long SATA-II power Y-cable	YSATA290	2	$4.19	$8.38
  StarTech 3.5" to 5.25" bracket	3.5" to 5.25" drive adapter bracket	BRACKET	1	$3.31	$3.31
  Total					$803.27

It's worth noting that I didn't pay the total above; NewEgg had a bundle deal on the case, motherboard, Seagate drive and one of the two memory sticks. I paid $68.97 less, for a total of $701.55.

Some hints on the extras...

I bought an 80mm fan to populate the empty fan location in the front of the case. I bought the 92mm fan to replace the rear fan included with the case. The fan included with the case might be good, but it might be junk. The Noctua fans are rated for 150,000+ hours, which is well above most fans available. Reliability is very important here. Since they're not PWM, the 80mm will be connected to a power supply feed and the 92mm will be connected to the PWM FAN1 connector on the motherboard via the Nanoxia PWMX.

The SATA power Y-cables... the power supply in the case only has four SATA power connections. I want six, the Y-cables get me there.

The 12" SATA data cables... those are for the hard drives in the 3.5" hard drive cage.

4G of RAM... the maximum the motherboard will support.

The Xion drive bay cover kit and 5.25" to 3.5" brackets... the 10,000 rpm drive is going to be the boot drive, and may be in one of the 5.25" bays. I want some air to be drawn over any drive that winds up there, and at some point there's going to be a drive in there even if it's not immediately.

ria software

• Part	Description	P/N	Qty.	Unit Price	Total
  FreeBSD	FreeBSD 8.2	FreeBSD 8.2	1	$0.00	$0.00
  Total					$0.00

As usual for my headless machines, I'll be running FreeBSD. FreeBSD 8.2 is scheduled for a January 2011 release. This will be the first time I've used the amd64 release, but I don't anticipate any problems. Other people are running FreeBSD 8.1 on this motherboard.

Grand Total

• ria hardware	$803.27
  ria software	$0.00
  Total	$803.27

Manuals

• Supermicro 731i-300B case (PDF)
• Supermicro X7SPA-H-O motherboard manual (PDF)
• Patriot PSD22G6672S 2G 200-pin SO-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) memory (PDF)
• Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB 7,200 rpm SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" hard drive (PDF)
• Western Digital Internal Hard Drives Quick Install Guide (PDF)
• Western Digital VelociRaptor Specifications (PDF)
• Noctua NF-B9 92mm fan spec sheet (PDF)

Diary

• May 3, 2024
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 13.3-STABLE.

• May 21, 2023
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 13.2-STABLE.

• April 27, 2023
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 12.4-STABLE.

• July 28, 2020
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 11.4-STABLE.

• October 19, 2019
  
  • ria has been updated to FreeBSD 11.3-STABLE.

• August 11, 2018
  
  • I installed the 0086L4 fan, replacing the dummy fan block. I had to use a 4-pin fan splitter cable, which isn't a great idea with RPM monitored fans but the 5th fan header on the motherboard is near the rear faceplate and I didn't have any 4-pin fan cables long enough to cleanly route from that header to the new fan. I'll order one from Amazon and replace the splitter setup when the new cable arrives.

    The new fan should help keep the Mellanox ConnectX-2 card cool.

• August 6, 2018
  
  • I ordered a 0086L4 fan and a 2.5" drive tray from Supermicro direct. I need the fan to keep the new Mellanox ConnectX-2 card cool. The drive tray is to allow me to put another SSD in ria or kiva.

• July 13, 2018
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 11.2-STABLE.

• December 19, 2017
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE.

• June 14, 2017
  
  • ria is now running FreeBSD 11.1-BETA1.

• March 14, 2017
  
  • I installed the new version of ria. It's nice to have 32G of RAM, a Xeon 4-core CPU and 4 gigabit ethernet ports. I don't really need the CPU except to be able to address RAM. The previous hardware was constrained to 4G of RAM. Which is plenty for simple gateway tasks, but I want to be able to use ZFS and I also want to run more elaborate intrusion detection software. I'm glad I went with a Supermicro chassis since the hot swap cages are the same as those in kiva.

    The new hardware is in the rack and doing its duty. Since it's only 1U, some rack space was made available. i installed two of my Middle Atlantic 2U rackmount drawers so I have space to store tools, extra fans and spare hard drives.

    It is interesting that it might turn out that the new machine is roughly equivalent in power consumption to the old machine. If true, I'll chalk it up to newer CPUs having wider and more effective SpeedStepping, an efficient motherboard, SSD instead of a spinning drive for root, and fewer spinning drives.

• March 6, 2017
  
  • I finally ordered a replacement for ria. I've needed to do this for a while. Normally I don't have CPU load issues on ria, but it's severely memory constrained at 4G (due to Intel Atom D510), and I want to be able to revive some of my old monitoring software and also run ZFS. The latter is the main impetus for more RAM.

    The machine I ordered is a used 1U server from eBay. A Supermicro CSE-815TQ-600WB chassis, X9SCi-LN4F motherboard, Xeon E3-1270v2 CPU, 32G of RAM. I ordered a Supermicro MCP-220-00043-0N drive caddy in order to install a Samsung 850 Pro in one of the hotswap bays as the root drive. I may later change to ZFS on root, and it's possible I'll move the Samsung 850 Pro outside of the hot swap bays. I also ordered a Supermicro CSE-PTFB-813LB front bezel. I don't need the lock, but I do need the filter. I have a similar bezel on kiva, and it's very useful in my environment (my unfinished basement).

    I don't really need the oomph of an E3-1270v2 CPU, and hence I might replace it with an E3-1265Lv2 to save power (and heat/noise). The one area where CPU has been an issue on ria's current hardware is compiling the kernel or 'make buildworld'. So it will be nice to have a significant bump in performance when I'm upgrading/updating. And I'll be happy to have additional gigabit ethernet ports, since it gives me some flexibility I currently do not have. Cordoning off my WiFi and IoT devices, for example. And having a separate network to connect to kiva if desired.

    The new hardware won't be her until next week. Hopefully the failing hard drive in ria will last that long. I already have the Samsung 850 Pro loaded from a good ria backup in case I need to swap it in before the new hardware arrives.