Wody

If your key is old, it may not be added to unraid connect yet, so try doing that, it will display the last 4 numbers so if you write those down somewhere with what USB it belongs to, when it fails you won't have any issues figuring it out. If you don't want to use unraid connect, the GUID is visible in tools->registration as well, and when you click flash in your drive list.

I guess in the end it doesn't really matter, since you can lose any two drives and re-create their contents, but if a controller fails, and takes drives with it, it feels safer because parity can replace any drive, but a data drive is only itself.

Freedos works, linux won't, because the software is DOS and needs hardware-access. Apparently you can also use maxView storage manager and arcconf which may have Linux versions, but the software is from 2013, so I doubt it works any better. I used rufus with the included freedos.

From the specifications, and that it supports different things that it comes with, and the pictures, it probably is a standard server-type, the firmware is encrypted or compressed, so I didn't get a lot out of that, but from the size it has a USB module or other type of flash inside like a DOM that it boots from like unraid. It could be they locked things down with the BIOS. I'd open it up, find out how it boots and see if you can do something with that.

See Changing the flash device.

For hard drives, throughput doesn't matter, they usually get to about 200MB/s (1.6gbit) at most, the 9400 is a PCIe 3 chip, which means 8GT or about 1GB/s per lane, x8 so 8GB/s, so you can connect about 40 SATA drives before you run into bandwidth limitations. And it's more complicated than that, because SAS has bigger buffers and queues than SATA, so it only matters for parity-check, for copying stuff between drives data doesn't even have to leave the controller (not sure if it will or not). The 9400 & 9500 also support NVMe with special cables (but it uses 4 lanes per drive so a lot less drives connectable). Anyway, if you don't use that, they also have a SAS_SATA firmware with even bigger buffers and queues. Also, keep in mind an 8i uses typically 10W, while the 16i uses 12W, so it saves some power. Keeping parity drives separate on different controllers and different backplanes makes sense for safety, and if you're going with a 16-port controller you need two anyway (16 and 8 or 2x16), so you can do that. Of course it only protects against a backplane or controller failure, it doesn't protect against motherboard or power-failure. In other words, don't forget raid (even unraid) is not a backup. To give some numbers, I'm currently using a 9500-16i with only 5 10TB SAS drives (Seagate Exos from 2018/2019) and I get about 185MB/s for parity-check, while using the drives as well.

You have a card with ASMedia 1166 controller. If it is a version with more than 6 drives, it uses a port multiplier which is not recommended. Also there may be firmware issues that can explain the problems. See this thread.

I'm lazy, so I do this remotely, with a computer that has a connection to an unraid-share, but it doesn't matter how you do it. The goal is to get the firmware-file and companion storcli-version on unraid in a known location. I'd first download the firmware-zip-file from Broadcom using the page I mentioned earlier, and the same storcli-zip-file under managment-software. I'd then copy the firmware file, bios file and uefi-file to a location on the share for example LSI9400. Since the downloaded file is a ZIP file, you can also use unzip or use MC to copy the files, doesn't matter. For the 9300 you'd use sas3flash which comes with a zip-file with all variations included, and you could unpack that. The 9500 and 9600 come with storcli(2) which also have a zip file with all variations, and a linux-lite version which is also easy to unpack (I assume this can be used to flash the card they are for, but I have used the full version). For the 9400 and newer there is also the full version, but this is a 'problem' since it comes as a RPM file, and unraid doesn't support those. So you need to unpack it, and easiest way to do that is with 7zip (which is why I use a different computer), so you'd open the RPM with 7zip, and navigate the folders, something like storcli/./opt/MegaRAID/storcli, and unpack the storcli64 file with 7zip and put it with the firmware files in the same location as before. Now open a terminal or ssh to the unraid-server (including login if needed) and then navigate to the share-location and run storcli, something like: cd /mnt/user/SHARE/LSI9400 ./storcli64 /c0 show If you did get the files unpacked correctly, this will show the first controller with everything attached. Then you'd do the same as on the page I linked first (this would be step 7 on that page) from step 8 to step 13, except for storcli.efi you'd use ./storcli64 and the filenames would be different. Instead of resetting the system you can do: ./storcli64 /c0 restart and when done do: ./storcli64 /c0 show and that should show the new firmware being active. If it doesn't, you may have to power-cycle the system anyway. Final remarks, if you check the help for storcli, by just running ./storcli64 it mentions reset, but the command is restart. Also for the 9500 and 9600 the download-commands are different, because the files they use are different, but everything around it is the same (except storcli2 for the 9600 of course).

After the wget you'd do something like tar -xvf sedutil_LINUX.tgz and then cd sedutil/Release_x86_64/ and then ./sedutil-cli But unfortunately that doesn't work because you have to give the Linux-kernel a boot-option to enable or disable something. (to see the error do something like ./sedutil-cli --scan ). So you'll need to do it through EFI-shell, using this procedure. You don't want to actually encrypt the drive though, so don't do the 'enable locking' stuff. Instead, you need the 'PSID revert' procedure.

Those are SED drives, and currently protected (PROTECT=1), so you need to use sedutil to remove the protection before you can format them. You may also have to change the sector-size of them.

Supermicro makes it difficult to find models, but if you look for specific ones, you can still find them easily, for example I'm currently running the X11SPL-F, which I bought a year ago and was made in 2023. A lot is going to depend on what is available locally to you, I tend to use price-comparison sites and then search for supermicro boards to see what's in stores around. Mostly that's X11 and X12 series, and some X13. So for me that would be something like a X13SEI-F or TF if you need the 10gbit. Or an X13SCL-F if you don't need so much power. For processors, energy efficient mostly depends on how you use them, idle ones don't use much. I usually look up the series of the processors on the intel site and then sort by TDP to get something reasonable, and then of course it's also about availability. MCIO is a connector that plugs in the motherboard, you'd connect it to a backplane or use a fan-out cable to connect them to drives. It looks a bit like a modern SlimSAS-cable but it's not the same. Many supermicro boards these days use SFF-8643 or SlimSAS (SFF-8654) connectors, even for just SATA to safe space on the board. Talking about saving space, you could also use a 9400-16i although for 24 slots the 9305 also comes in a 24i version and the 9600 as well. For M.2 drives, modern Supermicro boards usually have one M.2 slot, some have two, but if you need a lot of slots, you'll need the more expensive processors which come with bifurcation, so you can use a slot or two and split those for M.2 drives if you need more of them.

I forgot to mention, but if you want the bios and UEFI-interface, of course you'd also use the broadcom ones instead of the ones from the instructions (just for completeness). In case they do release new firmware (very unlikely since the 9700-series is getting closer to release and they're already working on a 9800-series) you can now just flash from the command-line in unraid, and reset the card to use the new firmware too, without having to restart the computer, unless the firmware says otherwise.

Since you have a bunch of plugins or dockers installed, try running without them and see if it still crashes, the cause doesn't have to be the card. Also verify you have the latest firmware for the card (Build 32118).

Usually you'd use a SAS cable with a backplane, which then has SFF-8482 connectors where you insert the drives, or a cable with the SFF-8482 connector directly, but yes, SATA drives fit in those too. And yes, you can mix it. It's generally not recommended because they behave differently (when something goes wrong, SATA drives will say hold on, and hang the system until something happens, while SAS drives say come back later) and you don't want that in a business, but for unraid it's normally fine, I run two servers, one SAS only, and one mixed.

Since the 13th and 14th generation chips have design issues (which apparently have been fixed with microcode) I wouldn't buy one, since there is no guarantee you'll get a good one, or worse, one that has been returned due to issues. The GPUs in all of them are the same too, although they may have a slightly higher turbo in newer generations, so there is no reason to go for the potentially broken ones, especially since they now have the Core ultra's which won't have the same issue (and a newer GPU but unproven).

1) Yes. To verify this, check the end where you insert the drives. You'll notice that you'll see one big connector that is entirely open, instead of having a separate power and data connector like with sata. On the drive side, SATA drives have a hole between the connectors, but SAS has this filled in with pins on top for an extra connection. 2) SAS controllers can speak SAS and SATA protocols, but SATA controllers don't speak SAS so you need to replace it. Unlike SATA, SAS cables are straight through, so you can get SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 or SFF-8087 to SFF-8643 cables that will work, depending on what card you pick. You'll have to make sure they are intended for SAS/SATA though, not NVMe. As for which card, it shouldn't really matter although if you get a SAS 4 card, those don't support 3Gbps drives anymore (SATA2) 3) The Norco 4224 supports SAS 2 meaning 6Gbps, with SFF-8087 connectors. Since these are 'dumb' backplanes, if you connect 12Gbps drives to a 12Gbps SAS controller (SAS 3) there is a chance they will negotiate at that speed as well. SAS is backward compatibile, so there is no reason to specifically buy a SAS2 card if they are more expensive.

I'm not the original poster, but see here For the firmware, Go to this page (It goes to broadcom, searching for 9400-16i in the support documents and downloads page) Basically, you'll want to get storcli.efi and HBA_9400-16i_Mixed_Profile from the firmware on an USB drive, then reboot the computer in an EFI shell with the USB conected, and use the following to install the firmware (so storcli /c0 download file=HBA_9400-16i_Mixed_Profile.bin instead of what it has for step 10 If that doesn't work, adding the force parameter should help (in the discussion on that github page it shows also how to do that)

'Shell patterns' are wildcards (e.g. * means everything, A* means every name starting with A, A?C means substitute anything for the 2nd letter as long as the first and third are A and C) so you'll want to leave that on. Dive into subdir means if a directory already exists, it will move the directory into that directory. In other words, if you're moving a folder named A, but on the target A already exists, it will first go in the directory, and then move it, so instead of moving from A to A, it moves to A/A, so you'll want that off. If MC is unable to move something, it will show a message asking you what to do, like when a file or folder already exists. It'll ask you if you want to overwrite it, and below that you can set options for the rest of the files, so if you want to overwrite all the files, you can set it there and it won't ask again. If the procedure doesn't complete, if you close MC accidentally for example, MC only deletes files at the end, so then two copies of the files exist, on the source and the target drive. So when you restart moving files, you'd get a lot of 'file already exists, what do you want to do?' windows. Another potential issue, I like to split things up, so say I have to move A, but A has 100 directories, I'll manually make directory A on the target, and then go into A on source and target, and move things 10 at a time, but creating A means making it under the account you're using (often root), so this can mess up permissions. When this happens, unraid has a tool for it, you can run 'new permissions' under tools which can help fix that.

I'm not sure if it is still the case, but almost everything of unraid is open and/or free, including the driver which is in /usr/src after booting, the only part that isn't is how the array is created.

If your screenshot of the drives is still accurate, you have 5TB free, which is bigger than the current biggest disk. Meaning you don't need any other ones. What I would do, in the screenshot, disk 3 has 1.29TB on it, while the free space on disk 1 is 1.53TB. So use Midnight Commander to move everything inside /mnt/disk3 to /mnt/disk1 (everything from disk 3 to disk 1). After that, re-format drive 3 to XFS. Move everything from disk 1 to disk 3, re-format disk 1. Move contents of another disk to disk 1, re-format that disk, move contents to that disk, and so on.

The firmware isn't the issue, it is the latest version and in IT mode (Initiator, Target). You don't mention how the drives are connected. If they are connected with a SAS to SATA breakout connector (1 plug in the card, 4 plugs for sata drives) you may accidentally have purchased a reverse breakout cable instead of a forward one, which would mean the drives can't communicate (see here for an explanation). If it is a SAS breakout cable with a wide connector, you might have forgotten the power-cables. And if they are connected with SATA powercables, it may be a 3.3v issue, try a molex-to-sata adapter.

SAS drives are different from SATA drives, in that a failed SATA drive will say 'hold on, something is wrong, let me try again', and the system waits and tries again, and that basically hangs the system until whatever is wrong is fixed. SAS drives however, have their electronic and drive part separate, so they'll report an error, and not hang the system. That means that even a drive that doesn't spin up and doesn't work can still be talked with, just nothing will work. For your drive, it is reporting a 'sense key' of 4 which means Hardware error, and an Additional Sense Code (asc) of 4c which means 'logical unit cannot be configured' So something maybe timing out. Try listening to the drive to hear if it spins up at all, and if it doesn't, and you have a sata-power-connection, use a molex-to-sata adapter instead because it may be suffering from the 3.3v issue. If that doesn't fix it, the drive should be replaced. Also, you should update the firmware on your card first, the latest version is 20.00.07 and is required, all previous versions have errors and bugs, like the 20.00.06 on your card.

See this post why forward and reverse sas-to-sata cables are different and important.

One of the things I like about Unraid is the reliability, and the ability to run on almost anything. So when I had this issue, I didn't want to rely on the capabilities of the motherboard at all, so that when it failed, I could switch it out for another one and keep going. So instead of worrying about sata-slots, I got a SAS-controller card, which meant for sas/sata drives its full speed all the time, and because of much bigger buffers and queues, most of the data doesn't leave the card so the PCIe speed doesn't matter a lot either. So, in your situation, since you're talking about 9 SATA drives, and 1 NVMe drive, I'd get something like a 9305-16i or 9400-16i or newer (the 9300-16i uses too much power and may get too warm, but an 9300-8i may do as well), put that in the 16x slot, and the NVMe in the M.2 slot. Only issue would be if you still had sata1 drives (1.5gbit), those aren't supported. You'd be freeing up more bandwidth in the DMI link as well, and if you do need more drives, you can then get SAS drives as well which are often cheaper because companies get rid of them when they run out of warranty, or because of a yearly replacement.

Speed is really about bandwidth and getting stuff as fast as possible to the processor. So that means checking the block diagram in the manual, which says that the x16 slot and one M.2 slot are directly connected, so an adapter card in one of those provides the most bandwidth and the most speed per drive. Everything else has to share the DMI 3.0 link to the processor, creating a potential bottleneck. As far as the cards you mentioned, you'll want to check this thread. In practice bifurcation only matters for M.2 PCIe devices, and graphics cards for AI or mining applications, if you don't use those, you don't need bifurcation, just a regular controller that moves stuff from whatever you want to connect to the PCIe bus, which those cards have (and other SATA/SAS controllers as well). Since you're talking SATA devices, they get a speed of max 6gbit/s which is about 0.75GB/s, PCIE 3.0 (the M.2 slot) can transfer a little less than 1GB/s so generally you'll need as much PCIe lanes as you have drives to have everything working at full speed. For many of the cards, they only have an x1 or x2 connection, so it works for a few drives, but more than 2 drives, and you'll notice a bottleneck where things don't go as fast as they can.