HBA vs MB SATA3


Recommended Posts

Hello, im considering getting a Supermicro X10SLL-F Micro-ATX Motherboard which has 2xSATA3 and 4xSATA2 onboard. I believe it also has an integrated Graphics chip (listed as Aspeed AST2400 BMC) which should be fine for booting unRaid and then using a Graphics card in the single larger PCIx16 Slot.

 

Ive two questions.

1) Will i be able to boot into unraid without using a Graphics card which i plan to use in a VM?

 

2) I have a minimum of 6 drives i need to connect and want to use faster than SATA2. Ive got a LSI SAS 2008 Falcon HBA which i can put in the PCI 8x slot but my understand as to how this works stops here. Would connecting 4 data drives (3Tb WD Reds) through the HBA and 2x SSDs on the motherboard work?

 

Im having trouble understanding the difference between connecting a drive to the motherboard and the HBA.

 

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SLL-F

And i believe its this HBA:
https://www.servethehome.com/lsi-sas-2008-raid-controller-hba-information/

 

I plan on a Xeon 1240L v3  (8t is fine) and 16Gb of ECC RAM. Im not a heavy user and this should suffice PiHole/Krusader/Rclone/Plex and a single Windows VM.

 

Thanks all.

Link to comment

Hi,

 

I have a X10SL7-F which is similar with a built in SAS HBA and one less slots.

 

The HBA will connect multiple devices and will support SAS and SATA drives. Normally they tend to have a couple of ports and you will need a fan out cable to connect to the drives.

image.png.0f1907570c9460fbe740cb21a26bd695.png

 

This is now my test box so dont have a GPU installed and using passthru, but did have a GT710 when it was my prod server and passed it thru to a WIn10 VM. And used the IPMI for console which uses the ASPEED VGA Screen so dont need to have a monitor connected.

 

Also I have an 16 port HBA with external connections at the bottom.

 

image.thumb.png.2fe607663a04bd25be60690e72949eb1.png

image.thumb.png.6c52b9182af5cbdc4dbaecf5393b5351.png

 

Edited by SimonF
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
2 hours ago, wobblewoo said:

Ive two questions.

1) Will i be able to boot into unraid without using a Graphics card which i plan to use in a VM?

 

2) I have a minimum of 6 drives i need to connect and want to use faster than SATA2. Ive got a LSI SAS 2008 Falcon HBA which i can put in the PCI 8x slot but my understand as to how this works stops here. Would connecting 4 data drives (3Tb WD Reds) through the HBA and 2x SSDs on the motherboard work?

 

Both no problem.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
21 minutes ago, SimonF said:

Is the Card already flashed to IT Mode? If not you should re-flash.

 

https://flemmingss.com/how-to-flash-it-mode-firmware-to-hp-lsi-sas-9212-4i-controller-card/

 

Thanks, it probably isnt. I'll do that.

 

One thing, of i use a double height graphics card (a Nvidea 1070 or a AMD 580) that will cover one of the 8x PCI slots meaning I can't use my USB card. Did you have any issues passing through the motherboard USBs?

 

Link to comment

And in terms of disk speed, will I get each drive attached to the HBA at 6Gps, I'm assuming so. The motherboard/processor won't have any throttling. 

 

The board comes bundled with a Xeon 1240L V3. I'm fine with 8 threads and the speed but not sure I understand PCI lanes etc.

Link to comment
21 minutes ago, wobblewoo said:

HBA at 6Gps, I'm assuming so.

Yes, but you almost won't got performance gain for mechanical disk.

 

32 minutes ago, wobblewoo said:

Did you have any issues passing through the motherboard USBs?

Some platform have more then one USB controller, found the one have its own IOMMU group then identify corresponding physical port then passthrough it.

Link to comment
8 minutes ago, wobblewoo said:

Thanks, it probably isnt. I'll do that.

 

One thing, of i use a double height graphics card (a Nvidea 1070 or a AMD 580) that will cover one of the 8x PCI slots meaning I can't use my USB card. Did you have any issues passing through the motherboard USBs?

 

I never passed thru USB controllers just used USB mapping in VMs. But no issues. There are  plugins to allow dynamic mapping , including one of my own(usbip-gui beta) which has expanded past just USBIP, currently changing to name to USB_Manager and making the USBIP optional. Do you have any devices of the same Vendor/model you want to passthru?

 

image.png.4bd0e83b1d634128fb489e3dd54d1d60.pngimage.png.4eade606208a7ade6b6d30cdefecffd1.png

 

 

8 minutes ago, wobblewoo said:

And in terms of disk speed, will I get each drive attached to the HBA at 6Gps, I'm assuming so. The motherboard/processor won't have any throttling. 

 

The disk port to the HBA will run at 6Gps if the drive supports it.

 

The PCIe Connections are 

 

1 PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16 slot),

1 PCI-E 3.0 x8

1 PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8 slot)

 

The last one will only provide 2Gbps from the card to the CPU. Which is the same for my MB. I can't say I noticed any impact when running with Disks, but there is a potential for a bottleneck.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I've purchased a Supermicro X10SLL-F with an 8 thread Xeon and 32GB ECC. I've flashed the HBA (Thanks @SimonF) I'm just waiting for delivery of my Fractal R6 then ill move everything over.

 

Regards the UnRaid USB and Hard drives (4x 3.5 3TB WD Reds [1 parity, 3 data] and 1x SSD) how do you move them over? Is it simply a case of move them all over and reboot?

 

I can obv set the fixed IP to be the same etc, its the drives i dont know what to do with.

Link to comment

Vr2Io post this on another thread yesterday. I think it allows you to create a bootable USB.

 

I would suggest you try new UEFI memtest86 ( I just try it yesterday ), some test will use all CPU core ( you need enable it ) which I doubt legacy memtest won't use all core ( may be wrong and I don't trust legacy memtest )

Anyway,  it could be CPU issue too.

 

https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.