Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 Thank you so much for your quick answer and feeling my pain! Is there a list of recommended cards? Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) We have a list of known hardware to work - see link to hardware in my sig. You will find many cards listed there. Initially, in unRAID 4 times, the Supermicro SAS 8-ports were the reference cards that LT used for their servers. Meanwhile the LSI based SAS2008 cards are very popular. The LSI 9211-8i is a plain HBA that you can have with IT firmware out of the box. More common and for less money you can have the license builds of the LSI 9240-8i card. Those are the IBM M1015, M1115, the DELL H310 and H200, the FSC D2607 and some HP cards. They can be cross-flashed with the 9211-8i IT firmware to be just like an HBA. Edited May 4, 2017 by Fireball3 1 Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 In my untrained eye, I like the LSI 9211-8i for it appears to be plug and play. Would you recommend it to a person of my skill (lack thereof) set? Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) Personally, I have to be very price-conscious when buying computer parts... In Germany you can have the 9211-8i for ~200€. I definitely wouldn't recommend buy that! What is the price of your source? You can have a ready cross-flashed rebranded LSI card for ~50€. Edited May 4, 2017 by Fireball3 Link to comment
Frank1940 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 1 hour ago, Sabot said: Man, my head is spinning. For a newbie, what are the recommended plug and play cards that will work straight out of the box? I don't wish to get into flashing or doing advance iT. Just want to plug it into my little TS140 server, run UnRaid and get the best performance possible from equipment. Two ports, four ports or eight ports? Are you planning on using virtualization? Is cost a consideration? Two port cards are widely available. Just read the reviews as quality appears to be an issue with certain cards. You can look at my systems in my furniture but beware that many four port cards requires that you turn off virtualization in the BIOS with those CPU's that support it. (On any four port card, look for a BIG heatsink. Most of the time these cards are used on systems where only one of two drives are in use at a time. This is not the case with unRAID!) Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 4 minutes ago, Frank1940 said: On any four port card, look for a BIG heatsink. Most of the time these cards are used on systems where only one of two drives are in use at a time. This is not the case with unRAID! This is probably valid for all cards. LSI recommends a specific air flow for their cards as they also get quite warm. But there seems to be some headroom in practice as the OEM tower-like servers most likely don't meet this conditions. Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) Plans for the next few years is to maintain the little TS140 server. 4 to 5 SDD/HDD. I plan to replace the current HDD's with SAS with higher volumes as needed. I have to children in College so the price is always important. I don't know anything about virtualization and might explore it in the future. I am not sure my little server would be all that good at it. While searching eBay, I selected only from North America ruling out all the rest. There are a few used LSI's on eBay but for a few dollars more I can get a new one. http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-IT-Mode-LSI-9211-8i-SAS-SATA-8-port-PCI-E-6Gb-s-Controller-Card-/182444920218?hash=item2a7a908d9a:g:z~0AAOSw-0xYlqFe for $72 shipped. I saw the Dell Perc H310 used are half the price of a new LSI. The new Dell Perc H310 costs near or more than the LSI. At the end of the day, I wish to get the biggest bang for my buck and have a solid card! I know, I want my cake and eat it too with some delicious ice cream. Has anyone put a new heatsink on the cards? An active one with a fan. An overpriced solution: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Cooling-Fan-for-LSI-9261-8i-9260-8i-9271-8i-9361-8i-/121400577255 Nice blog: http://vcojot.blogspot.com/2015/07/lsi-megaraid-hbas-overheating-and-one.html Edited May 4, 2017 by Sabot Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) Well, that's you guys in the US. LSI 9211-8i is not available on ebay.de - only from china for a reasonable price... If you don't trust in your skills to flash a DELL card, you're fine with the LSI card. Maybe you can push the seller to update it to the latest P20 IT firmware! But what about your onboard SATA ports? Don't you have enough already to connect 4-5 drives? Edit: Fan on the heatsink - I think I remember such a mod. Try the forum search. Personally, I don't like those little noisy fans. As already said, running 4 years without cooling... I don't know, but I guess few unRAIDers here are doing extra cooling for the controllers. Edited May 4, 2017 by Fireball3 Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) I do. I want to maximize my TS140 it's fullest potential before moving to my next project 10Gb Peer to Peer. I also want to understand what I can expect of this little server. When I started this journey, I was pondering getting an SATA card to see if my array's performance would change. Then I stumbled across the information that an SAS card would work with my old HDDs. Then I set out to learn about SAS cards. My goal is to get a solid card that can work with my current HDD. If I got any performance increase that would be a bonus. In the future, I want to move to SAS drives. I want to keep the number of drives to a minimal. Edited May 4, 2017 by Sabot Link to comment
JorgeB Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 1 minute ago, Sabot said: If I got any performance increase that would be a bonus Performance will be the same as the Intel onboard controller. Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 With that said, I should wait to purchase the controller when I purchase the first SAS drive? Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) Quote I want to maximize my TS140 it's fullest potential That means? Potential in terms of space? How many drives exactly? Forget about SAS drives! State of the art SATAIII drives are fine. What is available now - 10TB drives? 12TB? :-) Quote Then I stumbled across the information that an SAS card would work with my old HDDs You have all up-to-date SATAIII drives. Quote If I got any performance increase... Increase? Compared to what? I had a look at your case. Check the space where the controller shall fit. You should have some extra space for the cable plugs in the rear of the card! Maybe a card with vertical connectors is a better choice. I don't know if there is an original LSI 9211-8i with vertical connectors - like the H200. Edited May 4, 2017 by Fireball3 Link to comment
JorgeB Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 11 minutes ago, Fireball3 said: I don't know if there is an original LSI 9211-8i with vertical connectors - like the H200 It exists, It's the 9210-8i. Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) When looking at drivers, what version of Linux would I use as the operating system? Edited May 4, 2017 by Sabot Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 You want to run unRAID right?unRAID is the OS.You cant do much about drivers - its ready to run as it is. Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 Yes, I want to (and am) running UnRaid. Sorry for being such a novice. My first time diving into the Linux/UnRaid world. Does Lime Tech keep the drivers updated for the popular cards? As for the performance, is this the best speeds I can expect from the TS140 SATA @ 134MB/s (slowest drive in the array HDS724040ALE640)? Link to comment
c3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 13 minutes ago, Sabot said: Does Lime Tech keep the drivers updated for the popular cards? Recently, Lime Tech has done a great job of keeping drivers updated. And you can always ask to get a driver added/updated if you find a need. Link to comment
Sabot Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 (edited) Just found that my chipset is an Intel C226, see here: https://lenovopress.com/lp0034-lenovo-thinkserver-ts140#system-specifications There is no way I can read all 817 pages let alone understand it! My quest is to get as close to the market hype of 6Gb/s (actually as much as my slowest HDD). Here are a few cherry-picked features: PCI Express* — Up to eight PCI Express root ports — Supports PCI Express Rev 2.0 running at up to 5.0 GT/s — Ports 1-4 and 5-8 can independently be configured to support multiple port configurations — Module based Hot-Plug supported (that is, ExpressCard*) — NEW: Latency Tolerance Reporting Integrated Serial ATA Host Controller — Up to six SATA ports — Data transfer rates supported: 6.0 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s, and 1.5 Gb/s on all ports — Integrated AHCI controller External SATA support on all ports — 3.0 Gb/s and 1.5 Gb/s support — Port Disable Capability I thought I might be able to get a little faster performance if I went with a card that was attached to one of my PCIe lanes? I attached a picture of my little old TS140 for your review. Edited May 4, 2017 by Sabot Link to comment
JorgeB Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 1 minute ago, Sabot said: My quest is to get as close to the market hype of 6Gb/s (actually as much as my slowest HDD) No HDD you'll get you close to 600MB/s, fastest disks ATM are about 225MB/s, with SSDs you can get up to 550MB/s. Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 4, 2017 Share Posted May 4, 2017 Quote My quest is to get as close to the market hype of 6Gb/s This is the specified speed of the SATAIII interface. As johnnie.black already mentioned, conventional SATAIII spinners can't saturate the interface. SSD's come closer. 1 hour ago, Sabot said: SATA @ 134MB/s (slowest drive in the array HDS724040ALE640) In fact, the throughput of the Hitachi drive is a good average. Take a look at the chart in this thread and you will notice how the real throughput varies across the disk! When running unRAID with parity you will have full read speed of the disk, dependent where your data lies on the drive. Writes to the protected array will be slower due to the parity calculation, dependent on the write method you use. You may want to read this topic to understand better. Quote before moving to my next project 10Gb Peer to Peer This enterprise will be useful only when working with SSD's because in most cases the Gbit LAN will saturate your array in terms of throughput. For media server purposes the Gbit LAN and conventional drives are serving very well. If you really need more LAN throughput we should talk about the use case in detail. A cutting edge LAN won't help if you have other bottlenecks. How many 3.5" drives can you accomodate in that case max? 2x 5.25" half height? ==> 2x3.5" ? 2x 3.5" drive bays in the lower portion At the moment I can't see the need for an additional controller... Link to comment
Fireball3 Posted May 5, 2017 Share Posted May 5, 2017 20 hours ago, Sabot said: Has anyone put a new heatsink on the cards? An active one with a fan. An overpriced solution: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Cooling-Fan-for-LSI-9261-8i-9260-8i-9271-8i-9361-8i-/121400577255 Nice blog: http://vcojot.blogspot.com/2015/07/lsi-megaraid-hbas-overheating-and-one.html Another possibility. http://www.ebay.de/itm/PCI-Slot-VGA-Graphics-Card-Cooler-Fan-Holder-with-two-Slim-90mm-Cooling-Fans-/222331844684?hash=item33c402b84c:g:d5sAAOSwEzxYP56a Or use a PCB of a spare card for a diy solution. Link to comment
Sphinkx Posted May 29, 2017 Share Posted May 29, 2017 I'm looking for a sata controller. Apparantly is lsi the way to go looking at the comments I have read in this thread. But is it best to buy the 9211or the newer 9300? Link to comment
SSD Posted May 29, 2017 Share Posted May 29, 2017 1 hour ago, Sphinkx said: I'm looking for a sata controller. Apparantly is lsi the way to go looking at the comments I have read in this thread. But is it best to buy the 9211or the newer 9300? I'd look at the LSI SAS9201 or the LSI SAS9207. No firmware updates needed, which can be a big headache! Link to comment
SSD Posted May 29, 2017 Share Posted May 29, 2017 People trying to decide on what controller to buy should read and understand the following. It will help you to understand what specs should be most important to you. 1 Link to comment
SSD Posted May 30, 2017 Share Posted May 30, 2017 I have yet to see SAS SFF-8087 motherboard connections. I prefer the add on cards that use those to the myriad of individual sata cables on the motherboard. And when motherboard ports go over 6 (or 8?), the other ports are using some add-on controller chips with some of the same challenges as add on cards. Not sure what you mean by "fast", but PCIe 2.0 x8 cards with 8 or 16 drives are readily avail at reasonable costs. And they work quite reliably in my experience. Add on controllers can be upgraded and old ones can be sold or moved to other servers as needed. Or migratef to new motherboards when those are upgraded. Having to find an upgrade motherboard with so many sata ports limits options considerably. Sorry to disagree, but think I'll be sticking with add on cards. Link to comment
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