SATA Controller Cards

[trurl]

I guess I should ask to have my SAS/SATA card added as a data point

You should be able to edit the wiki yourself.

[leg0]

Unfortunately not many entries in the hardware wiki.

 

Check the links in the line above the table, maybe there is something you can use?

Economically I would guess you are better off with two 8-port controller...

 

I only have two free PICE slots and need to connect to 24 drives. I can possibly leave 8 drives on the PCI controller now and move the others to PCIE. I am using one of the TAMS servers if that helps. Or I could change the backplane as well. What do I need to do that?

[ken-ji]

I guess I should ask to have my SAS/SATA card added as a data point

You should be able to edit the wiki yourself.

 

Righty, patched it in.

 

A nice card, but ~650€ ... 

 

Unfortunately so... but I though about it before I started and decided that fitting a minimum 8 drive tower in the book shelf (shelf wasn't deep enough) was asking for a lot of pain and decided to go with a mini-itx build with external 8 bay tower and still have room to expand on.

[JorgeB]

Unfortunately not many entries in the hardware wiki.

 

Check the links in the line above the table, maybe there is something you can use?

Economically I would guess you are better off with two 8-port controller...

 

I only have two free PICE slots and need to connect to 24 drives. I can possibly leave 8 drives on the PCI controller now and move the others to PCIE. I am using one of the TAMS servers if that helps. Or I could change the backplane as well. What do I need to do that?

 

You can also use one HBA + Expander

[Fireball3]

I only have two free PICE slots and need to connect to 24 drives. I can possibly leave 8 drives on the PCI controller now and move the others to PCIE. I am using one of the TAMS servers if that helps. Or I could change the backplane as well. What do I need to do that?

 

You can also use one HBA + Expander

 

I'm not familiar with the TAMS server.

 

case 1.

PCI controller x8 drives

PCIe controller x8 drives

PCIe controller x8 drives

 

case 2.

PCIe controller x4 drives (1 port used for uplink to expander)

PCIe expander x20 drives

 

Considering the price of an Intel RES2SV240 expander at newegg ~260$,

you can save a lot if you go with a pair of rebranded 9240-8i cards (aka H310 or M1015) + cables.

Depends on your "philosophy".

 

Technically I can't tell how 20 drives will perform in one PCIe x4 (?) slot + uplink in terms of bandwidth usage.

Lets say it will load bandwidth of 4 drives through the uplink, that still leaves 16 drives on the PCIe slot.

You should check the boards specs to see what your PCIe slots are capable of to avoid running into a bottle neck.

Maybe somebody more experienced in expanders can chime in?

Consider this!

[JorgeB]

You should check the boards specs to see what your PCIe slots are capable of to avoid running into a bottle neck.

Maybe somebody more experienced in expanders can chime in?

 

See the post for some expander tests, both single and dual link:

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=43026.0

[Fireball3]

Nice work johnnie.black!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[leg0]

You should check the boards specs to see what your PCIe slots are capable of to avoid running into a bottle neck.

Maybe somebody more experienced in expanders can chime in?

 

See the post for some expander tests, both single and dual link:

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=43026.0

 

Case#1 would probably be the cheapest option to go with. The other option I am entertaining is buying one of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4U-Supermicro-BPN-SAS-846-7EL1-SAS8467EL1-SAS-SATA-24-Port-SAS1-Backplane-/142173451734?hash=item211a32b5d6:g:0wgAAOSwHsRYDkhF

 

What controller would I need to get that backplane to work?

[Fireball3]

That backplane would save you lots of cabling.

On the other hand, it will limit your throughput since it's 3Gb/s and all 24 drives are

routed through one HBA. See the link posted by johnnie.black and the expander figures!

 

Next thins you should take care of:

SAS-846EL1 backplanes have a single-port expander that access all twenty-four drives and supports cascading.

While this is not exactly the type number of your linked backplane, the EL2 mentioned in this manual is a dual-port expander.

The number of your linked expander has also an "EL1" in it's name suggesting it's a single-port uplink.

You better double check it to be a dual-port type!

Ideally it would be a 4-port backplane that can be connected to 2 HBA cards.

 

Finally, I can't tell if there are compatibility issues between this backplane and an HBA of your choice!?

But I answered recently on a topic where an expander-type backplane caused problems!

 

With respect to case#1

Connecting up to 8 drives on the PCI slot (exact specification not known) might also be problematic in terms of bandwidth usage! Hopefully it's a PCI-X slot! Running cache drives or something like that off mentioned slot is highly recommended then!

 

And last but not least you want to check your boards spec to see how all those drives are linked to the

CPU. As Johnnie.black explained in his post, so many drives will most likely overload the internal bus that feeds the CPU (e.g. DMI) slowing down the whole array. This will be mainly during parity checks and in case you have one single array spanning most or all of the drives.

[kolla]

Yes, that is the card you can take. It supports drive sizes >2.2TB.

You need forward breakout cables SFF-8087 MiniSAS to S-ATA.

Reverse breakout will not work!

Maybe you can find an offer that includes the standard cables as well?

One cable has only 2 S-ATA connectors per port though, but it could be enough

to start with.

 

Can't say much about the compatibility with your board.

There are solutions to the known hiccups. Can't remember of an abandoned

project because of incompatibility reasons.

Please take your time to study the wiki and then come back with your questions. 

 

Can you share a pointer to an example cable I need to connect this card to regular SATA HDs?

I have the same cable as shown with this card. Looks like this won't work?

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-H310-Perc-Adapter-6Gb-s-SAS-RAID-Controller-0HV52W-0T3F4V-RAID-0-1-5-10-50-/152297561810?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D40293%26meid%3D729bb7c8defd495395ca5c3364c1e21f%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D11%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D291925551355&_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=zU0jri%252BN%252Bnb9X2tlH1IYrSddwFg%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

 

(scroll down on this page to see details)

 

There's also an aux power connector on this card. Do we need to connect that too?

 

 

[Fireball3]

The cable shown should work!

Sometimes the SFF8087 plug will not connect properly. Make sure it is plugged well into the card.

 

Remember, you need to flash the H310 to IT mode for use with unRAID.

Although unRAID won't show any drives if not in IT mode, at boot the controller should detect your drives if they

are connected with this cable.

 

The mentioned "power connector" is not a power connector!

It is a connector for an activity LED, if I remember correctly! Better don't feed it with power! 

[kolla]

Thanks. I Connected the H310 to PCI-E slot of my main PC running win7 ultimate and went through the flashing process successfully without any errors!!

When the win7 PC boots as normal it's shutting off by itself and automatically reboots again (twice) before it successfully boots at the 3rd attempt with the new card plugged in

What could be the reason for this? (this behavior was there both before and after flashing)

Next I plan to move the card to the unraid box and hoping to use it to increase my storage there.

My new HDs will be inside a NORCO SS-500 cage so looks like this cable won't work with the Norco back.

 

Will 2 of these cables get me full 8 drive expansion?

https://www.amazon.com/CableDeconn-SFF-8087-Degrees-Target-Cable/dp/B00XBE4DGO

 

Thanks again for all the help.

 

 

 

[Fireball3]

Usually you don't want to flash out of Windows but if you were successful, it's OK.

 

The bootloop can happen sometimes.

Let me link to the wiki, where we collected some known problems.

This can be totally different on you server, you will have to try.

 

Yes, that are the right cables!

[kolla]

Thanks I used my Windows PC to flash because using the unraid box to do the flashing was not recommended in the wiki.

 

[opentoe]

Thanks. I Connected the H310 to PCI-E slot of my main PC running win7 ultimate and went through the flashing process successfully without any errors!!

When the win7 PC boots as normal it's shutting off by itself and automatically reboots again (twice) before it successfully boots at the 3rd attempt with the new card plugged in

What could be the reason for this? (this behavior was there both before and after flashing)

Next I plan to move the card to the unraid box and hoping to use it to increase my storage there.

My new HDs will be inside a NORCO SS-500 cage so looks like this cable won't work with the Norco back.

 

Will 2 of these cables get me full 8 drive expansion?

https://www.amazon.com/CableDeconn-SFF-8087-Degrees-Target-Cable/dp/B00XBE4DGO

 

Thanks again for all the help.

 

I've used these guys before on Ebay and they are inexpensive and quick. Also remember the cables you had a link to all had 90 degree angle ends. If you need that good. If you don't, could cause havic. Good luck!

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1M-MiniSAS-36pin-SFF-8087-to-4XSATA-Reverse-Breakout-cable-with-Latch-/162018005379?hash=item25b9069183:g:wmEAAOSwCQNWfpcY

 

[kolla]

Thanks opentoe for that link. I didn't order the 90 degree angle ones because that will be problematic for my Norco back.

This ebay ones look good and cheap too! Are you sure about this cable because in post #344 of this thread Fireball3 mentioned that

"reverse breakout cables will not work"!!

 

Also picked up this 5T for $99 BF price at the local Frys. There were plenty in stock and surprisingly no lines today when I went mid morning..

 

http://www.frys.com/product/8599849

 

 

[opentoe]

Thanks. I Connected the H310 to PCI-E slot of my main PC running win7 ultimate and went through the flashing process successfully without any errors!!

When the win7 PC boots as normal it's shutting off by itself and automatically reboots again (twice) before it successfully boots at the 3rd attempt with the new card plugged in

What could be the reason for this? (this behavior was there both before and after flashing)

Next I plan to move the card to the unraid box and hoping to use it to increase my storage there.

My new HDs will be inside a NORCO SS-500 cage so looks like this cable won't work with the Norco back.

 

Will 2 of these cables get me full 8 drive expansion?

https://www.amazon.com/CableDeconn-SFF-8087-Degrees-Target-Cable/dp/B00XBE4DGO

 

Thanks again for all the help.

 

I've used these guys before on Ebay and they are inexpensive and quick. Also remember the cables you had a link to all had 90 degree angle ends. If you need that good. If you don't, could cause havic. Good luck!

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1M-MiniSAS-36pin-SFF-8087-to-4XSATA-Reverse-Breakout-cable-with-Latch-/162018005379?hash=item25b9069183:g:wmEAAOSwCQNWfpcY

[kolla]

Just an update that I moved the "flashed" H310 on to my Unraid server and successfully added a new 5T drive. Showed up as new drive in the main unraid GUI. Used the "pre-clear disk" plugin to successfully pre-clear the new drive via the GUI. It was the first drive I precleared using this plugin. All other drives in the system were pre-cleared using the script using telnet/screen.

After the pre-clear added to the array and hit "format" and it showed up as "XFS" FS. All my other drives are "reiserfs". Will this be a problem?

Do I need to do a FS conversion?

[trurl]

Just an update that I moved the "flashed" H310 on to my Unraid server and successfully added a new 5T drive. Showed up as new drive in the main unraid GUI. Used the "pre-clear disk" plugin to successfully pre-clear the new drive via the GUI. It was the first drive I precleared using this plugin. All other drives in the system were pre-cleared using the script using telnet/screen.

After the pre-clear added to the array and hit "format" and it showed up as "XFS" FS. All my other drives are "reiserfs". Will this be a problem?

Do I need to do a FS conversion?

No. You can mix FS if you want. XFS is the default for array drives now but reiserfs still works. Many have converted reiserfs to XFS for some good reasons, and others think reiserfs has better recovery tools. I converted all mine to XFS.

 

Note that there is no automatic way to do the conversion, and changing the filesystem of a drive will format it, so you have to move the files off before changing.

[garycase]

This isn't the right thread for a detailed discussion r.e. file system conversion -- just search for "XFS conversion" if you want to read more details.  But I'll toss in a couple basic thoughts ...

 

=>  XFS is the recommended file system for new drives you add to your array, but there's no real reason to convert current Reiser volumes, especially if they're essentially static (i.e. filled with media and rarely changed or written to).

 

=>  Reiser does indeed have better recovery tools in the event a Reiser volume should get corrupted -- there are plenty of examples of just how good they are on this forum.

 

=>  If you have a very active volume -- lots of writes, deletes, updates, etc. -- it's probably a good idea to convert it to XFS, as XFS doesn't have the issue Reiser does with slow write performance as a disk gets close to full.  If you DO decide to convert your data, be VERY careful.  Read the threads about this CAREFULLY and be CERTAIN you understand what the "user share copy bug" is and that you absolutely avoid it -- it will result in complete data loss if not.

 

 

[kolla]

Thanks for all the help and tips guys. Really appreciate it. I think I'll just keep the FS on the older disks for now and not take any risks.

 

[tgggd86]

Seems like there are a lot of people having issues with Marvell controllers and unRAID.  I just ran into an issue I can't seem to resolve and I think it's time to find a new SATA controller card.  I currently have a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 which is throwing errors no matter what I do (change drives, change cables, change power source, update firmware) and am hoping to find something similar to replace it.  Any recommendations?  Hoping for something that will be a little future proof but I only need 8 ports.

 

Also if you're running unRAID v6.1.9 or higher and using this same controller without issues please chime in

 

Thread about my server issues: https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=54768.0

[Fireball3]

Try one of those rebranded LSI cards with SAS2008 chipset namely Dell H310 or H200, as well as the IBM M1015 or M1115.

Obviously they run nicely so far and can be found for reasonable prices in the bay.

[tgggd86]

Thanks Fireball3 Just ordered a Dell H310 for just under $50 on the bay.  Hopefully that will help get my server up and running again!

[mata7]

is this the dell that you guys are talking about? i want to get 2 i just want to make sure thas the one

 

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/282257072759?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

thanks