I have a LSI 9300-16i connected to an Adaptec AEC-82885T 36-Port SAS-3 12Gbps Expander internally via a SFF-8643 to SFF-8643 cable, and the Netapp connected to the the Adaptec card externally via single SFF-8644 to SFF-8644 cable.

 

All is well and the netapp shows up in Unraid.

 

Now for the interesting things.

 

Directly connected to the Netapp, none of the Seagate EXOS X16 16TB disks will spin up. 

I tried Kapton tape on the 3.3v pin on the disks and still nothing.

 

I have a bunch of SAS to SATA interposers, with 2 different model numbers.

The different models when attached to the SATA disks and plugged in to the Netapp allow the Seagate disks to Spin Up and be detected.

 

The interposers ending in part number 02D do not pass temp data.

The interposers ending in 04B do send the temp data. 

 

I have 9 disks now connected to the 04B interposers, and ran a preclear on them with pre and post check. All was well and pretty fast considering disk size.

 

The new disks have been added to my array and are working, but fix common problems tells me that write cache is disabled on the drives connected via interposers.

 

I stopped the array, and as a test put on of the drives without an interposer in to a USB enclosure and looking at its disk log, write caching is enabled.

 

It seems that the SAS to SATA interposer is killing the ability to use write caching, but removing the interposers prevents disk from spinning up at all. I tried the standard commands to try and enable the write caching when the drives are connected to the interposers, but that fails.

 

Any thoughts? Should I just live with this and be happy or am I taking a significant performance hit here?

 

Thanks!

Edited January 14, 20242 yr by Bos98
title update

Did you try without the interposers? It should better, and you'll get SATA SMART reports.

3 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Did you try without the interposers? It should better, and you'll get SATA SMART reports.

Without them the drives don’t power up at all in the Netapp. 

Try the tape trick, I never had a Netapp, but for most users it works better without the interposers.

2 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Try the tape trick, I never had a Netapp, but for most users it works better without the interposers.

As I mentioned, I have already tried kapton tape over the 3.3v pins. Still won’t power on in the netapp. 

Sorry, missed that, in that case no more ideas.

10 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Sorry, missed that, in that case no more ideas.

No worries. I have been doing extensive research and testing, and I think this is the best I can do sticking with the Netapp or the Seagate EXOS. Seems most people are able to get this config to work with other sata disks and no interposers. If anyone out there has a netapp and seagate exos x16 16TB disks working in it without interposers installed, I’d love to hear from you. 

I know this is an old topic , just wanted to pitch in, 

I have two Netapp 12Disk shelfs both with IOM6 modules one eache and two psu.

They are full for 6TB Seagates. no Interposers ( only have 7 of them and they just affectest smart stuff in a bad way ). So I am not using any.

All works fine , for except there is a Cosmetic spam in the logs that does not affect anything else. ( have isolated it down to the IOM6/Shelfs. )

 

Now I upgraded the Modules to IOM12 , and machine see the shelfs but does not spinn upp any disks.

So this is something the IOM12 controller module is doing, and IOM6 does not, so if IOM6 is enough for you then go that route, note you might need special Minisas-QSFP cables.

 

Edited December 18, 20241 yr by TeslaHaffi

So what is it about the IOM12 modules??