Hi,

 

I have a unRAID running in a VM and am now to the stage where I have 2x AOC-SASLP-MV8 1 drive away from being full.

 

I am looking into upgrading so that I can get this copy of unRAID upto max drives but also into running another VM for further drives.

 

I have seen people talking about Intel RES2SV240 and this seems the answer if I could use two of these with the AOC-SASLP-MV8 then I would be able to run 2 full unRAID VMs.

 

I have been searching and can't seem to find anyone that has used the AOC-SASLP-MV8's with the expander is there a reason people using IBM M1015 over them?

 

Thanks

Three reasons off the top of my head.

 

1 bandwidth.

the m1015 has about 4 times the bandwidth of the SASLP-MV8. you will over-saturate the MV8 at about 7 drives. to put even more onto the card with an expander will just just slow things down at a really fast rate. (keep in mind in talking parity checks and rebuils, not day to day use)

 

2 expander support.

I dont believe the SASLP-MV8 officially supports expanders.  I vaguely recall hearing that they will but you only see 8 drives in the bios no matter how many are on it. I would google it.

 

3 chip support.

The MV8 is a marvel chipset.

the M1015 is an LSI chipset.

the expander is an LSI Chipset also.

there is inherent operational compatibility with the lsi to lsi products (if I am not mistaken, the IBM white paper even lists the LSI version of the M1015 as a supported card with the RES2SV240)

 

 

 

Johnm you seem to know what you are talking about, might I ask a question regarding the best way to fill drives?

 

I have a 24 bay case with a supermicro X9SCM-iiF motherboard and 2 x IBM ServeRAID M1015.

 

Now I've built desktop computers before with 1-2 drives but am quite new regarding file servers.

 

Which drives goes where? Will some ports perform better than others? Do I slap the OS drives on the motherboards onboard ports and just stick the rest on the controllers or what is optimal?

Thanks for the reply.

 

I guess ill replace the mv8's when i get full

Johnm you seem to know what you are talking about, might I ask a question regarding the best way to fill drives?

 

I have a 24 bay case with a supermicro X9SCM-iiF motherboard and 2 x IBM ServeRAID M1015.

 

Now I've built desktop computers before with 1-2 drives but am quite new regarding file servers.

 

Which drives goes where? Will some ports perform better than others? Do I slap the OS drives on the motherboards onboard ports and just stick the rest on the controllers or what is optimal?

 

I think the question is.. what are you building?

 

For unraid, I'd slap the parity and cache drives (SDD's would take priority) on the motherboards SATAIII ports (you most likely will gain nothing by this with mechanical drives).

The rest can go anywhere for unRAID. performance will be about 100% no matter how you assign them. that is unless you are on a PCIe 4x slot.. then fill those last.

 

I think the question is.. what are you building?

 

For unraid, I'd slap the parity and cache drives (SDD's would take priority) on the motherboards SATAIII ports (you most likely will gain nothing by this with mechanical drives).

The rest can go anywhere for unRAID. performance will be about 100% no matter how you assign them. that is unless you are on a PCIe 4x slot.. then fill those last.

 

Thanks Johnm, first off it's just for unraid. I might explore virtualization further down the road but currently that is way out of my comfort zone

 

Say I want to use all 24 bays, which would be the better approach on that particular motherboard:

3 x IBM ServeRAID M1015 (one would have to be on the PCIe 4x)

or

1 x IBM ServeRAID M1015 + Intel RES2SV240

 

I would probably use the onboard controllers for the OS drives.

 

There is only 8% added cost for the latter solution (not counting cables).

keep in mind that the RES2SV240  has most of the cables you need included.

 

you will get better performance with 3x M1015's (fill the 4x slotted card last).

Keep in mind you be bottle-necking the the single card at some point. you will be running 20 drives on a single SAS2 port.

I would not be surprised if your parity check would drop to 50-60 Mb/s doing that. I have only has 16 at the most so far on a single port and i am still in the 85Mb/s range on parity checks at 50% in.  (that will vary with your drive type)

 

If you are only running 22 drives, you could run the expander with port aggregation for 16 expanded ports and 6 on the mobo ports and keep full speed. 

 

if your going for 24, you could run 6 drives on mobo ports, 4 on a single sas port and the last 14+ on the second SAS2 port via expander. or you could just put everything on the expander and take the hit. I just wish i could tell you the exact hit you will take.

 

 

some people have had odd issues with 3 HBA cards. I have run 4 just fine, but nothing is guaranteed.

 

Also there is a thread growing by the day of a user that is having issues with 3 cards on a V2 xeon. (ivy bridge chip on sandy bridge board) Look at that thread first to make sure you are not plagued by that issue (you can skip the first few pages or quick skim them).

 

 

 

Hmm, would this be a better combination?

 

http://www.xcase.co.uk/LSI-SAS-9201-16i-Internal-p/hba-lsi%20sas%209201-16i.htm

 

that and the M1015 would allow me to put 24 drives on the controllers and have the motherboards onboard ports available later.

 

I'm afraid I'm a controller newbie, but how would the performance of the 16 + 8 port controllers be compared to 3 x 8 port controllers?