My second UnRAID system is showing signs of instability. I'd like to replace the older Abit motherboard and move the system to something newer. My other UnRAID box is based on the Asus P5B-VM-DO, the officially recommended board, but I can't find that in stock anymore. What I'd like to do is find a new motherboard and migrate the drives in the second system to that.

 

My second system has 12 500GB SATA drives and 4 500GB IDEs. I want the new motherboard to be all SATA, so I'll add some new drives to achieve that. I also want to avoid the bottlenecks I currently have when doing parity checks. The system will have 17 drives: 16 for parity and data, and a cache disk. So, I'll need 17 SATA ports. I'd like all these to be full speed, so any add in cards need to be PCIe, not PCI. Of course, I'm all set with case, power supplies and drive cages.

 

I've been reading the threads here, and I'm hoping to find a way to avoid the long drive spin up times that I have with a 17 drive system. It's painful just to open a directory and have to wait a so long to see contents. If extra RAM would help, or someone has a utility to help with this, I'd appreciate any recommendations in this area. The cache drive I just added to my first UnRAID box has speeded up things dramatically. I'd like the new system to have even better performance.

 

To summarize, I need:

 

UnRAID motherboard, preferably with built-in video

17 SATA ports, full speed mobo and PCIe (no PCI based cards)

CPU and RAM recommendations

 

Thanks.

 

 

Still looking for a mobo recommendation, or a link to where I can find some suggestions for components. My Abit board is not going to last much longer, and I'd like to get the data off the 4 IDEs so I can just plug the existing SATA drives into the new system. A mobo with 10 onboard SATA connectors would be best, and I could add in an 8-port SATA card (or a couple of 4-port SATA cards) on the PCIe bus.

 

I'd like to use a mobo someone here has experience with.

 

The most motherboard connections I've seen so far was the abit ab9 pro. 9 internal, 1 external.

 

2 pcie x1, 1 pcie x16, 2 pci.

 

also, 3 of the internal sata ports are port multiplier capable.

 

or if you went with    2 - 4x adaptec controllers. you would have 8 more ports.

(or one card capable of handling 8 ports in the x16 slot).

 

 

 

What would I need to do to take advantage of the 3 internal port multiplier capable SATA ports? How many additional SATA drives could be added to each of these, and would there be any speed disadvantage to using the multipliers?

 

I've seen this board mentioned in other posts here. Have some forum members used this board?

 

Thanks for the response. I've been away from the forums for quite some time because of a death in the family. Glad to see there are still a lot of helpful people here.

What would I need to do to take advantage of the 3 internal port multiplier capable SATA ports?

 

http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp

Disclaimer, I don't know how (or if) it actually works with unRAID. Maybe someone else can chime in.

 

How many additional SATA drives could be added to each of these

 

3 port multiplier capable ports, 3 controllers, = Up to 15 more sata drives

 

6 original ICH ports + 15 ports + 1 external.

 

Keep in mind, unRAID's max drive capability right now is  15 data drives, 1 parity drive + 1 cache drive.

 

would there be any speed disadvantage to using the multipliers?

 

There could possibly be contention on the sata port being multiplied if simultaneously accessed.

Sort of like P-ATA drives, whereby 1 drive is communicated at a time even if two drives are on the same cable.

Supposedly, 1 3Gb/s SATA port is capable of handling 5 drives at approx 60MB/s.

I would surmise that if you stagger the drives across the channels instead of assigning them sequentually, you could achive high throughputs during parity operations.

 

To stagger them this means assigning

disk 1 - ich

disk 2 - drive on port multiplier on SIL3132

Disk 3 - drive on port multiplier on JMicron.

etc, etc..

 

rather then the first 6 to one controller, the next 5 to another controller, etc, etc.

 

It could be a bit of a maintenance chore in keeping track of them.

 

 

I've seen this board mentioned in other posts here. Have some forum members used this board?

 

I'm using it, I like it, it requires quality memory.

There are a few others using it with success.

 

 

Your other option is to purchase controllers.

 

1  - 4x  PCIe adaptec 1420sa - 4 ports.

2  - 1x  PCIe SIL3132 - 2 ports each = 4 ports.

 

 

 

 

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2432.0

thats the thread to what I had to do to get my MB to work

 

I'm going with adapter 1430SA pciex4  4-port sata controller, other people on the message board have got them to work fine, also using http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816701005 istarusa  4x hard drive cage for 3x5.25 bay slots. Then later on I will pickup another card and another hard cage and that will put me at 16 HD's with all drives running off the pcie bus, so parity check will be really quick.

 

adapater cardx2=$200

hard cagex2=$200

 

 

Exactly the kind of information I needed. The Addonics 5X1 Internal SATA Port Multiplier (PM) documentation warns that the board "does not work with SATA controller that has no PM support. Check with your system supplier to confirm the PM support on your existing SATA port." I Googled PM and port multiplier with this board and didn't get a single hit. It might not support it, but then again, I didn't really see a reference to any of the SATA ports supporting PM at all, so it might. There's also the issue of whether UnRAID will see the drives on the PM.

 

This is a very appealing solution, along with the idea of staggering the drives in UnRAID. Maybe someone else can chime in here?

 

 

I didn't really see a reference to any of the SATA ports supporting PM at all, so it might. There's also the issue of whether UnRAID will see the drives on the PM.Maybe someone else can chime in here?

 

I confirmed that the SIL3132 and JMICRON worked with this unit in port multiplier mode.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1750.0

 

This doesn't mean the addonics will work, but changes are good it might.

Someone else had a port multiplier working with unRAID.

 

Here's s'more posts regarding multipliers. (pros and cons).

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2318.0

 

 

 

 

Thanks for checking that out. I think I might just try the Abit board with the Addonics multipliers. I'll try staggering the drives as you suggest.

 

You mentioned that the mobo is finicky about RAM. Which RAM sticks are you using? Also, if I have to get an add on SATA PCIe board after all, do I need a video card for this mobo to boot? I thought a board wouldn't boot w/o a video card. I'll need to use the sole PCIe x16 slot for the SATA card.

 

Weebo, after reading some of your links a little more carefully, I'm not sure about parity check speeds with your rig. That's my main concern. Since I have a 16 drive setup, with all 500GB drives, parity checks are a bear. I haven't timed it precisely, but if I start one in the afternoon, it's not until sometime late the next morining that it finishes. I really want to cut that down. Any guesstimates, based on your config, how long I could expect checks to take on my system if I go with the Abit AB9?

 

with my AB9pro setup, where each drive is on it's own PCIe lane, parity is done at about 90 MB/sec... 9 1 tb drives and 3 500gb drives finish in a little more than 3 hours. 

 

 

That's what I wanted to hear. Can you share your hardware configuration and anything special you had to do to get that kind of performance? Some extra cost at this point is fine with me.

 

That's what I wanted to hear. Can you share your hardware configuration and anything special you had to do to get that kind of performance? Some extra cost at this point is fine with me.

 

 

I'm pretty much ready to bite on this Abit board, if I can get your hardware details. I'd appreciate RAM/CPU suggestions, too, since I've read several posts here and elsewhere that it can be picky about RAM. What did you do to get all your drives on separate PCIe lanes, and could I achieve that with 16 (or 17) drives?

Here's the setup:

6 drives on Intel MB controller

1 drive on MB SIL controller

1 drive on MB JMicron controller

4 drives on Adaptec 4030sa PCIe 4x controller (in 16x graphics card slot)

2 drives on two PCIe 1x SIL controllers

 

I have 12 drives in the array, 1 cache and one Linux boot drive

 

A core2duo of about 2 ghz would be plenty... go for one with the biggest cache (I'm using a Q6600  )

 

I have 8gb of Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 in it, at 2.2 v

 

I had to get a Corsair 750 with single rail, my 600w OCZ would sag and reboot the server when I hit the "Spinup" button 

 

Good Luck....

 

Thanks. Here are a few more questions for ya:

 

1. Would an 8-port controller in the x16 slot likely work as well and, if so, any suggestions for one? (I'd like to maintain the current drives until the capacity/price ratio gets a little better.)

2. Do you have a video card connected anywhere? I thought most mobo's needed one to boot.

3. Which controller got your parity drive?

4. Do you think the 8GB of RAM (or the quad core) helps you get such great parity check speeds? I've read some posts which suggest more RAM helps.

5. Did you have to make many other RAM and mobo timing/voltage changes?

6. Would one of my IDE drives on the mobo IDE controller negatively effect speeds for other write operations? If I end up using an 8-port PCIe card in the x16 slot, and the other onboard SATA controllers, I'm still missing a cache drive contoller.

 

I know I'm asking for some speculation here, but this is certainly the place to ask.

 

Thanks, again, Jim and Weebo, for your help here.

 

 

 

Edit: I just got word that I can get this CPU for $50:

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz 2M shared L2 Cache.

 

I'm concerned because it's only a 2MB cache (compared, for instance, to the Q6600's 8MB). Big difference in performance with a 16 drive system?

 

1. Would an 8-port controller in the x16 slot likely work as well and, if so, any suggestions for one? (I'd like to maintain the current drives until the capacity/price ratio gets a little better.)

 

Yes it would work as well. you just have to find one that is cost effective. I've not seen one that is not a raid card.

The raid cards usually have drivers that assign the drives as SCSI. So I'm not sure I can recommend that.

If you find an 8 port card, let us know and I'll help research it a lil.

 

 

2. Do you have a video card connected anywhere? I thought most mobo's needed one to boot.

 

The ABIT AB9 PRO requires a video card, A cheap PCI card with a passive heatsink is the way to go.

 

3. Which controller got your parity drive?

 

My recommendations,

Put it on it's own controller (SIL3132, JMB or PCIe 1x) or put it on the controller you put in the 16x slot.

 

4. Do you think the 8GB of RAM (or the quad core) helps you get such great parity check speeds? I've read some posts which suggest more RAM helps.

4G is enough for you.

You can get by with 2G.

It's cost effective and will give provide performance during reads, by caching as much as possible.

It will help in keeping drives from spinning up. It helps with writes a lil.

It does help with allowing you to install more applications without running out of room.

It does not help with parity calculation what so ever.

8G is not worth it unless you are going to use the unRAID server very heavily (like me LOL).

It also requires recompiling the kernel with PAE enabled.

I would recommend against 8GB at this time, if you can afford it, 4G is the best choice for future and performance reasons.

 

The quad core buys you nothing at this time. Perhaps later when unRAID supports SMP and you install VMWare to offload other machines.

Right now I would recommend against it unless you have one just laying around.

 

I won a 2.66ghz duo core 2 for peanuts last year and even then I run it at 1.6ghz.

The CPU has hardly an issue with unRAID, it's more I/O bound.

I plan to score a Celeron-L 440 2ghz and possibly replace the 2.66 just because it's so idle and I want to reduce power consumption.

 

 

 

 

5. Did you have to make many other RAM and mobo timing/voltage changes?

I did, but only because I noticed the ram timings were 272mhz instead of 266. I changed it to 266 for stability.

Others bump the voltage a lil

 

6. Would one of my IDE drives on the mobo IDE controller negatively effect speeds for other write operations? If I end up using an 8-port PCIe card in the x16 slot, and the other onboard SATA controllers, I'm still missing a cache drive contoller.

The IDE drive may slow down the system slightly during parity checks.

if you put 2 ide drives on the same cable, AND have them next to one another in the devices page, I'm positive this will slow down the system slightly.

With IDE drives, the CPU has to wait for the command to succeed.

I think with SATA drives and NCQ, the CPU can detach from the command like SCSI drives.

Overall, I would not worry so much about the IDE drive unless it is on a PCI controller and the drives share a cable.

 

I don't use IDE drives in my unRAID controller.

I have used them with Linux software raid before on a promise controller.

I've had good performance unless two drives were on the same cable.

In that respect I've had horrible experiences whereby one drive brought down the whole cable thus causing a raid5 array to fail.

In this case I lost everything.

 

I do plan to build a small unraid server with Just my old 300gb ide drives to use them till they drop LOL.

Either that or I'll off them on eBay.. Have not decided yet.

 

8G is not worth it unless you are going to use the unRAID server very heavily (like me LOL).

It also requires recompiling the kernel with PAE enabled.

I would recommend against 8GB at this time, if you can afford it, 4G is the best choice for future and performance reasons.

 

Agreed, but get 2x2gb, not 4x1gb sticks so you have the 2 extra slots when you need them later 

 

Agreed, but get 2x2gb, not 4x1gb sticks so you have the 2 extra slots when you need them later 

 

Doh, should have thought of that!

Here's what I thought I'd order, barring any warnings to the contrary here.

 

1. Abit AB9 Pro mobo - $90

2. Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz - $50

3. iStarUSA BPN-350SAS-Black 3x5.25" to 5x3.5" SATA/SAS Trayless Hot-Swap Backplane RAID Cage - $90 (can't find the AMS ones I used for my other SATA drives)

4. Addonics AD5SAPM port multiplier cards (3) - $255

5. CORSAIR XMS2 DHX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX - $107

 

I've had a lot of good luck with Corsair RAM in the past - never a failed stick. I'll stagger the drives to avoid parity check conflicts as best I can. I thought I'd do PM1a PM2a PM3a, PM1b PM2b PM3b, etc., up through 15 drives, then use a native mobo SATA for parity and cache. I know this is a risk, not knowing if the PMs will work with UnRAID, but if they don't I can probably sell them over at AVS, where they're recommended components for many of the HTPCs they have in their extensive list. Worst case, I know this board will perform well if I have to go another route with PCIe SATA cards.

 

I couldn't find much in PCI video cards at Newegg, and a couple I did had warnings about problems working with Linux. Gack! Any ideas here or anyone have an old working PCI video card they'd let go for cheap?

 

Which of the SATA mobo ports is PM capable? Are they the two paired together without other SATA ports around them and the one isolated from the rest?

 

I'd really appreciate any final thoughts before I go ahead and order the components.

 

 

4. Addonics AD5SAPM port multiplier cards (3) - $255

 

Why 3?  At most you will need two or one if you go with native controllers.

 

6 onboard ports. 384MB/s bandwidth I believe. divided over 6.

 

1 SIL3132 256MB/s Bandwidth divided over 5.

1 JMICRON 256MB/s Bandwidth divided over 5

 

I might be inclined to grab the adaptec board for $100 which is 4 ports in the 16X slot.

Then only get 1 port multiplier

 

Notice Jim White's setup in the prior post.

 

The cost for the controllers vs port multipliers will be the same.

 

--------------------------------------------------

 

>> Which of the SATA mobo ports is PM capable? Are they the two paired together without other SATA ports around them and the one isolated from the rest?

 

The Sil3132 and JMB ports are. 

The Sil3132 has one internal and one external port (1 pcie lane)

The JMB has 2 internal ports.

 

You can get PCIe 1x SIL3132 controllers for $20-40 each (fit up to 2 controllers)

You can get the 4 port adaptec fro $100-120 (fit 1 controller).

 

>> iStarUSA BPN-350SAS-Black 3x5.25" to 5x3.5" SATA/SAS Trayless Hot-Swap Backplane RAID Cage

I love this, I've never used it though. I'm considering the purchase myself.

 

On the istar 5x raid cage, depending on the tower your putting it into, it might not fit. My black pearl case has 1/8" ledges for drives to sit on top. Thats the reason I had to go with the 4x to 3x5.25 drive vs the 5 drive cage. The 4x drive cage has groove/slots in the sides to allow it to slide into the case w/o modifying.  I'd double check to make sure it's going to fit.

I'm using a CM Stacker case with similar cages that I can't find anymore. From the look of the iStar, it should fit, but I'm not positive. The cage looks like it will fit with the drives arranged vertically, like my other cages, even though the photo shows the drives oriented horizontally. The mounting screws are on the top in the photo, not the sides. Anyone else have any experience with the iStar?

 

You're right about the 3 PMs. I only need 2. The reason for not putting a 4 port controller in the PCIe slot is that I have a spare PCIe video card lying around, but not a PCI, which I'm having trouble finding. With 2 PMs (one for the jmicron and one for the SIL3132), I'll still have enough internal SATA ports so that I won't have to go outside the case to bring the eSATA connector inside. If the drives are accessed sequentially for parity checks, I still should be able to stagger them for faster checks, doing it this way:

 

mobo-PM1-PM2-mobo-PM1-PM2-mobo-PM1-PM2-mobo-PM1-PM2-mobo-PM1-PM2-mobo-JMB = 17 drives. Right?

 

Worst case, if parity check speed is too slow, I go Jim's route. This way, I can also stay all SATA and not have to worry about the IDE controller at all.

I'm also looking at replacing those IDE drives in this UnRAID box. Newegg has these 1TB drives for $140 right now,

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148274&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives-_-Seagate-_-22148274

 

so I think I'll just replace parity and the 4 IDE drives with 3 of these. Anyone have any warnings about these drives? I've read some bad things about 1TB WD green drives failing prematurely, so I want to be careful.

 

I think I'm ready to go on this unless someone has additional warnings. Anything?

 

I would consider going with the new 1.5 TB drives recently released.  Buy.com sells them for 199 and newegg for 189, but both currently out of stock.    They seem to have about the same GB/$ ratio as the 1TB drives, with the 1.5TB being a slightly better deal.  Something to think about with the limited physical server space.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

http://www.buy.com/prod/seagate-1-5tb-barracuda-sata-7200rpm-3-5-32mb-cache-internal-hard/q/loc/101/208921110.html

 

Thanks. Good suggestion. I'm on Newegg's auto notify list.