Adaptec 72405 24 Port Controller Series 7 Controller - Compatible?


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Does anyone know or have thoughts if the Adaptec Series 7 controller, specifically the 72405 might be compatible with Unraid or not?  The specifications show that is supports HBA mode.

http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/products/series/7/

 

Yes, I know this is an expensive card and would be a waste of raid hardware and that 24 ports can be achieved for a lot less cost.  The reason would be to reach a high port count on a mini-ITX motherboard that only has a single expansion slot.  Since the controller is a PCI Express Gen3 8X, speed shouldn't be an issue.  I have the Supermicro X9XPV-M3-3UE motherboard in mind for the setup.  Yes, I know this isn't cheap either!

http://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/motherboard/Xeon/QM77/X9SPV-M4-3UE.cfm

 

My idea here is to have the best performance and lowest power consumption.  I've built high port count Unraid servers before tyring to keep power consuption low, but was never happy with the results.  I saw the thread here:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27460.msg244046#msg244046

where someone is working on a 24 port low power server.  Between this and the soon to be released version 5, I thought it might be time to try again!

 

According to this article

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5225/adaptec-by-pmc-asr-72405-enterprise-raid-controller-review/index5.html

the Adaptec 72405 would use just 18 Watts of power.

 

Thanks,

Kerry

 

 

 

 

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Is here a reason you want to use the Adaptec card vs. the 24 port RocketRaid 2760A that is used in the thread you linked to? Since we know that card is working.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say at this time this controller will not work. It looks like it's a brand new controller chip so it's doubtful the drivers have been included. You can ask Tom if he could include them and see what he says. I would say, though, unless you have a specific reason to use this card, just go for the 2760A since it already works.

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A few thoughts ...

 

=>  Agree the 18w vs 28w is nice ... when you're building a low-power system, dropping the idle power consumption by 10w is definitely nice.

 

=>  Also agree with mrow that there's significant doubt about whether this card would work.  I'd say you'd need to do what Pauven did with the 2760a ... i.e. take the risk of buying it from a source that would accept returns, and simply try it  :)

 

=>  One of the big advantages of the 2780a is that it's a PCIe x16 card, so there are no potential bus bandwidth issues.  Note that the Adaptec card here is an x8 card, so it has half the bandwidth to the PCIe bus.  With 8 lanes (thus 4GB/s of bandwidth), you could have a bit of bandwidth limitation with a fully populated system [modern high-capacity drives can hit 200MB/s of sustained throughput on the outer cylinders ... so 24 of them would exceed the x8 bus bandwidth].

 

=>  r.e. "... My idea here is to have the best performance and lowest power consumption. "  ... when comparing the 72405 and 2760a it seems the "best performance" goes to the 2760a, but the "lowest power consumption" goes to the 72405, so you can't have both  8).  However, I certainly agree that IF the 72405 works with UnRAID, it's a very attractive option.  The bus limitation would only come into play with parity checks/builds or drive rebuilds ... and it's not that much of a bandwidth limitation -- so I certainly agree that the 10w power advantage would make it a better choice for a low-power "maxed out" system.

 

Bottom line:  You should buy one, try it out, and let us all know if it works !!  8) 8)

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... by the way, that SuperMicro board is a VERY nice board.    Good choice for a high-performance but very low power mini-ITX build !!

 

I was going to say there could be some interesting uses for it with the 4 onboard NICs but I just looked it up and it's going for ~$715 bucks! I know it includes the CPU but damn! Low power stuff sure ain't cheap.

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... by the way, that SuperMicro board is a VERY nice board.    Good choice for a high-performance but very low power mini-ITX build !!

 

I was going to say there could be some interesting uses for it with the 4 onboard NICs but I just looked it up and it's going for ~$715 bucks! I know it includes the CPU but damn! Low power stuff sure ain't cheap.

 

He DID say "...  Yes, I know this isn't cheap either!"

 

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... and it's "only" $659 here:  http://shopcomputech.com/supermicro-mb-mbd-x9spv-m4-3ue-o-i7-3517ue-qm77-16g-ddr3-pcie-sata-usb-miniitx.html

 

While it seems a bit high (I suppose it is), when you consider it's an excellent SuperMicro board (call that a $200 "value");  and an embedded Core i7 (call that a $300 "value"); has 6 SATA ports and 4 Gb NICs, along with 4 USB v3 ports; it's certainly a VERY nice mini-ITX option with perhaps a $200 or so "premium" vs. what an equivalent quality setup would cost in a larger form-factor using a higher-power CPU.

 

It gives you Atom-like power utilization with more than 5 times the processing power of a D525 Atom [PassMark 3807 vs. 694 or the D525].

 

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=>  One of the big advantages of the 2780a is that it's a PCIe x16 card, so there are no potential bus bandwidth issues.  Note that the Adaptec card here is an x8 card, so it has half the bandwidth to the PCIe bus.  With 8 lanes (thus 4GB/s of bandwidth), you could have a bit of bandwidth limitation with a fully populated system [modern high-capacity drives can hit 200MB/s of

 

While the Adaptec card is a X8 card, it is a Gen 3 PCI Express which gives it a througput of 1GB/s per lane.  The Supermicro motherboard has a Gen 3 PCI Express slot so the card would perform to it's maximum capability.  The RocketRaid 2760a is a X16 card, but it's a Gen 2 PCI Express which give is a through put of 500MB/s per lane.  The throughput cabpability of the Adaptec card should match the RocketRaid.

 

PCI Express bandwith info:

http://www.chipestimate.com/tech-talks/2011/03/15/Synopsys-PCI-Express-3.0-A-Protocol-in-Transition

 

 

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While the Adaptec card is a X8 card, it is a Gen 3 PCI Express which gives it a througput of 1GB/s per lane.  The Supermicro motherboard has a Gen 3 PCI Express slot so the card would perform to it's maximum capability. 

 

I had noticed that the Adaptec was Gen 3, but missed that the motherboard actually had Gen 3 slots ==> so you're absolutely right.

 

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I've still got a couple weeks to decide to keep or return the 2760A.  I'm a little on the fence.

 

Pros:

  • It works with unRAID out of the box!
  • It's very fast, as long as you're not doing a parity check
  • It's a single-slot solution to a 24 bay server
  • It is somewhat price competitive, on a per drive basis
  • It boots incredibly quick (no 5-minute bios boot sequence)
  • Marvell says their 88SE9485 SAS/SATA chips are "the most energy efficient in their class"
  • Parity Checks/Rebuild energy consumption is way down from previous build (may also be CPU choice)

 

Cons:

  • 28 Watt Idle power consumption (measured)
  • 55 Watt Max power consumption (theoretical)
  • Runs hot, even at idle
  • 160+ degrees measured under load in a well ventilated, high airflow case
  • Exposes an issue with unRAID during Parity Checks - ~30% slower
  • Probably still way overkill for an unRAID box
  • It's not cheap
  • I don't feel like I got my money's worth due to power consumption and unRAID parity check issues

 

 

I found your link while looking for other options to consider.  I was one of the few unRAID users to try the Adaptec 1430SA adapter, and to be honest it was an excellent controller and worked great with unRAID 4.3 through the current versions.  There is a risk with the 3.4.x Linux kernel versions not having driver support out of the box, since it is already a little old, so if you do try it out (and I hope you do) definitely purchase from a shop that will let you return it.

 

I would actually try it myself if only it had the SFF-8087 mini-SAS connectors; I would have to buy $$ cables to try this card.

 

Did you find any other options for 24 port controller cards?  I'm willing to give an 8-port HBA with port multipliers built in a try.

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Tough choice.

 

To me the key advantages are that it's a single-slot solution, works out-of-the-box with UnRAID, and boots quickly (often a problem with add-in controllers).    It's also FAST except for parity checks ... but you've proven that's not related to the card, so there's at least hope that the speed issue will be resolved.

 

The only disadvantages you listed that bother me are the power consumption and heat.  The price is a bit high, but not out-of-line for a 24-port card, and as a % of the cost of a 24-drive system it's really not bad.

 

It would, of course, be very interesting to see as detailed an analysis of the Adaptec 72405 as you've done with this card.    If it truly idles at 18w it should also be cooler; and if it matches the speed of the 2760a then clearly it would be a better choice.

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I finally looked up the price of the Adaptec 72405... Yikes!  That's a 50% premium over the 2760A. The cables are more expensive too.

 

If it saves you 10W over the 2760A, it's going to take about 30 yrs (at 11 cents KWh) to break even on the price premium.

 

If that 18W figure is the maximum power (I don't know if it is) and it idles even lower (sure would be nice), then we might be looking at a 20W savings on average.  Still, 15 years for ROI just isn't cost effective over the 2760A.

 

As garycase points out, the lower heat output sounds desirable, but I also noticed in the article they mentioned throttling if the 72405 doesn't get enough airflow, which makes me wonder if the cooling solution has cut some corners.

 

Now, if you want to save electricity at any cost, then I salute you, as you are a better man than I am.  I certainly had a goal of making a low power 24-bay server, but at a certain point chasing a few more watts just becomes too expensive for me.  I've also had to redefine what a low-power 24-drive server even means.  When I started my quest, I thought <20W was the target.  After my build is done, and I've seen where the power flows, I would say anything in the 50W range is world-class.

 

I don't think you are going to get better performance with the 72405, as the 2760A is already faster than the hard drives it is connected to, so the HD's are the bottleneck.  I say that assuming that one day unRAID won't have the parity check throughput issue that is afflicting the 2760A.

 

That Supermicro X9XPV-M3-3UE also looks interesting... how much does it cost and how much power will it consume at idle? 

 

I picked up the Celeron G1610 and Foxconn H61S for about $100 total.  That's cheap!  I still got the benefits of a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, it has plenty of horsepower, and I was able to achieve a 17W-18W idle (not counting case fans, controller card or HD's).  There's not much room to save more power on the CPU/MB combo.  10W saved is about $10/yr, so you might be looking at a very long return on investment.

 

An in case you're curious, I've calculated the idle wattage of my build, once scaled up to 24 WD Red 3TB drives, to be 76 Watts.  It's surprising how fast the watt counts goes up once you add in things like case fans and backplanes (I see 10W going to three 120mm case fans, and about 6W going to the SAS backplanes).

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I found your link while looking for other options to consider.  I was one of the few unRAID users to try the Adaptec 1430SA adapter, and to be honest it was an excellent controller and worked great with unRAID 4.3 through the current versions.  There is a risk with the 3.4.x Linux kernel versions not having driver support out of the box, since it is already a little old, so if you do try it out (and I hope you do) definitely purchase from a shop that will let you return it.

I got started again on this idea when I was reading your post!  I tried it a couple of years ago and ended up with the machine in my signature.  I just wasn't happy with it I guess or else it was time for something new.

 

I finally looked up the price of the Adaptec 72405... Yikes!  That's a 50% premium over the 2760A. The cables are more expensive too.

I did get an Adaptec 72405 ordered the other night.  It's shipping from California and I'm in Michigan, so I'm assuming that it will be at least 6/10/2013 before I recieve it.  I found a sweet deal on a used one on Ebay from a reputable seller that provided a 1 year warrany for $645 so I jumped on it.  Plus it came with the flash module for that price which I don't need.  I should be able to put the flash module back on ebay and get $150 for it.  That money will cover the cost of the cables.  I thought the deal was so good that I bought 2.  I might have bought more, but that was all that they had!  Now, the best deal I see on ebay for a used one is $750 and it doesn't include the flash module.  The 2nd one might just be to make a quick profit to get some money back in the paypal account.

 

You can get new ones for $850 here:

http://www.provantage.com/adaptec-2274900-r~7ADPR043.htm 

 

I've had good luck with Adaptec controllers in the past plus the last one held it's value pretty well.  I bought a series 5 24 port 52445 used on ebay for $900, used it for 3 years and sold it for $750 as soon as I saw the news about the series 7 being on the way.  Now, I'm able to buy a series 7 for less than I sold my last series 5 for.  I really lucked out on that one.  It doesn't usually work quit so well.

 

If that 18W figure is the maximum power (I don't know if it is) and it idles even lower (sure would be nice), then we might be looking at a 20W savings on average.  Still, 15 years for ROI just isn't cost effective over the 2760A.

Yes, I do realize that the ROI just isn't there.  If i was looking at ROI, I would just keep using the machine in my signature.  Even if I reduce the power consumption, it will never pay for the new hardware even with selling the old.  However, I do have a pet peeve with monthly bills and like to keep them low.  That gives me money to support my computer habit. lol

 

Did you find any other options for 24 port controller cards?  I'm willing to give an 8-port HBA with port multipliers built in a try.

The Areca 24 port controllers might work, but the spec show 28.81watts for them.

http://www.areca.com.tw/products/1882.htm

Plus they are really expensive as well.  There does seem to be success using Areca controllers with unraid plus some awesome flexibility.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19507.0

 

I don't think you are going to get better performance with the 72405, as the 2760A is already faster than the hard drives it is connected to, so the HD's are the bottleneck.  I say that assuming that one day unRAID won't have the parity check throughput issue that is afflicting the 2760A.

You are correct.  The therotical throughput of the 72405 would be identical to the 2760A.

72405 Gen 3 PCI express has 1GB/s per lane X 8 lanes = 8GB/s

2760A Gen 2 PCI express has 500MB/s per lane X 18 lanes = 8GB/s

 

That Supermicro X9XPV-M3-3UE also looks interesting... how much does it cost and how much power will it consume at idle? 

The X9SPV-M4-3UE (Dual Core) $636

http://www.wiredzone.com/Supermicro-X9SPV-M4-3UE-Motherboard-w--3rd-Gen-Core-i7-3517UE~10022339~0.htm

The X9SPV-M4-3QE (Quad Core) $738

http://www.wiredzone.com/Supermicro-X9SPV-M4-3QE-Motherboard-w--3rd-Gen-Core-i7-3612QE~10022357~0.htm

I'm not sure about the power consumption.  My guesstimate would be some where below 18watts.

 

I picked up the Celeron G1610 and Foxconn H61S for about $100 total.  That's cheap!  I still got the benefits of a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, it has plenty of horsepower, and I was able to achieve a 17W-18W idle (not counting case fans, controller card or HD's).  There's not much room to save more power on the CPU/MB combo.  10W saved is about $10/yr, so you might be looking at a very long return on investment.

You're deffinately way ahead in the low cost catagory!  I usually don't keep my hardware long enough to see much of a ROI at all.  I like to play with the new stuff and get familiar with it for a few months.  I usually end up selling it while its's still worth a good bit.  Then I find something else to buy.

 

An in case you're curious, I've calculated the idle wattage of my build, once scaled up to 24 WD Red 3TB drives, to be 76 Watts.  It's surprising how fast the watt counts goes up once you add in things like case fans and backplanes (I see 10W going to three 120mm case fans, and about 6W going to the SAS backplanes).

Yes, I found that out my last go a around.  I can't seem to find all of the data for the actual power consumption, but I measured the actual for each component.  I'm thinking the supermicro 3X5 cages with fans was about 1.5W each.  Don't quote me on that one, since it's coming from my memory.  And the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller were some where around 5 to 6 watts each.  I almost considered remove the cages, but those cages are so handy when your playing around with stuff. 

 

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I did get an Adaptec 72405 ordered the other night

 

Excellent.  Now we can see a very good comparison with the 7260a  :)    I think these two controllers are by far the best solutions to a single-card 24-drive array.    On paper, the 72405 would seem to have a slight edge due to the 10w lower idle power consumption ... but it'll be good to see some actual measurements.

 

 

...I do have a pet peeve with monthly bills and like to keep them low.

 

Me too.  I'll spend far more money on things than I'll ever recover, just to keep the bills lower.    Replaced the perfectly good electric attic vents in our home with solar units for well over a grand;  bought two new SEER 18 dual-stage compressor heat pump units and had R52 blown in to the attic for nearly 20K; etc.    Definitely help the monthly bills ... and the A/C units may actually pay off in ROI after a decade or so; but the key reason was to lower the monthly outflow.

 

My plan for my next UnRAID is to make it as low-power as possible, with 24-drive potential.  It's very tempting to use a SuperMicro X9SPV-M4-3UE with the 72405 ... in theory this should get idle consumption down in the 40w plus drives range ... so possibly as low as 60-65w with 24 drives spun down and a few 120mm fans.    The X9SPV-M4-MQE would likely have an almost identical idle consumption ... I'd guess no more than a watt or two difference, despite the much higher TDP of the quad core (35w vs. 17w)  => the extra power of the quad core might be nice for some purposes (not needed for UnRAID).

 

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Thanks for the tip garycase!  I replied to Tom's post.  Fingers crossed.

 

I saw your post in that thread and Tom's reply r.e. changing some of the tunable parameters.  I also asked Tom if those parameters were applied differently during a rebuild, since one of the most perplexing results of your testing is that a rebuild works SO much better than a parity check, despite the underlying disk I/O and processing requirements being nearly identical !!

 

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The X9SPV-M4-MQE would likely have an almost identical idle consumption ... I'd guess no more than a watt or two difference, despite the much higher TDP of the quad core (35w vs. 17w)  => the extra power of the quad core might be nice for some purposes (not needed for UnRAID).

I was think the power consumption would be almost identical as well, so I might as well spend a few more bucks an get a quad core in case I ever want to use it for something else.  I actually tested the dual core vs quad core theory out back a couple of years ago with the. 

Xeon L3406 vs. the Xeon L3426

http://ark.intel.com/products/47555/Intel-Xeon-Processor-L3406-4M-Cache-2_26-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/43233/Intel-Xeon-Processor-L3426-8M-Cache-1_86-GHz

I just can't remember for sure what the how come was.  I have a 2nd Supermicro X8SIA-F Motherboard server that isn't being used, it might have a quad core in it.  I can't remember that either.  I'll have to check that out, if I get the time.

 

Me too.  I'll spend far more money on things than I'll ever recover, just to keep the bills lower.    Replaced the perfectly good electric attic vents in our home with solar units for well over a grand;  bought two new SEER 18 dual-stage compressor heat pump units and had R52 blown in to the attic for nearly 20K; etc.    Definitely help the monthly bills ... and the A/C units may actually pay off in ROI after a decade or so; but the key reason was to lower the monthly outflow.

Here I thought I was the only one that thought like that!  I was considering building a new house and was wanting to build it with double offset wall to eliminate thermal bridging which could get the side walls around R47 (4" Closed cell foam and 6" R19 bat), of crouse the house would be sealed so tight that it would cost me an air exchanger!  I also paid full price for my Galaxy Note 2 smart phone, so that I could have a cell bill that was less then $20 a month with Ting.  That one actually does pay back in less then a year.

 

 

 

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I can confirm that the idle power doesn't seem to vary a lot among processors of the same Intel generation.  A couple years ago I built an extra HTPC with a Core i5-2400S.  A really nice little system, but I later decided to use it for a bunch of video re-rendering work, so I upgraded the CPU to a Core i7-2700k.    I don't remember the actual values, but I do recall that my Kill-a-Watt showed virtually no difference in the idle power consumption of the system after the change (but of course a notably higher consumption under full load).

 

 

Love the idea of R-47 walls !!    Not something I could do ... we have a LOT of windows (almost the entire back of the home plus most of the front ... but it's a neat idea nevertheless.  I DID spend a small fortune having all of the windows replaced with Low-E solar glass, and it makes a BIG difference in the hot summers around here (Texas).

 

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The Areca 24 port controllers might work, but the spec show 28.81watts for them.

 

I read that as a maximum power rating.  The 2760A was rated 55W, if I recall correctly. 

 

If it idles at 50% like the 2760A, then the Areca might have a 14W idle.  Purely theoretical, of course, but certainly has an opportunity to save a good number of watts.

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I read that as a maximum power rating.  The 2760A was rated 55W, if I recall correctly. 

 

If it idles at 50% like the 2760A, then the Areca might have a 14W idle.  Purely theoretical, of course, but certainly has an opportunity to save a good number of watts.

 

It's a shame the controller makers don't simply publish these power specs -- "Idle" and "Max" load specs would certainly be nice to know.  The drive manufacturers publish much more detail on power consumption under various conditions ... and since the controllers are clearly part of that "chain" you'd think they'd provide the same level of detail !!

 

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Me too.  I'll spend far more money on things than I'll ever recover, just to keep the bills lower.    Replaced the perfectly good electric attic vents in our home with solar units for well over a grand;  bought two new SEER 18 dual-stage compressor heat pump units and had R52 blown in to the attic for nearly 20K; etc.    Definitely help the monthly bills ... and the A/C units may actually pay off in ROI after a decade or so; but the key reason was to lower the monthly outflow.

Here I thought I was the only one that thought like that!  I was considering building a new house and was wanting to build it with double offset wall to eliminate thermal bridging which could get the side walls around R47 (4" Closed cell foam and 6" R19 bat), of crouse the house would be sealed so tight that it would cost me an air exchanger!  I also paid full price for my Galaxy Note 2 smart phone, so that I could have a cell bill that was less then $20 a month with Ting.  That one actually does pay back in less then a year.

 

Wow, you guys are great.  I upgraded two contractor grade 10-SEER heat pumps to 15-SEER a year ago.  I expected to see huge energy savings, but somehow they never materialized.  I feel a little jaded.

 

I also have a TED (The Energy Detective) installed.  If neither of you have one of these, you are truly missing out.  I remember the first time I saw the washer and dryer (elec) running at the same time and I saw 12KW being pumped into my clothes!  Makes the 10W savings for a computer component seem like chump change.

 

The TED helps you save energy by educating you on your own energy use.  Though oddly, one day I turned off and unplugged everything I could find in the house, and I still had about 600W going somewhere.  I need to go through that process again, as whatever is causing that energy drain appears to be going 24/7, and costing me about $600 year.  Bleh, I feel sick just talking about it.  Time to go hunting...

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