July 31, 201312 yr Hello all... after having my current Unraid build Melt 2 of my (then) 2tb WD Green HDs... during parity check the HDs were running 47c+... i have decided to build a Norco 4220 system that i bought from Xcase... im in the middle of building the system base off of the suggestions from http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22553.0 here is the build then i will go into my concerns... Case: X-Case RM420 4u Rackmount V2- 20 x SATA / SAS HDD Cadddy, Mini SAS 6GB Backplane -Rail Kit http://www.xcase.co.uk/X-Case-RM-420-Hotswap-4u-p/case-rm420.htm MOBO: ASRock 970 Extreme4 Motherboard CPU: AMD FX6300 Black Edition 6 Core (3.5/4.1GHz) http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009O7YORK/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Raid Controller: HighPoint RocketRAID 2680SGL 8-Channel PCI-Express x4 SAS 3Gb/s RAID Controller http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004TEZ31E/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 LSI SAS 9201-16i HBA the rocketRAID 2680SGL is not supported by ESXi or UnRaid... after adding this controller my parity check was clocking 114megs/sec Quite happy with that... Ram: 20gig that's left over from other builds... HD: 9x 2tb WD Green currently... 1x 2tb Barricuda... with planned 11x Any other make cept WD(I have lost 3 WD drives in the past 3 months alone)... + 500gig Barracuda Cache So my problem is... im short one SAS connector for the backplane... but i was intending to use the sata ports on the Mobo to fill that hole... but what about video... i understand that i might be able to run IPMI... but to get to that point i was planning on installing a video card temporraly to set it up with IPMI and then pull it out once IPMI was working... after i installed the new card i was able to boot into ESXi... but i didnt see any of the HDs to pass along to the VM... i had to access the advanced configuration for the host and uncheck the VHDD? option(not the exact name) but after that i was able to pass along the HDs to the VM... but i still wasnt able to boot the VM because the data store HD had moved controllers and it couldnt "Lock" the VM... so... i will delete the VM and try again at a future date... when i finally get my internet connection running at the new house... Can you guys point me in the right direction? i feel like i have just dropped $$$ on something that has a fundimental failure... Thanks... Mat
July 31, 201312 yr Author im just tossing around some ideas here... but would it be possible to use a HighPoint RocketEJ 240 Device Board with a Rocket 2722... which would free up a PCI port? the cost of these would come to about 200 pounds... would that be a cost effective and reliable? or am i being too cheap???
July 31, 201312 yr IPMI is remote Management (with KVM-over-IP) for Servers. These have a small GPU on-board plus a BMC chip in order to achieve that. Your mobo does not offer that, as it is a desktop board....and it is without a GPU (on-board or in CPU). You'll need a small GPU in order to make it post (MAYBE there is a headless config in BIOS which you can pull afterwards, but I doubt that). For the missing SATA ports, you should be able to use reverse breakout cables to connect the on-board ports to one of the backplanes of the case. According to this thread http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=28665.msg255273#msg255273 you could pass individual ports to the VM. ...just in case, your mobo is an Extreme 3 R2.0, not an Extreme 4 as mentioned in the other threads...however, the chipsets are the same, so there is a chance that it'll work. Edit: not the same chipsets on northbridge, but same for southbridge, where sata ports are embedded. Edit2: chipsets *are* the same...NB970, SB950...nevertheless...the Extreme 4 is confirmed to work...swapping the board with amazon might be the cheapest, non-risk solution.
July 31, 201312 yr Author well isnt that the mother of all FUps... well... atleast that was bought though amazon and it's easy to exchange!!! YeYe for amazon... so that means that i will be reusing an old video card that i got on hand... knew there was a good reason that i kept that!
August 6, 201312 yr Author does someone know a good place to find sas-to-sas cables??? and also a reverse breakout cable??? amazon has them for 30 pounds a piece...
August 7, 201312 yr Author well as an update to what i have done... which wasnt much... but anyways... I downloaded the iso for 5.1 and burned that to a disk... and come to find out my slim cd rom had different connectors for the power connection... so instead i burnt the ISO to a usb and booted the system... and that takes the better part of 2 mins to boot to the USB because rocketraid takes a LONG time to detect the HDs which are even connected as of yet... so... after i booted to the USB i cant use my wireless keyboard for some reason... even though i am able to in the bios??? any thoughts on that one??? so then i decided to use the 4.1 version... and that failed to boot because it was "missing" a file... so... does anyone have some thoughts on what i have done wrong??? Thanks... Mat
August 7, 201312 yr i don't think esxi supports wireless keyboards, lol. It's an extremely stripped down linux kernel. Glad to see another AMD users though, any reason you didn't go with a 990FX board?
August 8, 201312 yr Author well the keyboard and the install went smoothly after i moved both the usb keyboard (wireless) and the USB memory stick that i wanted to install to the PINK usb ports... strange and it didnt work on the usb ports marked 2.0 and 3.0... even though the usb memory stick that i was installing from was in the 3.0 usb port... just really strange that it only reconized the one bank of usb ports and not the other two usb ports... well... i did get esxi installed and it's booted cleanly... it's reconized the network card that was builtin to the motherboard... bonus there... and i was able to boot an unraid virtual machine... just without the unraid USB installed... so tonight i will attempt to install all the HDs a new video card (one that draws alot less power and uses a PCI port vs PCI-E) more memory, all the 10 HDs, and the UNraid USB stick... but i have a question for those of you out there that have this Asrock MOBO... I have been trying to select the USB boot media from the bios but the only options that i have been given is for a SATA HD... how did you go about resolving this? Thanks, Mat
August 9, 201312 yr depending on what chipsets the mobo has, some of them might not be supported by ESXi but are supported by the syslinux install disk/usbkey. ESX can be "weird" like that, the support hardware list is short and always changing.
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