Connecting the SAS ports on a Supermicro X10SL7-F to a SAS Expander


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Hi - as a couple of people are doing, I'm having a huge unRaid upgrade (all  but drives and power supply changing).  Then I can turn off my app server and give the jobs to unRaid.  Existing unRaid is purely a low-spec 14TB NAS.  The case I'm looking at (in the UK) has 24 bays on the front, which are accessible via 6 SAS backplanes into a built-in SAS expander (with two mini-SAS ports).  I'm therefore looking at using the Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard, but first need to know whether what I want to do is possible.

 

  • Can I plug the SAS ports on this board directly into the expander?
  • I assume it needs flashing to IT mode
  • I'm guessing you need two reverse break out cables to get from the motherboard's ports to the expander

 

unRAID will be running Plex and Logitech Media Server (to start with).  I'm looking at putting my TV tuner cards in and  running a VM for DVBLogic (TV tuner software), if indeed that's possible (that's for another thread).

 

I don't necessarily need uATX - a standard ATX board would be fine, but there are few affordable motherboards out there with on-board SAS, and PCIe SAS HBA cards cost almost as much as the best price I've seen for this board.  Truth be told, I'd be using up both expansion slots with TV tuner cards,  so more would be welcome, but not essential.

 

The other daunting fact is, if not this board then what?!  There are so very many out there!  :-\

 

 

Optional Extra: If it's any help, the case is the non-pro version of this http://www.xcase.co.uk/4u-rackmount-server-cases/x-case-rm-424-pro-with-sas-expander-sgpio-backplane-649-00-x-case.html (which is currently not listed, as they're going through an upgrade - however, same spec, not quite so robust, much cheaper).  I'd use the internal slots for an SSD drive.  I'm going to hold out until the case is available again, just in case they've upped the backplane/expander card to 12GB, but I'd like to get ready to push the button.

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Btw, I've had bad experience with no-name break-out cables that I bought from Ebay (china supplier). Monoprice ones are okay, even though they look exactly like the no-name chinese ones; just different colors. And pay attention to the required cable length for your case...

 

I use the hp expander for my unraid, with that mobo, in a 24-port supermicro case... right now I have 22 drives connected, parity check maxes at around 100MB/sec when all drives are spinning together.

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Thanks for that - I'll look out for decent cables once the case is back in stock.  I'd just earmarked ones off the same website as the case for now, but I'll go into more detail.

 

And that's a much quicker parity check than what I'm getting now on my old system.

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Sorry to jump on your thread, but I am also thinking of upgrading my motherboard to the X10SL7-F.

I have the Norco RPC-4224 case.

What is needed to connect the motherboard to the backplanes?

Can I do without the AOC-SASLP-MV8 card(s) that I now use?

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Sorry to jump on your thread, but I am also thinking of upgrading my motherboard to the X10SL7-F.

I have the Norco RPC-4224 case.

What is needed to connect the motherboard to the backplanes?

Can I do without the AOC-SASLP-MV8 card(s) that I now use?

 

 

I have the 4220, I think the backplanes are the same; just missing one compared to 4224.

 

You'll need straight SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 (SAS multilane) cables to connect the expander ports to the backplanes. If I'm not mistaken, the 4224 has 6 backplanes (4 sas/sata port per backplane).

 

And 2 reverse breakout (sas to SFF-8087) cables to connect the 8 SAS/SATA ports on the motherboard to the SAS expander.

 

When buying the multilane cables, take notice the length and orientation of the connectors. Some of them come with angled (L-shaped) connectors. I don't think they can be plugged all the way to the backplanes, especially the bottom one.

 

Yes, you won't need the AOC-SASLP-MV8 anymore, since the 8 onboard ports on the X10SL7-F can be expanded to 24 ports with a SAS expander (hp or intel are the popular ones).... but, speed calculation may be in order if you want to avoid bottlenecks. As I've mentioned earlier, using 22 drives I maxed out around 105MB/sec running parity check... with my drives (4TB+) I think i should be getting a tad more and bottlenecked by the SAS bandwidth. But I may be mistaken on that, I'm fine with that speed so I haven't dug into optimizing that further.

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As I've mentioned earlier, using 22 drives I maxed out around 105MB/sec running parity check... with my drives (4TB+) I think i should be getting a tad more and bottlenecked by the SAS bandwidth. But I may be mistaken on that, I'm fine with that speed so I haven't dug into optimizing that further.

As an apples to apples comparison I ran a 16 drive Seagate array (all 3TB DM001 drives) off of my Intel RES2SV240 expander and same drives connected directly to 2 IBM 1015s.  I got a 25% reduction in speed down to about what you got - between 90-100 anyway off the expander and 130 off the 1015s when I ran parity checks.
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