Question before installing SATA controller card


niven

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Hi.

 

I purchased a supermicro sas2lp-mv8 some time ago, but never had the need to install it before now.

Im expanding my array and I wondered if any problems will happen if I switch sata ports on different drives? Does it make any difference if the parity or a data drive is connected to example-- sata port 1 or 4? Also when adding the drives to the controller card is there anything i should be aware of? Or do unRAID fix this automatically

 

thanks for any tips info!

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unRAID identifies drives by serial number so there's no problem switching them from one port to another (but, do be aware that the device assignment, sda/sdb etc will change).  It will still know which is parity, which is data, etc.

 

I found that my system was slightly faster when the parity drive was on the motherboard SATA ports, but it was also a little unstable under unRAID 6 that way so I moved everything to my SAS2LP.  I'm not recommending that as a general approach, btw - but it worked for me.

 

Everything should be plug and play, just put in the card, move the drives, and make sure all the cables are tightly secured.

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unRAID identifies drives by serial number so there's no problem switching them from one port to another (but, do be aware that the device assignment, sda/sdb etc will change).  It will still know which is parity, which is data, etc.

Thanks for the reply tdallen! aha, OK I understand. shouldn't really be a problem if the device assignment changes so that's good to know.

 

I found that my system was slightly faster when the parity drive was on the motherboard SATA ports, but it was also a little unstable under unRAID 6 that way so I moved everything to my SAS2LP.  I'm not recommending that as a general approach, btw - but it worked for me.

 

Everything should be plug and play, just put in the card, move the drives, and make sure all the cables are tightly secured.

OK thanks!

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....

I found that my system was slightly faster when the parity drive was on the motherboard SATA ports, but it was also a little unstable under unRAID 6 that way so I moved everything to my SAS2LP. 

....

 

More as a piece of information, but could you elaborate a little on this?  What was the issue you were experiencing?  I am interested in knowing if you think it might be true in general or just with your hardware setup.

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@Frank140 - I had a stable array under unRAID 5, but experienced dropped/false red ball drives during the unRAID 6 beta.  I took a series of steps to help address them, including moving all drives onto the SAS2LP, replacing the power supply, and setting my WD Red 6TB drives not to spin down.  What was the difference maker?  Hard to say...  Things have stabilized but I still experience slower than normal parity check speeds.

 

I wasn't the only person who had problems with the AOC-SAS2LP, but only a subset of us did so it could have been certain hardware combinations.

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@Frank140 - I had a stable array under unRAID 5, but experienced dropped/false red ball drives during the unRAID 6 beta.  I took a series of steps to help address them, including moving all drives onto the SAS2LP, replacing the power supply, and setting my WD Red 6TB drives not to spin down.  What was the difference maker?  Hard to say...  Things have stabilized but I still experience slower than normal parity check speeds.

 

I wasn't the only person who had problems with the AOC-SAS2LP, but only a subset of us did so it could have been certain hardware combinations.

 

I understand.  Thanks.  I know one of these days, I will have to get a SATA expansion card and there does not seem to be a really good solution.  I know that there are some used cards that can be flashed to work with unRAID but (in reading the flashing thread) that can be a real problem with respect to equipment and clear, concise instructions. 

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Yeah, there really isn't a clear best choice.  Early on I think more unRAID users picked Supermicro cards, but recently more have picked the LSI based cards to flash.  The IBM M1015, etc, is cheaper here but the Supermicro cards are cheaper in Europe.  Even here, the prices on the LSI based cards can vary a lot on eBay (which is the only reasonably cheap source).  There can be problems flashing the LSI based cards.  The older SASLP is only x4, and can be bandwidth limited on older motherboards.  I had compatibility problems under unRAID 6 with the SAS2LP, and I wasn't the only one.  Etc, etc.

 

It sure would be nice to be able to buy a highly compatible card with a manufacturers warranty for a cheap price from Amazon or NewEgg, but there doesn't seem to be a perfect choice.  On the other hand, most of the available choices work out pretty well most of the time and unRAID allows pretty clean plug and play compatibility for properly configured cards, to the OP's original question.

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@Frank140 - I had a stable array under unRAID 5, but experienced dropped/false red ball drives during the unRAID 6 beta.  I took a series of steps to help address them, including moving all drives onto the SAS2LP, replacing the power supply, and setting my WD Red 6TB drives not to spin down.  What was the difference maker?  Hard to say...  Things have stabilized but I still experience slower than normal parity check speeds.

 

I wasn't the only person who had problems with the AOC-SAS2LP, but only a subset of us did so it could have been certain hardware combinations.

 

I understand.  Thanks.  I know one of these days, I will have to get a SATA expansion card and there does not seem to be a really good solution.  I know that there are some used cards that can be flashed to work with unRAID but (in reading the flashing thread) that can be a real problem with respect to equipment and clear, concise instructions.

Which is why I was upset when I bricked my C2SBA+II MB bios.  I found the C2SBA worked well flashing my IBM M1015s and Dell H310 boards.  After the C2SBA was bricked I installed a X7SBE MB and have found it to works well flashing the H310's so I'm happy again.  As to instructions I have always used the original instructions included in the zip file for the cards in question and a dos boot flash drive.  I just substitute the updated image file in place of the older one from the zip file on the flash drive.  But the instructions to flash I still follow from the zip file: execute "1.bat" through "5IT.bat" rebooting and recording at the correct time.  I still have to read them each time too because I never remember it completely as in when to remove it from the system to get the SAS address and when to reboot to complete the process.  About the only change I made to the process was for the H310s I changed the 5IT.bat file to always flash the bios as well as the firmware.  I like to see the drives being detected at the expense of a longer boot time.  All my servers have IPMI so I can watch said boot up.
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