My case will have 12 drives with the internal backplane having 3 SAS SFF-8087 connectors.  The mobo (gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H) will have 5 SATA connectors and one IDE.  I am okay building windows systems but get challenged doing Linux ones. I have a few questions and wiould really appreciate any help.

 

1) Will the standard unRaid 4.5 release work with the SATA mobo connectors (4 of them) running through a reverse breakout cable to the SFF-8087 backplane connector with 4 drives for testing and familiarization purposes?

 

2) I would like to use an ARECA 1300ix-16 HBA card which has 4 SAS SFF-8087 connectors (I would use 3) to connect to the backplane (8087-8087). Are the Areca controllers supported in the 4.5 unRaid release?

 

3) Another choice would be the SuperMicro AOC SASLP MV8 which would handle 8 of the drives via 2 SFF-8087 connections to the Backplane.  In this configuration I would use 4 of the mobo sata ports for the other 4 drives to handle the planned 12. If the Areca controller is not supported by unRAid what is involved in getting its drivers onto the flash drive, not physically, but linux wise.

 

4) I see some comments that SAS is not supported (or is it) and am confused as to whether or not it is.

 

As you can see I am a little confused and would appreciate any help I can get

Should that read gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H? Search for HPA and gigabyte. Make sure you understand HPA before plugging drives into the motherboard.

 

1. Assuming it is a GA-MA785GM-US2H, then yes. SB710 is supported. However the backplanes might be a stumbling block. Assuming they arent doing anything too clever this should work fine. Norco backplanes work for instance. 

 

2. The arcmsr driver isnt compiled in release 4.5.3 so you need to do some work. The areca cards support true jbod pass thru so should work assuming Areca dont do something odd with the drive naming it might just need the driver compiling and loading. If you have this card then by all means try it. I wouldnt buy this card however hoping it will work. To get it too work look for HDD install slackware and unRAID. That way you can compile slackware with the arcmsr driver. That card is a bit strong for a unRAID server, if it was mine I'd sell it and buy more drives and a SuperMicro AOC SASLP MV8 or put it to use elsewhere. 

 

3. This card is supported, however check someone has tried this card in that motherboard, some x16 slots don't play nice with some raid cards. Gigabyte has been known to pull the x16 is vga only trick. 

 

4. SAS is a drive interface (serial attached SCSI), so far we have a couple of working SAS controllers controlling SATA (Serial ATA) drives. Most SAS controllers will talk SATA, however SATA controllers rarely talk SAS. SAS has several advantages in a server environmnet over SATA, it is full duplex (SAS can be read and written at the same time). It is also dual port so in a server there can be two SAS paths to the same drive, great for redundancy in the case of a controller failure.

 

Unraid uses drive identifiers from the interface cards to recognize valid HDD types. The SAS cards tend to recognize SATA drives as SCSI or SAS drives which meant some additional work was required to support SAS hosted SATA disks. So far the Supermicro and 3ware 9550SX cards have been used sucessfully. The SM uses a Marvell 6480 chipset which is supported via the SATA_MV driver, The 3WARE is supported via the 3w-9xxx driver. I noted the 3w-xxxx driver is there as well (7xxx and 8xxx 3ware cards).

 

HTH.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My typo on the Mobo.  You are correct.  The mobo has the ability to turn off the bios copy to the HDD and that is the default setting and I intend to leave it that way.

I am using the YMI (RackmountPro) case model 3012 which is a 12 bay unit with a SAS backplane and room for a ATX-E Mobo if I ever want it. The GA-MA785GPM is a microATX mobo.

 

For initial tetsing and familiarization I bought a reverse breakout cable and hopefully I will be able to connect 4 mobo SATA ports to the 3012's SAS backplane and begin to understand unRaid.  If you see something wrong in that approach please let me know. I will buy the SASLP card later as I expand the array.

 

 

Thanks for the reply.

Why not a NORCO 4220?

 

Seems to be the case of choice until the 4224 ships shortly?

 

Looks a lot less dosh too.

 

 

My Nature gets in the way.  Sooner or later you have to fish or cut bait, and I get impatient.  I guess I have too much time on my hands, and not enough to do. The case and PSU (redundent) arrives later today if FedEx ever gets its act together.

 

I ordered the supermicro controller (SASLP version) as I could get it for under $100. The mobo and processor are here along with 4 Hitachi 2TB drives. The memory chips come tomorrow as sometimes I don't read correctly and originally ordered DDR3's but needed DDR2's.

 

The whole unit will go in a rack in my Home's server room, so noise is mostly irrelevant.  No laughing, building things is my hobby and I did major computer center design work at one time in my career so the house has a server room/ spare closet/ . . .  The server room is on a UPS and the house has a standby generator. The only other architectural change is to do a mini split HVAC system for that little room since it is a little warm ambient wise (85-88 degrees F).  It is fed by the house's main HVAC system but in a cold winter as we just had in FL I actually pump heat into that room "Shame on me".

 

 

 

I hear that!

 

I have my server in my rack also, no aircon though! UK is mostly cold enough not to worry.