External Backup


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Hi Guys,

I'm back once again with a question regarding the M1015. I'm just preparing to install this along with the SAS Expander this weekend, and have just taken the M1015 out of the packaging.

 

I hadn't realised until removing from the packaging that the board comes with a PCI-E FRU43V7067 expansion adapter and not a bracket. This isn't a problem as I can accomodate this, but the question is to do with what looks like a USB port on the expansion adapter. Anyone know why this is there as I thought the card would get its power through the pci-e slot? Do I need to connect a usb cable to this port?

 

IBM-Riser-Board-Card-1x-PCI-E-with-USB.jpg

Edited by apefray
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Hi Johnnie,

 

So are you saying ditch the adapter and not worry about the bracket and just let the card sit in the socket, which is my thought after I posted the above, or should I really look at getting a bracket to fit? Using the adapter or not, the card isn't going to be physically held to anything anyway.

 

The SAS Expander does have a bracket which of course is essential as it has an external SAS port.

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Ok, just ordered the brackets. The eBay seller has promised to have them delivered tomorrow, so thats good news.

 

Just come across an oddity though. I have 2 x IBM M1015 cards, although my intention is to only use one with the SAS Expander. However, I've just noticed one of the cards has a small daughter board attached whereas the other doesn't? What is this daughter board and is it needed:

 

 

IMG_3413.JPG

Edited by apefray
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Sorry its taken a while, but I had to rebuild the server to accomodate the M1015 and SAS Expander.

 

All sorted now, the M1015 has been flashed and both cables are running to the SAS Expander, then 3 Mini SAS cables run from the Expander to the backplane connectors. All up and running, and unraid has even sorted out all the hard drives even though they are now on a different controller and had been moved around in the bays. I have also disabled the Marvell controller.

 

I checked the SMART diagnostics, and the 2 SSD's are now running on the Intel SATA 3 ports and they are being reported to be running at 6GB's on both. The Parity drive is running on one of the Intel SATA 2 Ports and is being reported to be running at 3GB's so they are fine and I now have the option to add a 2nd Parity drive running on the other Intel SATA2 port sometime in the future.

 

The other 3 rows are running on the Expander ports, and all the occupied bays are all reporting to be running at 3GB's so it looks like its up and running and I may not need to update the Firmware on the Expander card (fingers crossed).

 

 

tower-diagnostics-20180623-1635.zip

Edited by apefray
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Great, then the job is done. Just out of interest, where did you see that info in the diagnostics?

 

Now have all 16 bays at my disposal and an External Mini SAS connector for when I purchase the external back up unit.

 

I have to say, it could just be me, but the whole system appears to be running a little faster now I have moved away from the Marvell ports. Emby, which is the main use for my server, the movies are loading quicker than they have done before, so that's a bonus.

 

Thanks for all your help guys.

Edited by apefray
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Can someone explain why my Parity Check has halved in time?

 

It used to take the best part of 14hrs, so I only did it at the end of the month. However, now I have access to all the bays in the case since adding the Expander, I decided to add another 3TB drive to the array. Unraid went through its thing, cleared the disk then formatted it and added it to the array. It then proceeded to do a Parity check, and all of a sudden the time has halved and its averaging 226mb/s instead of 113mb/s previously.

 

I thought the upper limit of a Hard drive was around 135 - 150mb/s, but to get 226mb/s, I don't get? However I'm not complaining, just curious as to why its now able to do a parity check at far higher speeds than previously after adding a M1015 and the Expander card. Was the Marvell controller really slowing things down that much?

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, i have also noticed that Emby is a lot smoother now, and Movies start up so much quicker so installing the M1015 and Expander card has been the best investment by far in my Unraid server setup, lol.

Capture_Parity.JPG

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Ahh right. That makes sense then seeing as I have a 6TB Parity drive and I added a 3TB Drive, so double the speed as they are double the size of each other, but its just a placebo effect and actually, it was running the Parity check at the normal average of 113mb/s.

 

Answers that one then, lol!

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  • 2 years later...

@JorgeB

 

Just revisiting this.......

 

Have a question about the M1015 and the expansion card that I am currently using (mentioned in the previous posts).

 

I am now up to 16 disks all running through the M1015 and expansion card. I cant help wonder if now will be the time to think about upgrading the M1015 to something that will handle the 16 disks currently and more to be added in future. What would be a good upgrade in terms of speed. I fear I may approaching the limit of the M1015 card as my disk speeds appear to have dropped since installing the last 3 drives using the Startech 1U Rackmount 4 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure, although it could just be me.

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With 16 drives the bottleneck is going to be the expander, since it's SATA2 only it will be limited to 2200MB/s usable max, assuming dual link, that's around 140MB/s max per disk when used concurrently, you can see here for some more numbers, just upgrading the HBA won't help here, you'd need a SAS2/SATA3 expander and to improve even more also a PCIe 3.0 HBA to go above the PCIe 2.0 limit.

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42 minutes ago, apefray said:

Would it even work in unraid????

No reason it shouldn't, SAS expanders are transparent to the OS.

 

Depending on the number of disks you think you might need you may also consider the Intel RES2SV240 or the RES2CV360, both are SATA3 and can be found considerably cheaper on ebay, either one will give you a nice bandwidth bump, for more you'd need a PCIe 3.0 HBA.

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@JorgeB

 

What are you thoughts on the following as an upgrade:

 

LSI SAS 9207-8i (does this need flashing to IT Mode??)

HPE DL380 Gen9 12Gb SAS Expander Card

  (Specs:

  Storage interface (SAS/SATA)

  28 physical links across 9 x4 internal ports

  12Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/s SATA technology

  Mix-and-match SAS and SATA hard drives to the same controller

  PCI Express 3.0 x8 link

  Supports up to 28 internal drive bays (dependent on the server)

  Up to 64 logical drives when connected to a Smart Array Controller)

 

I have tried to find a Intel RES2SV240 on ebay, and it appears no-one is selling one in the UK (although I have only looked on ebay so far). The RES2SV360 can be had for £190 which is £40 more than the HPE DL380 Gen9 12Gb SAS Expander Card. 

 

An alternative would be the IBM ServeRAID M5110 that can be had for a similar price to the LSI SAS 9207-8i, but willl probably need flashing to IT Mode?!?!

 

If this will provide a worthwhile upgrade in relation to disk speeds, and I dont have intentions on running more than 20 drives, then can I presume that running the LSI SAS 9207-8i with the HPE DL380 Gen9 12Gb SAS Expander Card will provide a good combination. 

 

Just a thought, I will need an external port to the Startech External unit, so I presume I can just purchase something like this:

 

CableDeconn Dual Mini SAS SFF-8088 To SAS36P SFF-8087 Adapter In PCI bracket

 

Then connect it to the Expander.

Edited by apefray
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32 minutes ago, apefray said:

LSI SAS 9207-8i (does this need flashing to IT Mode??)

That's a good option and that model originally was IT mode only, so no flashing needed unless someone converted it to an IR model.

 

33 minutes ago, apefray said:

If this will provide a worthwhile upgrade in relation to disk speeds, and I dont have intentions on running more than 20 drives, then can I presume that running the LSI SAS 9207-8i with the HPE DL380 Gen9 12Gb SAS Expander Card will provide a good combination. 

Should be a good combo, and good for roughly 220MB/s with 20 drives on the expander.

 

35 minutes ago, apefray said:

so I presume I can just purchase something like this:

Yep.

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