January 22, 20197 yr Working on a project to upgrade my existing unRAID system (new motherboard, new CPU, new RAM). Trigger was RAM as I've maxed out what the motherboard supports. Here's the current setup: Mobo: Asus M5A78L-M LX Plus (6 years old) CPU: AMD FX-4100 Quad-core RAM: 8GB (at capacity and main reason for upgrading) SATA: Syba SI-PEX40064 4 port SATA III (mobo has 6 SATA ports) Storage: 6 x 6TB WD Red (parity and data), 2 x 1TB WD Red (cache, mirrored) When looking at motherboards, should I try to procure one that has 8 SATA ports built-in, or rely more on a separate controller? Maybe use an 8-port exclusively instead of the on board SATA ports? Just keep using existing controller in new system? Does it make any difference in performance?
January 22, 20197 yr 34 minutes ago, snowboardjoe said: Working on a project to upgrade my existing unRAID system (new motherboard, new CPU, new RAM). Trigger was RAM as I've maxed out what the motherboard supports. Here's the current setup: Mobo: Asus M5A78L-M LX Plus (6 years old) CPU: AMD FX-4100 Quad-core RAM: 8GB (at capacity and main reason for upgrading) SATA: Syba SI-PEX40064 4 port SATA III (mobo has 6 SATA ports) Storage: 6 x 6TB WD Red (parity and data), 2 x 1TB WD Red (cache, mirrored) When looking at motherboards, should I try to procure one that has 8 SATA ports built-in, or rely more on a separate controller? Maybe use an 8-port exclusively instead of the on board SATA ports? Just keep using existing controller in new system? Does it make any difference in performance? Motherboard SATA ports are best for SSDs as most HBAs don't support TRIM. The performance of motherboard SATA III ports and HBAs with SAS/SATA III is the same. I recently moved some hard drives from motherboard SATA ports to an LSI 9211-8i and saw no difference at all in performance. This was most evident in parity checks in which all drives are involved. You can mix and match between onboard and HBA SATA ports without issue with HDDs. As long as you are upgrading, I would ditch the Syba SI-PEX40064. That card is based on a Marvell chipset and unRAID, FreeNAS and other recent Linux distributions are experiencing problems with Marvell controllers. Even if you have noticed no issues, they can just randomly drop disks after working without issue for months. Get something LSI based. They are many specific recommendations in the forums, but, anything based on an LSI 2008/2308/3008 chipset will work well.
January 23, 20197 yr Author 6 hours ago, Hoopster said: Motherboard SATA ports are best for SSDs as most HBAs don't support TRIM. The performance of motherboard SATA III ports and HBAs with SAS/SATA III is the same. I recently moved some hard drives from motherboard SATA ports to an LSI 9211-8i and saw no difference at all in performance. This was most evident in parity checks in which all drives are involved. You can mix and match between onboard and HBA SATA ports without issue with HDDs. As long as you are upgrading, I would ditch the Syba SI-PEX40064. That card is based on a Marvell chipset and unRAID, FreeNAS and other recent Linux distributions are experiencing problems with Marvell controllers. Even if you have noticed no issues, they can just randomly drop disks after working without issue for months. Get something LSI based. They are many specific recommendations in the forums, but, anything based on an LSI 2008/2308/3008 chipset will work well. I have tentatively chosen an Asus X370-Pro motherboard (still researching and verifying specs). That comes with 8 SATA ports, so I could ditch the need for a controller card completely. The old Syba card did case some issues a few years ago when I first installed it when it would sometimes stall out on me. I think later version of unRAID resolved that as there have been no problems for a long time now. Would rather be rid of it regardless.
January 24, 20197 yr If you do go for an HBA card avoid the DELL PERC H330, I had a nightmare with it and cannot get it to work in unRAID even though it is SAS3008 Good Luck!
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