First time setup question (SATA controllers)


PlayLoud

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Hello everybody,

So, I decided to finally give unRAID a try.

Here is my current setup.

 

CPU: Intel Core i7 3770k @ 4.4 GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600
MB: Gigabyte Intel Z77 GA-Z77X-D3H

 

Storage Interfaces on the MB:
2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (Intel Z77)
4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (Intel Z77)
2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (Marvell 88SE9172)

 

Current Drives:
10TB WD Red
6TB WD Red
4TB WD Red
3TB WD Red
2TB WD Green
Blu-Ray Optical Drive
Blu-Ray Optical Drive
64GB SSD (system drive - Linux Mint 19)

 

This used up all the SATA ports on the board. I figured I was going to just order another 10TB Red drive for Parity, so I ordered a LSI SAS 9207-8i for additional ports.

However, as I ran an extended SMART test on all my drives, I discovered the 3TB Red failed with a read error, and the 2TB Green was showing a very high "Current Pending Sector Count", and also had about 70,000 hours on the drive. Time to retire those drives.

 

So, instead of ordering one 10TB Red, I ordered two. One for Parity, and one to replace the combined 5TB of the two drives that didn't make the cut. I also ordered a larger SSD for the cache drive.

 

New Plan:
10TB WD Red (Parity)
10TB WD Red
10TB WD Red
6TB WD Red
4TB WD Red
1TB Samsung Evo 860 (Cache)
Optical Drive
Optical Drive

 

Because I am replacing two smaller drives with one larger drive, I'm actually good on SATA ports again, though I already have the LSI HBA on order.

 

I could return the HBA.
I could keep the HBA, but keep it out of the system until I want to add another drive.
I could install and use the HBA, but I don't know if that would provide any benefit, which brings me to my first question.

 

Is there any advantage to using the LSI SAS 9207-8i with its high bandwidth (all 6Gb ports)? Would using this take any pressure off of the Intel controller? Only the SSD cache drive would truly need the 6Gb port (available on the Intel), but I am wondering if splitting up the drives to different controllers would improve performance by not saturating the Intel controller when all drives were in use?

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1 hour ago, jonathanm said:

Those could be problematic.  Use the LSI for some of the spinner drives, leave the SSD's on the motherboard native ports.

Thinking they weren’t as good as the Intel controlled ports, I have to this point only connected the optical drives to the Marvell ports.

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3 hours ago, PlayLoud said:

Thinking they weren’t as good as the Intel controlled ports, I have to this point only connected the optical drives to the Marvell ports.

You would probably get away with that :)   The Issue with Marvell controllers is that they can unpredictably end up dropping drives which causes havoc with array drives.   Less likely to be an issue with optical drives I would think.

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So, if I can fit the SSD and all the spinny-go-round HDDs on the on-board Intel SATA controller, is that a better option than offloading some of them to the LSI? Is there a situation where the on-board Intel controller would get saturated? Perhaps a parity check with 5 drives all reading at once?

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21 hours ago, PlayLoud said:

So, if I can fit the SSD and all the spinny-go-round HDDs on the on-board Intel SATA controller, is that a better option than offloading some of them to the LSI? Is there a situation where the on-board Intel controller would get saturated? Perhaps a parity check with 5 drives all reading at once?

5 drive won't saturate the PCH, PCH have 4 PCIe lane connect to CPU, but you should note all PCH downstream device were share these 4 PCIe. I like all disk (no SSD due to need TRIM)  under LSI, one reason was I don't like individual SATA cable.

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1 hour ago, Benson said:

5 drive won't saturate the PCH, PCH have 4 PCIe lane connect to CPU, but you should note all PCH downstream device were share these 4 PCIe. I like all disk (no SSD due to need TRIM)  under LSI, one reason was I don't like individual SATA cable.

Thanks for the info Benson. It pointed me in a good direction to for further research. Though if I'm not mistaken, the SATA controller isn't connected to the CPU lanes, but the chipset lanes. The chipset in this case is PCIe 2.0, but if it is 4 lanes as you say, that (2 GB/s) should still be enough for 1x SSD + 5x 5400rpm spinners, even in a worst case scenario. Nothing else is sharing the PCIe 2.0 lanes. No cards have been added. I think I'll keep the LSI in the box until I add another drive. No reason for it to consume power in the mean time. The LSI will eventually go into one of the first two 16x slots, which are connected to the CPU, and are PCIe 3.0.

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8 hours ago, PlayLoud said:

that (2 GB/s) should still be enough

Right.

 

8 hours ago, PlayLoud said:

Nothing else is sharing the PCIe 2.0 lanes.

Onboard Network also.

 

8 hours ago, PlayLoud said:

I think I'll keep the LSI

Just simple keep it, it will ready for you all time. When bottleneck found then take out for try.

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