Alternative to HBA LSI SAS card that supports trim for cache pool? Or does trim matter?


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So I am in the process of trying out unraid trail as I am wanting to switch over to it. Figured out most things but one issue I am having is lack of sata ports.

 

I have a bunch of Small SSD's floating around and I want to put them into a raid 0 cache pool for storing unimportant things I can replace (like game installs that multiple users can access but are easily replaced so no worries about if something dies), really looking forward to the rumored multiple cache pool feature I saw somewhere.

 

Also be nice to use as a scratch drive for my main system that has a 10gb P2P connection to the server.

 

So the obvious answer is put in a SATA card, I currently have a cheap 4 port pcie x1 card that works fine but is limited to 500mb/s and I need more bandwidth. (I only have 2x onboard sata 3 ports with my dell 7010 motherboard)

 

Doing reading, everyone recommends an HBA LSI card (although finding a particular model that works and is cheap is proving a bit harder). The issues is I also read that these do not support trim on consumer SSD's?

 

TLDR:

Need more SATA ports for SSD Raid 0 cache pool

SAS cards don't support trim

 

So my question is four fold:

 

1: Are there any SAS cards that work with trim on consumer SSD's?

2: If not, are there are alternative cards that would work at a similar price point? I have a total of like $100 in my server right now not including the drives and that took years to put together. So the cheaper the better.

3: Is there a way to trim the drives manually by moving them to another controller once a month or so for example?

4: If trim will simply not work, has anyone run a cache pool without trim? What are the effects? The write slowdown is expected and while it sucks, as long as the speeds are still reasonable, I could live with it. More worried about drive longevity of the nand flash.

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

After years of trying different options for my server from windows 7, ESXI, Proxmox, freenas, Windows server, windows 10, I have to say that unraid is far far better out of the box then those were after a lot of setup and tweaking. Quickly falling in love with dockers and my inherent distrust of raid fits perfectly with unraid. Although I have been watching ZFS, it might get me on the raid bandwagon.

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On 5/26/2020 at 6:47 AM, johnnie.black said:

LSI SAS3 models like the 9300-8i support trim as long as the SSDs support deterministic read zeros after trim. e.g, 860 EVO, WD Blue 3D, etc

 

True but that doesn't include old laptop SSD's like I will be using lol.

On 5/26/2020 at 10:12 AM, coolasice1999 said:

I picked up a handful of asmedia based 2 port cards to add ssds to my system.  Filled up all my 1x slots.  Kept my  hds on hba card and now have 6 ssds connected.

 

Yep, I actually have been doing the same, had 3x such cards in the system until recently. I don't have enough spare PCIE slots for that anymore though, I have 1 each x8, x4 and x1.

 

The 4x is now being used by a 10gb NIC, the 1X will be used by a Pro 1000 once the x1 to x4 adapter shows up.

 

Already tested the pro 1000 by taping off the extra pins converting it to a X1 card and it preformed the same as in x4 mode according to iperf with 4x clients connecting to it with LACP bonded connection, topping out around 3-3.5gib/s combined.

 

Leaving just the 8x slot open. So got to get a card that can handle all my drives and the SSD bandwidth into that single slot (those x1 cards are only good for a single SSD each).

Edited by TexasUnraid
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  • 1 month later...
On 5/26/2020 at 2:44 PM, TexasUnraid said:

I am going to try an adaptec HBA and see what the results are with it.

I was looking at some Adaptec cards today. Have zero experience with servers myself so far, but planning on putting one together by the end of the year. Which cards have you tried and what kind of results did you get?

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I ended up getting a Adaptec ASR-71605 16-Port 6Gbs SAS PCIe 3.0 card for $30

 

I have to say, I am very happy with it. No need to flash it to put it into HBA mode, you simply change the setting in the cards bios at boot.

 

Performance has been great as well and it has 16 ports for less money then the LSI 8 port cards.

 

It also works great in unraid, drivers installed automatically and have given me no issues.

 

Only downside is that like the LSI cards it can't trim consumer SSD's but thus far I have not noticed this to be an issue and I can connect the SSD's to the onboard sata to trim them every now and then if needed.

 

Also, need to make sure that you set the write cache setting properly from the start:

 

https://community.wd.com/t/unable-to-activate-write-caching-on-several-drives/17723/3

Edited by TexasUnraid
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30 Bucks?

 

that's alot cheaper then the route that I went... Searched on amazon for your card and it came out at 400+... newegg refurbish shows your card for 50...

 

Nice!

Here is what i got

$240 

16-PORT Int, 6GB/S Sata+sas, Pcie 2.0; In The Box: Lsi Sas 9201-16I, Qig, Driver

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I got my card on ebay, I got a good deal but you should be able to find them under $40 without a lot of hassle, at least when I was searching.

 

Like all HBA card, you will need some airflow over the heatsink to keep the card happy. I ended up building a funnel out of poster board that covers half of the side panel mounted 120mm fan and funnels it down to the heatsink.

 

I run the fan at the minimum speed which is somewhere around ~500rpm and it can't even be heard and the card stays nice and cool.

Edited by TexasUnraid
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5 hours ago, TexasUnraid said:

I ended up getting a Adaptec ASR-71605 16-Port 6Gbs SAS PCIe 3.0 card for $30

 

I have to say, I am very happy with it. No need to flash it to put it into HBA mode, you simply change the setting in the cards bios at boot.

 

Performance has been great as well and it has 16 ports for less money then the LSI 8 port cards.

 

It also works great in unraid, drivers installed automatically and have given me no issues.

 

Only downside is that like the LSI cards it can't trim consumer SSD's but thus far I have not noticed this to be an issue and I can connect the SSD's to the onboard sata to trim them every now and then if needed.

Thanks! That's one of the cards I was looking at. I'm finding it on eBay for 50 pounds, from UK, not from China. I placed the order, couldn't resist, since you confirmed it can work my worries about this were relieved.

 

This setting in the bios is something you only need to set once I hope, not every boot? Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on which specific setting it is and what to set it to?

 

Also, what is this trimming of SSDs you mentioned? Not that I'll be using SSDs on this card. I'm just curious.

Edited by Stonelesscutter
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Yes, the HBA setting is just set once. I don't remember the exact settings off hand but it was pretty straight forward, basically you just disable all raid functions of the card and it has a setting to turn it into an HBA setup.

 

The online documentation explains it pretty well.

 

SSD trim is outside the scope of a fourm post, but basically it clears old data from an SSD nand memory so that future writes will be faster.

 

Modern drives have garbage collection that makes it far less important then it used to be but it can still help write performance to trim the drive from time to time.

 

In the last month I have been using the system though I have not seen any performance degeneration.

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4 minutes ago, Stonelesscutter said:

Also, what is this trimming of SSDs you mentioned?

TRIM is a mechanism for claiming unused space on SSDs that works in conjunction with garbage collection.  It helps with drive performance over time.

 

Only certain HBAs/controllers in conjunction with certain SSDs can support TRIM operations.

 

Modern motherboard SATA ports almost always support TRIM which is why it is recommended that SATA SSDs be connected to MB ports and not PCIe controller cards.

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