Any troubles with CISCO UCS C220 M3 ?

[Sergei_Shablovsky]

Hi FreeNAS Gurus!

Is anyone here to know about troubles with CISCO UCS C220 M3 ?

Please see User Guide about controllers, etc.


Storage controller

Single lane PCI-Express host interface running at Gen 1 speed
Embedded RAID (3 Gbs)
• Embedded SATA-only RAID controller, supporting up to 4 SATA-only drives (RAID 0, 1, 10), or
• ROM5 embedded RAID upgrade, supporting up to 8 SAS+SATA drives (RAID 0, 1, 10), or
• ROM55 embedded RAID upgrade, supporting up to 8 SAS+SATA drives (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10).

2008M-8i Mezzanine Cards (6 Gbs) - two versions
• Cisco UCSC RAID SAS 2008M-8i Mezzanine Card, supporting up to 8 SAS+SATA drives supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50, and JBOD. SAS and SATA drives can be mixed. This card has a product ID (PID) of UCSC-RAID-11-C220.
• Cisco UCSC RAID SAS 2008M-8i Mezzanine Card, supporting up to eight SAS/SATA drives supporting RAID 0, 1, 10, and JBOD. This card has a product ID (PID) of UCSC-RAID-MZ-220

PCIe RAID controllers (6 Gbs)
• LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i or 9271CV-8i RAID 8-port PCIe RAID controllers with on-board 1 GB data cache and chassis-mounted (remote) supercap for data cache power backup (supercap not present on 9271-8i), supporting RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60 and up to eight internal SAS+SATA drives.
• LSI MegaRAID 9285CV-8e or 9286CV-8e PCIe RAID controllers with on-board 1 GB cache and chassis-mounted (remote) supercap for data cache power backup, supporting RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60. Supports 8 external SAS ports (up to 240 external drives).

Thank You for all suggestions and detailed explanations;)

Right now only on-board RAID exist, so I’m free to buy any PCI Gen 1 card...

 

[jgreco]

You can't use a RAID controller. See

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

I used these for years before I replaced them with M4 series servers. @jgreco is on point with not using RAID controllers. I installed FreeNAS on both C220 M3's and C240 M3's using an LSI 9207-8I card, and both of those worked great for years. The M4's and M5's have LSI based HBA's that you can install in the disk controller slot. That is what I am using now and I have been quite happy with them.

 

[Sergei_Shablovsky]

I used these for years before I replaced them with M4 series servers. @jgreco is on point with not using RAID controllers. I installed FreeNAS on both C220 M3's and C240 M3's using an LSI 9207-8I card, and both of those worked great for years. The M4's and M5's have LSI based HBA's that you can install in the disk controller slot. That is what I am using now and I have been quite happy with them.

Thank You so much!
That’s exactly the answer what I looking for!

Another one sub-question: which card You suggest for 3Gb/s SAS drives?

Need to note that C220 M3 have 4 x 3,5’ drives and NOW I not need uplink speed FROM THIS NAS more than 3Gb/s, But May be after 1 year I replace drives for biggest capacity (8, 10, 16 Tb each) and need more (6Gb/s ?) speed uplink speed from NAS.

Also may be CPU, bus, memory speed and NIC not able to give me 6Gb/s in future, so the limitation due this would be 3Gb/s no matter which HDD data output speed 3/6Gb/s I have.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Another one sub-question: which card You suggest for 3Gb/s SAS drives?

I would still go with the LSI 9207-8i. I am 99% it will be backwards compatible with 3G SAS/SATA drives. The only down side to this is that you won't see the drives in the CIMC. Then again, you can't use the CIMC GUI any longer without Adobe Flash which has been deprecated so that isn't a big deal. I was quit happy with mine for several years. When I used the M3's, I used E5-2637 v2 CPU's in them because they has the highest clock speed and not too many core's. I was using mine bare metal for storage only, no VM's. This worked very well for me. If you had been in Florida a few months ago, I would have gifted you one of the old ones, but they are gone to a new home!