Integrated SATA Ports on SuperMicro A2SDi-H-TF useable for TrueNAS?

[volckg]

Hi all,
I'm using the following small home TrueNAS build with an IBM ServeRaid M1215 flashed to IT-Mode.
The question is if the SAS Expander is really necessary or if I can just use the SATA ports the mainboard provides ?
So far the system is running fine, but I'd like to use the M1215 for a different setup.

TrueNAS 13.0-U3
Mainboard: SuperMicro A2SDi-H-TF with an Atom C3758 and 32GB ECC RAM
Case: SuperMicro SC731
PSU: be quiet! Pure Power 11 300W ATX 2.4
SAS Expander: IBM ServeRaid M1215 flashed to IT-Mode
Pools:
Raidz: 4 x 4TB SSDs
Raidz: 2 x 10TB HDDs
The system serves as a small backup and nextcloud server

Thanks in advance.

 

[mistermanko]

Well, the mainboard provides 4 SATA ports, you need 6 connections, do the math!?

EDIT: There are Mini SAS ports present, I did not see. You could use them with Mini SAS to SATA breakout cables, to connect 8 more devices. So you're probably safe here.

Besides, this is the german speaking sub-forum, you may want to ask this again in the general help sub-forum. Be sure to delete the thread here fist, we don't need more duplicates here. thanks ;)

 

[Etorix]

I'm using the following small home TrueNAS build with an IBM ServeRaid M1215 flashed to IT-Mode.
The question is if the SAS Expander is really necessary or if I can just use the SATA ports the mainboard provides ?

Yes, of course! The HBA is only needed if you want to use actual SAS drives or if you need to go beyond the 12 SATA ports the motherboard provides.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Well, the mainboard provides 4 SATA ports, you need 6 connections, do the math!?

EDIT: There are Mini SAS ports present, I did not see. You could use them with Mini SAS to SATA breakout cables, to connect 8 more devices. So you're probably safe here.

The A2SDi series mainboards come with all miniSAS to 4x SATA cables and 4x conventional SATA cables included and they work great. This board has got 12 SATA ports in total.

You lose one port if you use the onboard M.2 slot for a SATA SSD. If you use an NVMe/PCIe M.2 SSD, you keep all 12 ports.

 

[volckg]

Excellent, thanks for chiming in.
Actually my question wasn‘t about the number of SATA Ports but about the functionality TrueNAS needs in order to be able to directly communicate with the disks. Should have made that clear from the beginning. But that seems to be the case. I just couldn’t find that information in the forums.

 

[Etorix]

TrueNAS fully supports all SATA ports from C3000 SoCs, and SATA ports from chipsets in general, irrespective whether they are exposed as regular 7-pin SATA ports or packaged as MiniSAS/MiniSAS HD/SlimSAS/OcuLink/whatever.
"MiniSAS", "OcuLink", "SFF-xxxx" (or "whatever") are names for the connector and do not promise anything as to the protocols that are actually carried through: Depending on board and BIOS settings, this could be SATA and/or NVMe; SAS is possible, but would typically require an on-board LSI 9200/9300 controller. In the case of A2SDi boards, the "MiniSAS HD" are pure SATA.