Mirror SATA DOM's

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STREBLO

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After a bit of a scare with my boot drive messing up I decided it would be a good idea to mirror my boot drive. Right now I am running one of Supermicro's 32GB SATA DOM on my Supermicro X10SL7-F. On their website they say that their "SuperDom" can be run without a power cable on X10 generation boards but there doesn't appear to be power connectors on the SATA ports on my mobo. Did they only mean for the higher range motherboards?

Anyway so my question is if I only have a single 5 volt power connection on my motherboard and I wanted to mirror 2 DOMs what would be the best way to do this? Am I limited to one due to the power connections?
 

Jailer

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You'll be able to tell if it's a compatible part by the color of the connector. If it's white you need an external power cable, if it's yellow you can run it without an external power cable.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm

I personally wouldn't bother with mirrored boot devices. If you do in fact have a bad DOM, RMA it and get a replacement. Mine has been flawless for a year now.
 

Bidule0hm

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would be the best way to do this?

Grab the soldering iron...

But as everybody can't do this: I guess there's power splitter for DOM (as there's for SATA drives) ;)
 

STREBLO

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Grab the soldering iron...

But as everybody can't do this: I guess there's power splitter for DOM (as there's for SATA drives) ;)
Is that reliable? Splitters i mean.
 

Bidule0hm

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Yep, the power is really low so there's nothing to worry like with SATA splitters.

But I can't find one for DOMs with a rapid research. Maybe you should try to ask SuperMicro directly ;)
 

STREBLO

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Sam
Yep, the power is really low so there's nothing to worry like with SATA splitters.

But I can't find one for DOMs with a rapid research. Maybe you should try to ask SuperMicro directly ;)
Same, i've been looking.

When they are mirrored its running off both of them at the same time right? It's not like a backup where it switches to one if the other one fails right? Because if it's basically just a backup I could also use a large USB key or something and then if it fails I could get a new DOM and swap them out .
 

STREBLO

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joeschmuck

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I would (as previously expressed above) just utilize a single boot device vice dual boot devices and retain a backup copy of your configuration file external to your NAS so you could rebuild the boot device without issue if a failure does occur. Also, the dual boot device does not necessarily do what most people think it will do. If the primary boot device fails, odds are better than great that your system will not fail over to the second boot device and start up your system but rather your system will just not boot. I have never heard of a case where an actual failure occurred and the second boot device worked, but I don't hear everything.

Good luck.
 

STREBLO

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I would (as previously expressed above) just utilize a single boot device vice dual boot devices and retain a backup copy of your configuration file external to your NAS so you could rebuild the boot device without issue if a failure does occur. Also, the dual boot device does not necessarily do what most people think it will do. If the primary boot device fails, odds are better than great that your system will not fail over to the second boot device and start up your system but rather your system will just not boot. I have never heard of a case where an actual failure occurred and the second boot device worked, but I don't hear everything.

Good luck.
Shit. Guess those two new sata doms I ordered aren't getting used... Is there no benefit?
 
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STREBLO

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Yep, the power is really low so there's nothing to worry like with SATA splitters.

But I can't find one for DOMs with a rapid research. Maybe you should try to ask SuperMicro directly ;)
Found the answer, use a CBL-CDAT-0597 to the DOM to a 4-pin molex power connection.
 

Bidule0hm

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Great; however $20 for this thing is just outrageous...

But as I already said on the other thread one DOM should be plenty reliable enough. If it's failing there's a problem and you need to identify it before buying things, etc...
 

joeschmuck

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Shit. Guess those two new sata doms I ordered aren't getting used... Is there no benefit?
I can't tell you there is no benefit. Under the right circumstances I would imagine that you could just change the boot priority to boot from the other DOM and reboot the system, but for this to be an automatic thing, not very likely. This means that you could do this type of operation via IMPI and not open the system up to yank out the original boot DOM.

If you have been reading some of the threads over the past several months, there is a turn away from DOMs in favor of SSD, more like a single SSD as the boot device because they are inherently more reliable than USB Flash and DOM. Well I shouldn't say that about the DOM, I'm not savvy on your DOM hardware materials so if it were just a small SSD, a single one should be just fine, just they cost more than a normal cheap SSD.

My goal wasn't to tell you not to use the DOM's, but more to educate you on what limits they have. When this redundant boot device thing came out, I was very skeptical while folks were stating how wonderful it was. The testing was crap, meaning you start with a proper system, two boot devices, reboot and yank out the primary boot device. In someones mind that was all it takes to simulate a boot drive failure but that is far from true. In my world I generate very unique hardware faults for software developers and I'll place circuits on extenders, disconnect signals, add extra pulses, pull data lines low or high, or even just make a CPU go catatonic all in the name of producing a realistic failure. For the dual boot device thing here, if a device fails it will likely be corrupt code in which odds are the device just hangs the NAS while booting up. The odds of the device being completely dead and not recognized by the computer hardware is actually slim.

Sorry, I get a bit wordy at times. So I recommend a single boot device and after you make changes to the FreeNAS configuration, make a backup of it. It's just my two cents as they say.
 

diedrichg

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I am running (2) DOMs and had to split the power off a Molex, no soldering needed. I'll link the cables when I get a chance tomorrow morning.
 

solarisguy

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I can't tell you there is no benefit. Under the right circumstances I would imagine that you could just change the boot priority to boot from the other DOM and reboot the system, but for this to be an automatic thing, not very likely. This means that you could do this type of operation via IMPI and not open the system up to yank out the original boot DOM.

If you have been reading some of the threads over the past several months, there is a turn away from DOMs in favor of SSD, more like a single SSD as the boot device because they are inherently more reliable than USB Flash and DOM. Well I shouldn't say that about the DOM, I'm not savvy on your DOM hardware materials so if it were just a small SSD, a single one should be just fine, just they cost more than a normal cheap SSD.

My goal wasn't to tell you not to use the DOM's, but more to educate you on what limits they have. When this redundant boot device thing came out, I was very skeptical while folks were stating how wonderful it was. The testing was crap, meaning you start with a proper system, two boot devices, reboot and yank out the primary boot device. In someones mind that was all it takes to simulate a boot drive failure but that is far from true. In my world I generate very unique hardware faults for software developers and I'll place circuits on extenders, disconnect signals, add extra pulses, pull data lines low or high, or even just make a CPU go catatonic all in the name of producing a realistic failure. For the dual boot device thing here, if a device fails it will likely be corrupt code in which odds are the device just hangs the NAS while booting up. The odds of the device being completely dead and not recognized by the computer hardware is actually slim.

Sorry, I get a bit wordy at times. So I recommend a single boot device and after you make changes to the FreeNAS configuration, make a backup of it. It's just my two cents as they say.
There are two scenarios when having a mirrored FreeNAS boot device is in my opinion beneficial.

1. If there is ever a need to go to the previous configuration.

2. If .system is on the boot device (and if the boot device is a quality SSD why not), then samba stuff automagically reappears about a reboot.
 

STREBLO

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So basically I should have gone with an ssd... Are the DOMs not essentially a tiny ssd, and shouldn't their reliability be comparable ?
 

joeschmuck

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If you have a DOM, I'd use it just because you are likely to not have any other use for it. They are much more reliable than a USB Flash drive but I personally cannot say they have similar internal components to a SSD nor the longevity of a SSD, I just haven't investigated it.

There are two scenarios when having a mirrored FreeNAS boot device is in my opinion beneficial.

1. If there is ever a need to go to the previous configuration.

2. If .system is on the boot device (and if the boot device is a quality SSD why not), then samba stuff automagically reappears about a reboot.
Valid I do agree and dual boot devices is not harmful either but still the dual boot device doesn't give you that automatic recovery that many believe it will which was basically my point.
 

diedrichg

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The Supermicro SATADOMs have MLC memory, whereas standard SSDs are SLC.
 

diedrichg

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Here are the SATA cables I used.
StarTech SATAEXT30CM 11.8" SATA Extension Cable M-F (Amazon)

And this is the power extension:
ASUS USB TO SATA DOM POWER CABLE (EBay)
 

Ericloewe

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