Are you sure this isn't just a UEFI thing? Legacy BIOS didn't have an option to "extend" system setup menus from PCI expansion ROMs, but UEFI does. E.g. LSI SAS2/3 cards still take the legacy extension ROM and the UEFI extension ROM. The legacy extension ROM is, I guess, an independent real mode application like the firmware setup utility itself is. But the UEFI extension ROM adds its own menus to those present in the system setup utility (no doubt describing the menu structure and callback addresses in some byzantine UEFI way), and they end up looking a lot like standard menus from the system ROM.
www.truenas.com
Two things:
I think it's a matter of cost/benefit. The more recent stuff adds little that's useful, as far as I can tell. The SAS35xx adds PCIe/NVMe, but you need a U.3 backplane and a crazy expensive tri-mode expander for it to be useful in a real application... And then you're oversubscribed immensely on the PCIe side.
I have the Define R6 and those tray are really not great in my opinion. Although my primary concern is not so much that replacing a drive with them is a bit fiddly; it is still better than the cases I have had before.
Thank you for the info.
"PCIE5 slot (BTO)" Built-To-Order! You have to specifically order a board with this slot mounted to experience the limitation. As pictured, there's only an empty green space behind the M.2 socket where SLOT5 would be mounted.
Otherwise, a server board like this is just a regular Z490, but optimised for 24/7 operation, no overclocking and no care for "aesthetics" because it's bound to be locked away in a server room or a far-away data centre rather than adorn a fancy case with tempered glass panels.
If you don't mind the screw-in, finicky, drive trays (I certainly would!), the Define 7 is just fine for any "server" board that fits in.
The issue is more about reorganising drives—and, if possible, considering a safer raidz2 layout because raidz1 is actually not guaranteed to sustain the loss of one drive when using such large capacities. How much data is in there?
Read cache (L2ARC) would only be useful if you were repeatedly streming the same files over and over. I doubt that's a realistic use case. And then, L2ARC takes up some ARC space (i.e. RAM); with only 16 GB, a large L2ARC is actually hurting performance.
Best take out the cache, and keep two NVMe for boot and jail — separate, as wanted, or hacked into dual use
That will free up a useful SATA port for the data pool.HOWTO: setup a pair of larger SSDs for boot pool and data
Moderator Warning: This HOWTO will damage the ability of your TrueNAS appliance to properly maintain itself, will break the ability to replace failed drives, and may cause problems with upgrades and updates. TrueNAS is not designed to do this sort of partitioning, and the developers are not...
As you've seen from an above reaction, most here would go for W480 or a Supermicro board to have support for ECC, at least as a later upgrade. But this one should be fine, except for ECC support.
Don't you already own 2*32GB?
Unless you're building a router, this one should be useless with 4 ports on-board, 2 of which 10 GbE!
Does the job, but you may consider the PCIe 3.0 sucessor, the LSI 9300. Depending on how many drives you plan to have, it may not be necessary at all (the AsRockRack W480 board has 8 SATA, for instance), but the HBA may come handy when moving data to a new raidz2 pool—with every drive/vdev nearly full, it will be tricky.
Keep it simple for the CPU cooler. But some considerations beyond pure function may be at play here… I would expect a NAS with so many drives to be tucked away from ears and eyes, so that glass panels and fan colours should NOT matter.
The reason I chose this one is partly for the 2 x RJ45 10G base-T. Granted the other board has the support for the ECC and couple hundred dollars cheaper, but everywhere I look for it comes up "Out of stock" Hopefully by the time I can order the motherboard, it will come back in stock. When it comes to SuperMicro, I keep hearing that they are power hogs and I would like to keep it as efficient as possible :)
Yes... I would use the ones I have from my current system... Apologize if I confused anyone how I listed it in the breakdown.
Have you seen one that will support up to 16 drives? All the LSI 9300 I have seen does 8. I want to keep the SATAs freed up so that I can use those for drive transfers when I upgrade the drives.
I use it for the increase bandwidth for PLEX. I see an improvement when multiple 4K videos are being streamed in/out of the home network. The goal is to get where I use the 10GbE, but I will have to wait awhile due to money limitations.
That's the plan.. I chose those fans so that I can keep every in black. I want to definitely get a positive airflow going for sure... As soon as I build my new desk, it will be on the far corner of the desk instead of below. :)
Are you saying that you want to place the NAS onto a desk, at which you will be sitting and working? If so, you should consider vibrations. Personally, I would be afraid to put unnecessary stress on the disks. And what when (not if) you hit your desk hard by accident?
There are 9300-16i cards, though prices may not be palatable. But 16 (HBA) + 6 (onboard) is more drives than the case can accommodate and would bring additional issues with power supply. 8+6 should be enough.
That may be because the boards do not support S3 power state and do not sleep (even the workstation boards). But a NAS does not sleep, it idles.
I will look into this. Thanks!
