My new Supermicro X11 build

[Cornstick]

An addtional question - M.2 NGFF slot - that one will not take away from the internal SATA ports, right?

Did this question get answered?

I purchased a X11SSH-LN4F today to pair with my right 6TB WD Reds that I have accumulated over the past year or do. I've had a hodge podge of devices that made up my PLEX server and I want to clean it up with a brand new build.

I need all 8 SATA connectors for the drives and I purchased a dual mSATA RAID card with a couple of mSATA 250GB drives to boot from. The card has a Marvell chip and I'm not too crazy about Marvell chips. So if I could eliminate that whole mess with an M.2 drive I will.


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[Rand]

I ended up getting another board without m.2 slot so i cant say for sure, but given that the slot should be attached directly to the pci-e switch it should not take away a sata port

 

[Ericloewe]

Did this question get answered?

It's wired for PCI-e only.

 

[Cornstick]

Ok. Well it looks like I'll be headed back to Micro Center to exchange some items. I'll be giving up RAID 1 on my OS drive but I'm thinking a Samsung M.2 PCIe drive might be more reliable than the Vantec add in card with a Marvell RAID controller...

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[Cornstick]

Actually... Let me ask all of you what your opinions are. Here is what I purchased yesterday.

Two of these:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/443614/MX200_250GB_mSATA_Solid_State_Drive_(SSD)_CT250MX200SSD3

One of these:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/..._SATA_6Gb-s_PCIe_RAID_Host_Card_with_HyperDuo

With this setup I would configure the two SSD's in RAID1. The goal (obviously) to have a backup of my boot/OS drive.

-OR-

Return everything above ($250 worth) and purchase this:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/456000/950_PRO_512GB_PCIe_30_M2_Internal_Solid_State_Drive

Doubles my storage space and utilizes the M.2 PCIe port. But... No RAID.

I should add the purpose for this build is to be a media server. It will be running Windows 8.1 Pro with Windows Media Center and PLEX.

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[Cornstick]

Ok... I just installed a Samsung M.2 drive. Loaded Windows up fine on it. Then added my RAID5 array and now the BIOS doesn't recognize the M.2 SSD.... So unless I'm doing something wrong....? It appears Supermicro has fooled me again!

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[Ericloewe]

Then added my RAID5 array

You mean Intel PCH fakeRAID?

I wouldn't be surprised if the BIOS had some bug related to NVMe devices and Intel's Rapid Storage Technology thing.

 

[Cornstick]

I don't know much about RAID controllers. The Intel PCH seems to work for me? But after spending an hour on the phone with Supermicro the guy I was talking to all of a sudden remembered that if you use the M.2 slot SATA ports 0 and 1 are unavailable to RAID.... I'm not sure if he meant just RAID or entirely unavailable. Either way I just used my Vantec card for booting.

What is a good RAID controller that won't break the bank? Everyone seems to have a different opinion about this.

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[Ericloewe]

With FreeNAS, you absolutely do not want a RAID controller.

Further reading:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/