Need advice on new build

[warllo]

I have the opportunity to purchase a Super Micro Computer X9SRH-7TF motherboard for around $75.00. My understanding is the on-board LSI 2308 can be flashed to IT mode. Mentioned in the manual here https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/LSI_HostRAID_2308.pdf Also the board has integrated 10GBE nics via the Intel x540 chipset but I am not sure if there is support for these in FreeNAS.


I was thinking of using it for a FreeNAS build, I was hoping to get some feedback on what people think.

The rest of the build would include:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon...6-CORE-processor-Socket-LGA-2011/352465570278

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-M3...2B:sc:FedExHomeDelivery!56472!US!-1:rk:2:pf:0 x2

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Seagate-ST...ve/222381431701?hash=item33c6f75b95:rk:1:pf:0 x4

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219029 Norco RPC430 4u case. I would like hot swap but it seems to be out of my budget.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...m_re=500w_power_supply-_-17-438-012-_-Product

Thanks in advance for your input.

 

[HoneyBadger]

That's an excellent board - you get RDIMM support for big memory on the cheap, the SAS2308 can indeed be flashed to IT mode, and the X540 is supported in FreeBSD (although it's not as good as the Chelsio cards, if I recall)

What is the intended purpose of the build (eg: media hosting, virtual machines, etc?)

 

[warllo]

That's an excellent board - you get RDIMM support for big memory on the cheap, the SAS2308 can indeed be flashed to IT mode, and the X540 is supported in FreeBSD (although it's not as good as the Chelsio cards, if I recall)

What is the intended purpose of the build (eg: media hosting, virtual machines, etc?)

I will be using this to share our media via smb or nfs and I will run iSCSI for shared VM storage. I don't plan on running any VM's but I will run urbackup in a jail for backing up vm's on the host's local storage. Probably a bit overkill for my needs but the price is right and power is pretty cheap where I live at just under 8 cents per KW.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I've said it often enough it's in my signature - there's no kill like overkill. ;)

Personally though if you're just going to share media and use it as a backup target I would drop one of the 16GB RDIMMs and save up to go with six drives (in RAIDZ2) from the beginning.

 

[warllo]

I've said it often enough it's in my signature - there's no kill like overkill. ;)

Personally though if you're just going to share media and use it as a backup target I would drop one of the 16GB RDIMMs and save up to go with six drives (in RAIDZ2) from the beginning.

@HoneyBadger

Based on some other forums post it seems that more than 16 GB of ram is suggested when running iSCSI. I may have miss described my use . I will be running a few vm's on this storage but not using FreeNAS as the hyper-visor. Would you still suggest dropping a stick of ram? Or would a slog be advisable in this situation?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Gotcha. Definitely go with the full 32GB if you're going to be running VMs off of the FreeNAS storage.

SLOG is a different factor, and is down to "How much does your data matter to you?" If you are willing to accept restoring a previous backup of your data, then you can run without one - if everything is important, you need one.

 

[warllo]

@HoneyBadger

Thanks for the suggestions. The way I look at it, if my data is worth storing it's important so I'll be getting a slog from the looks of it based on the link in your signature it might have to be a budget slog but stability is more important that speed for me.

 

[HoneyBadger]

If this is only for a home-lab style machine and it won't be getting heavy usage, one of the smaller M.2 Optane drives on an adapter card might be an option. They'll burn out quickly under a heavy write load though, so only set sync=always on your VM dataset/zvols.

A second-hand Intel 750 NVMe drive would also be a great option.

 

[warllo]

@HoneyBadger Do the M.2 Optane drives have power loss protection? I can't find any documentation saying the do so I'm guessing that's a no.

 

[HoneyBadger]

@HoneyBadger Do the M.2 Optane drives have power loss protection? I can't find any documentation saying the do so I'm guessing that's a no.

The claim from Intel is that Optane devices don't require external PLP since all writes are direct-to-NAND and never land in a RAM buffer.

 

[warllo]

I have ordered most of the parts I am unsure of which cables to order for connecting up the SAS hdd's though.

Which cables will I need to connect the hard drives?

The motherboard has 8 blue connectors that resemble sata connections but it is my understanding that sata and sas cables are not interchangeable.

I am not planning on using a back plane of any kind.

Thanks for your response in advance!

@HoneyBadger

 

[JohnK]

Which cables will I need to connect the hard drives?

Haven't used a SAS drive in many years, but I believe you are going to need some sort of converter.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Haven't used a SAS drive in many years, but I believe you are going to need some sort of converter.

@warllo - This cable is exactly the type you need, although you may be able to find it more inexpensively in a bulk package of 4 or 8. And those blue ports are indeed for both SAS and SATA.

 

[warllo]

https://www.amazon.com/SFF-8642-SAT...9887662&sr=1-14&keywords=SFF-8482+SAS+to+SATA

A little more than $5 a piece with free prime shipping

Thanks for the help, this is going be a nice short depth nas.

 

[warllo]

I have finally received my hardware and have managed to finally get the system to post, before I get FreeNAS installed I just want to make sure that the firmware for the onboard LSI 2308 is correct. Here is a screenshot, from what I can tell the device is clearly in IT mode but I was hoping someone more experienced could confirm.
Thanks for your responses in advance!

 

[HoneyBadger]

You're indeed on IT mode, using P20.00.04.00 firmware.

I think the latest is 20.00.07.00 - you can get it from the LSI/Avago/Broadcom site here:

https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12350493

 

[warllo]

I purchased these drives https://www.ebay.com/itm/HITACHI-HU...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 to go with the LSI 2308. The 2308 controller detects the drive but says they are unsupported, I do have them in an icy dock sas tray but other sas drives do indeed work in the tray. Does anyone have any thoughts on why these are unsupported? I also tested them in a LSI 9260 and I get the same results.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Does anyone have any thoughts on why these are unsupported?

I'm betting these were OEM drives from a disk array like Netapp/EMC. Can you post the Information (top portion) of a smartctl -a /dev/daX in codeblocks, eg:

Code:

root@test:/ # smartctl -a /dev/ada1
smartctl 6.6 2017-11-05 r4594 [FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-17, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:	 Intel 320 Series SSDs
Device Model:	 INTEL SSDSA2CW080G3
Serial Number:	[redacted]
LU WWN Device Id: [redacted]
Firmware Version: 4PC10362
User Capacity:	8,589,934,592 bytes [8.58 GB]
Sector Size:	  512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:	Solid State Device
Device is:		In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:	Thu Nov  1 13:20:00 2018 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

Google the combination of device and firmware version, I'm betting it's something like "NA01" which is a NetApp firmware.

 

[warllo]

Thanks for the response, this is exactly what I am guessing. I am working on reformatting these with 512b sectors. The drives are not labeled as Netapp. After the format I will run the command you suggested, they are currently not in my freenas box as I didn't want to do troubleshooting on a production system.

 

[HoneyBadger]

If they came as 520bps drives then it's very likely Netapp or EMC as both of them use that layout.

Reformatting the drives to 512bps may correct the issue; but it's not guaranteed. Please keep us posted.