New install - install hanging after Adaptec 2805 card

[Ericloewe]

The 9211 is a 4 lane PCIe 2.0

I'm fairly certain that the SAS2008 is 8x PCI-e 2.0 and the 2308 and 3008 are 8x PCI-e 3.0.

 

[jgreco]

It's not Monday morning any more, stop making silly mistakes. The 2008 is x4,

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9211-8i#specifications

They went to x8 with the 2308

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9217-8i#specifications

when people started whining about SSD throughput. I'll buy you a cup of coffee if it helps you wake up ;-)

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Thanks guys. I will stop worrying about it then. You are both right, it is a PCIe 8x card (speed of the PCIe interface) but 4 LANES (presumably 2 SATA ports per lane).

 

[jgreco]

No, there's not a mapping of ports to lanes. You can cram a PCIe x4 card into an x1 electrical slot and it works fine.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Interesting. On my motherboard I have one PCIe 16x slot & a 4x. I'm going to try it in the 16x first (had troubles with my 8x Adaptec card in that slot, but that's a whole different story). If that falters, I'll fall back to the 4x slot. Probably will not matter in terms of performance.

Specs of my card:

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9211-8i#specifications

 

[Ericloewe]

It's not Monday morning any more, stop making silly mistakes. The 2008 is x4,

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9211-8i#specifications

They went to x8 with the 2308

http://www.avagotech.com/products/server-storage/host-bus-adapters/sas-9217-8i#specifications

when people started whining about SSD throughput.

So why on earth did they use x8 connectors on the SAS 2008 cards? That's gotta be the weirdest thing I've seen in a while.

I'll buy you a cup of coffee if it helps you wake up ;-)

Thanks, but I'm beyond what caffeine can fix. This requires sleep.

 

[solarisguy]

@NOT_Bill_Gates, in theory..., well..., the answer depends on which theory is being practised :D

In practical terms, it is better to have all pool components to be the same, then any deviation can be immediately seen.

Performance depends on the worst performing component, thus one of the theories is to use the same type of the disk using the same type of (quality) cable connecting to the same type of SATA port. Yes, as jgreco indicated, connect all the drives from the pool to your 9211.

And what are these deviations good for? They are very good for troubleshooting. Everybody hopes to avoid troubleshooting, but it is very nice to be prepared.

 

[jgreco]

So why on earth did they use x8 connectors on the SAS 2008 cards? That's gotta be the weirdest thing I've seen in a while.

Better physical stability of the card? Some new signal that's out in left field? I don't know. However, think hard and point to a server grade board that has x4 or smaller slots? Physically? I can't think of many other than the HP Microserver. Sure there's a lot of "PCIe x4 (in physical x8) slot" crap out there, but it just doesn't seem to be that big a deal for servers.