Should I get a motherboard with SAS3?

[mzarrugh]

I’m planning on building a system with at least 12 hard drives, requiring at least 12 sata ports.

The CPU that I’d like to use is E5-1620 v4

So this makes my options of supermicro motherboards to be one of these:

The maximum number of sata ports in all of them is 10 ports. So I’m going to need an HBA card.

But I noticed that X10SRH-CF has SAS3 built-in.

X10SRH-CF

Is it a good option? If so, Will I be able or need to flash it to IT mode?
Will the mini-sas to sata cables on amazon work with it?

Thanks

 

[BigDave]

Is it a good option?

How many drives are you going to run now and in the future?

Will I be able or need to flash it to IT mode?

You can and should flash to IT mode, yes.

Will the mini-sas to sata cables on amazon work with it?

I don't know if the Amazon cables are the correct ones, but you need FORWARD BREAKOUT cables if you will be hooking up directly to the SATA ports on the drives.

 

[BigDave]

SAS3 is kinda a waste of money for spinning rust hard drives, having said that, if some day
soon you will convert your pool over to SSD drives then SAS3 will be of benefit.

 

[mzarrugh]

How many drives are you going to run now and in the future?

6 drives now, 12 drives in total in the future. All mechanical drives with the possibility of having an ssd for L2ARC.

Do you have an advice on how should I arrange the drives? Should I populate the motherboard sata ports first and when I add the extra 6 drives plug them to the SAS?

Could you link me to a guide to flash the built-on controller? all I can find is external HBA.

Its cheaper for me actually to buy a motherboard with built-in SAS3 than buying a separate HBA card, and lower risk than used from ebay.

I don't know if the Amazon cables are the correct ones, but you need FORWARD BREAKOUT cables if you will be hooking up directly to the SATA ports on the drives.

I meant these http://a.co/25urI69

it says forward breakout so it seems that they're the ones.

 

[BigDave]

6 drives now, 12 drives in total in the future. All mechanical drives with the possibility of having an ssd for L2ARC.

In your case, spending money on SAS3 is a waste.

The CPU that I’d like to use is E5-1620 v4

What is your reason for choosing this CPU? It severely limits your motherboard choices.

 

[BigDave]

I finished work early today, so I will work up a list for you because I'm bored... ;)

$120 HBA card for PCIe slot (run 8 drives off this and use four SATA ports on the Motherboard)
$222 Supermicro Motherboard X11SSM-F
$219 Kingston 16GB memory (2 Sticks for total of $438) KVR21E15D8/16
$310 Intel Xeon E3 1240 V5 CPU (comparable to E5-1620 v4)
$71 Supermicro SSD-DM032-SMCMVN1 32GB SATA DOM (For your boot drive)
$26 For 2 - SFF-8087 to 4x SATA data cables (connecting HBA to eight drives)

• 6 Drives configured as a single Vdev/pool in RAIDz2 (At the beginning you don't need the HBA & cables).
• 6 more drives to the second RAIDz2 Vdev expansion, then you can buy the HBA and cables.
• OR when it's time to expand, replace your drives with ones of larger capacity (search for Auto Expand)

I have no idea if these items are available in your country or if you could have them imported for a resonable
fee. The idea behind my post is more of encouraging you to look at this thoroughly and see what you can get
for a smaller investment on the above items and having more to spend in the big ticket item (your DRIVES)!
While searching, know that the newer generation processors use less power and produce less heat, so if they are available you may want to pay a little bit more to get them, saving on energy cost over their lifetime.

 

[mzarrugh]

@BigDave

Thank you for your effort.

What is your reason for choosing this CPU? It severely limits your motherboard choices.

I chose this CPU because I need the ability to install 128 GB of RAM in my system. I intend on using 10 TB drives. 6 of them for now. So I will need 64 GB of RAM now, and the ability to upgrade to 128 GB when I add the other 6 drives.

Through my humble research, it appeared to me that the only FreeNAS-recommended platform that accepts this amount of memory is LGA2011. And that the cheapest CPU of the most recent generation that is compatible with LGA2011 is E5-1620 v4. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

These are the parts that I plan on purchasing if you're interested.

 

[LIGISTX]

I guess the question is, why do you need so much RAM? 64 GB of ram should be MORE then enough for most people, and 128 is a very large amount. You can get 64 GB on an i3 6100 for instance, assuming you have a motherboard that supports the layout required. Not saying for your needs an i3 is the best option since we don’t know what your needs are as far as CPU power. But point is 64 GB of ram is not that hard to deploy these days.

I don’t mean to assume what your knowledge level of freenas and ZFS are (my level is still pretty low, but I can get around well enough these days), but are you basing your RAM needs around the age old quote “1GB per TB of harddrive space”? If so that breaks down a bit past the 32TB mark, although this is heavily dependent on server requirements as far as, VM’s, SCSi, users hitting it, networking speed required ect ect.

I’m just wondering why you think you need 64GB now and will need another 64GB upon deploying your future vdev of 6 drives?


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[mzarrugh]

I guess the question is, why do you need so much RAM? 64 GB of ram should be MORE then enough for most people, and 128 is a very large amount. You can get 64 GB on an i3 6100 for instance, assuming you have a motherboard that supports the layout required. Not saying for your needs an i3 is the best option since we don’t know what your needs are as far as CPU power. But point is 64 GB of ram is not that hard to deploy these days.

I don’t mean to assume what your knowledge level of freenas and ZFS are (my level is still pretty low, but I can get around well enough these days), but are you basing your RAM needs around the age old quote “1GB per TB of harddrive space”? If so that breaks down a bit past the 32TB mark, although this is heavily dependent on server requirements as far as, VM’s, SCSi, users hitting it, networking speed required ect ect.

I’m just wondering why you think you need 64GB now and will need another 64GB upon deploying your future vdev of 6 drives?


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My thread asking the same question.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-much-storage-64gb-ram-supports.60733/

 

[LIGISTX]

Fair enough. You definitely will want a lot of RAM.

In that case, as previously mentioned there are a few nice options to choose from.

That also being said, if you do plan on this type of workload, a 2011 based system I think is a fine idea. This is certainly not a home user setup, and the needs of the server may heavily evolve with time. LGA2011 should give you a solid platform to start with.


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