[SOLVED] Newbie SAS JBOD Question

[g1ngerninja]

Hi All,

I'm new to the SAS game and was wondering what JBOD enclosures everyone uses?
I have a HP microserver n40l with 16GB RAM and LSI 9211-8i flashed IT.
If I needed more drives I was thinking a JBOD sas enclosure connected via the LSI would suffice.

I've seen this one http://www.aicipc.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ref=XJ3000-2123 but it's like £1100

Suggestions welcome

Thanks
g1ngerninja

 

[depasseg]

Supermicro is a well used product among FreeNAS folks. I'm using a used Supermicro enclosure SC847E16 JBOD (45 drives) I got cheap off ebay

 

[g1ngerninja]

Thanks depasseg

Bit big for my needs and I couldn't find any of them on ebay.
Seen this one https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826BE1C-R741JBOD.cfm but again it's almost the same price.

 

[jgreco]

Thanks depasseg

Bit big for my needs and I couldn't find any of them on ebay.
Seen this one https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826BE1C-R741JBOD.cfm but again it's almost the same price.

Rackmount tends to be more expensive, and buying units prebuilt as JBOD is priciest of all. Consider a cheap used eBay chassis and then throw in an SAS expander if it doesn't already have one.

 

[g1ngerninja]

Hi jgreco,

You'll have to forgive my ignorance, but what is a SAS Expander and how would that work with a regular chassis. Don't they require a motherboard etc?

 

[Ericloewe]

Looks like you have some reading to do:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-sas-sy-a-primer-on-basic-sas-and-sata.26145/

 

[g1ngerninja]

OK I've read that but i doesn't help explain what a sas expander is in terms of a chassis. You can get a sas expander pci-e card but that's no good in an empty chassis with a backplane.

 

[Ericloewe]

You can get a sas expander pci-e card

No, you can't.
The PCI-e connector you see is just for power. There's also a handy molex connector on most standalone expanders, which can be used instead.

For your case, you can also grab a Supermicro chassis of the desired size, replace the backplane with the one you want (if needed) - with an SAS2 expander, add some miscellaneous SAS cabling and supermicro's neat little JBOD board (this last one is optional, expensive, and very cool).

 

[jgreco]

OK I've read that but i doesn't help explain what a sas expander is in terms of a chassis. You can get a sas expander pci-e card but that's no good in an empty chassis with a backplane.

Sure it is. The "PCIe" part of it is only for power. Most SAS expanders will also have a Molex power connector.

 

[g1ngerninja]

Ok so I bought one of these http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826E16-R500LP.cfm?parts=SHOW#jump from eBay with X8DT6-F, Xeon e5606, 24GB RAM, mega raid 9266-4i and 12 SAS 500GB HDDs. I really couldn't find any none pci-e expanders or those with molex connectors.

Is this any good?

 

[Spearfoot]

@GingerNinja: Yes (and No). The X8DT6 motherboard has a built-in LSI 2008 SAS controller that you can flash to IT mode and use with FreeNAS. The LSI 9266-4i card isn't usable with FreeNAS, but you can sell it to recoup some of your investment... See:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-firmware-for-lsi-megaraid-sas-9260-4i.40093/

 

[g1ngerninja]

Ok but I forgot to mention the motherboard doesn't have the lsi controller on it it's missing. But I found a way of setting each disk to jbods using the cli on this controller. I'll post the url later when I find it again.

 

[Spearfoot]

Ok but I forgot to mention the motherboard doesn't have the lsi controller on it it's missing. But I found a way of setting each disk to jbods using the cli on this controller. I'll post the url later when I find it again.

Are you certain the motherboard on your system is an X8DT6? Because an X8DT6 has an integral LSI HBA:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm

 

[g1ngerninja]

Well this is the URL https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm?SAS=N&IPMI=Y however this URL says model is X8DTE-F weird huh

 

[jgreco]

It's the same board with variations. That's that the "SAS=N" in the URL does.

 

[Spearfoot]

Well this is the URL https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/QPI/5500/X8DT6-F.cfm?SAS=N&IPMI=Y however this URL says model is X8DTE-F weird huh

Yes, the X8DTE and X8DT6 are much the same motherboard, except that the latter has a SAS controller and the former does not... You seem to have the X8DTE. So, for use with FreeNAS, you'll probably be better off getting rid of the RAID card you have and replacing it with a 9211/M1015/H200 in IT mode.

 

[g1ngerninja]

Does this https://plone.lucidsolutions.co.nz/...figuring-jbod-with-a-lsi-2208-controller/view not work then?

 

[jgreco]

Of course it "works", but it's not what you want to do. See the LSI sticky. You want an HBA.

 

[Mirfster]

Here is my ghetto method; just had to do this real quick for my test machine since I wanted to copy some data before I recreated the pool and vdevs (VMs I previously created)...

1. On the FreeNas box, I grabbed a LSI 9200-8E and stuck it in
   • Did have to up the firmware since it was pretty old
2. On another box (my temp JBOD)
   • Stuck in a "Dual Mini SAS 26 Pin SFF-8088 to SAS 36 Pin SFF-8087 Adapter PCI Card Bracket"
   • Stuck in some drives
     
   • Connected the backplane to the adapter card (Mini-SAS SFF-8087 to Mini-SAS SFF-8087)
3. Connected the the LSI 9200-8E to the adapter on the JBOD (SFF-8088 to SFF-8088)
4. Booted up the JBOD with a USB stick running FreeDos (my stick I use to flash stuff)
   • Just wanted something that would stop the messages for "no boot device..." and provide power
5. Booted up the FreeNas Server
6. Saw the disks in FreeNas and went about making a pool and copying my stuff off..

Maybe not the "best method" but got me where I needed in a pinch

Of course I could have gotten even lazier by just sticking in a second H200 and then directly connecting it to the JBOD backplane with the cases opened and servers sitting on top of each other... :p

 

[Dice]

@Mirfster - the man of all envisonable lists :D