Suggestions on Storage chassis (was Broadcom SAS 9305-24i)

[Ericloewe]

option 2: MegaRAID SAS 9341-4i. 4 channels - 1 port (270€)

Can that be crossflashed?

option 3: Adaptec RAID 8405E. 4 channels - 1 port (250€)

Not a good choice, Adaptec's drivers are miserable.

option 1: LSI SAS 9300-8i SGL. 8 channels. 2 ports - (350€)

option 4: LSI SAS 9305-24i. 24 channels - 6 ports (650€)

Both are fine, but 350€ feels steep for a SAS 9300.

 

[Forza]

This is getting out of hand. Sorry! :)

I found out the vendor can get the superstorage server, so we have four options now:

1) Chassis: SC846 BA-R920B

• 24 bays - 4U
• 6Gb/s direct-attached backplane
• LSI SAS 9305-24i 24 channel HBA
• X11SCL-F
• 2x1GbE
• Xeon E-2126G 3.3/4.5GHz 6/6 cores/threads - LGA1151
• Kingston ECC 2x32GB 2666MHz
• TOTAL: 2,877 EUR

2) Chassis: SC836 BE1C-R1K03B

• 16 bays - 3U
• 12Gb/s single-expander backplane
• LSI SAS 9300-8i SGL 8 channel HBA
• X11SCL-F
• 2x1GbE
• Xeon E-2126G 3.3/4.5GHz 6/6 cores/threads - LGA1151
• Kingston ECC 2x32GB 2666MHz
• TOTAL: 2,652 EUR

3) Chassis: SC846 BE1C-R1K28B

• 24 bays - 4U
• 12Gb/s single-expander backplane
• LSI SAS 9300-8i SGL 8 channel HBA
• X11SCL-F
• 2x1GbE
• Xeon E-2126G 3.3/4.5GHz 6/6 cores/threads - LGA1151
• Kingston ECC 2x32GB 2666MHz
• TOTAL: 3,094 EUR

4) SuperStorage Server 6049P-E1CR36L:

• 36 bays - 4U
• 12Gb/s single expander backplane
• X11DPH-T
• 2x10GbE
• Supermicro HBA AOC-S3008L-L8e 8 channel HBA (Only works on SuperMicro motherboards)
• Xeon Silver 4208 2.1/3.1GHz 8/16 cores/threads - LGA3647
• Kingston ECC 2x32GB 2666MHz
• TOTAL: 3,634 EUR

A dual 10GbE network card (Intel X550) is 280€. I do not need it at this moment.

What would you choose here?

 

[NugentS]

3.

 

[Forza]

3.

Thank you.

 

[jgreco]

3 has the advantage of being more expandable in the future because you haven't consumed all your HBA ports. You can add an external SAS cable and another JBOD chassis.

4 could be the way to go if you are certain you will eventually need more than 24 drives.

Do note that the Supermicro HBA quoted in #4 is just the OEM version of the LSI. You should be able to use either one in any of the systems listed.

 

[Ericloewe]

Do note that the Supermicro HBA quoted in #4 is just the OEM version of the LSI. You should be able to use either one in any of the systems listed.

I was trying to figure out why they'd say it only works in Supermicro motherboards and found nothing special. The product page mentions IPMI, but that might just be that IPMI has a driver to get data from the card over SMBus.

 

[Forza]

Thank you for the valuable input. I also think 3) is most sensible option for now. And would I need a larger case I probably need to re-think the setup.

I'm surprised that the xeons with lga3647 socket are so expensive for low core count parts, relatively speaking.

 

[jgreco]

I've found that OEM cards sometimes do not work correctly or at all. I suspect that the thorough testing LSI does for compatibility with a variety of vendors is not done by Supermicro, Dell, IBM, etc. on their OEM versions of the cards.

As an example, I have a bunch of X9DBU systems I support that are incompatible with PERC H700 cards if the H700's BIOS firmware is the latest revision. If you step the BIOS back to the 2015 version, it works just fine. Earlier versions of the H700 BIOS firmware also work fine with any Supermicro BIOS version.

 

[NugentS]

I thought 24 bays was a damn good start. You can always add 10Gb if you want with a decent NIC and can add external bays using an appropriate external SAS card later (you were talking about 3 HBA's earlier). Also the CPU in 3 is better, and with 12Gb SAS