BUILD Supermicro Chassis for X10SL7-F? Modest/Reliable Backup Server.

[JayG30]

EDITED
So I'm redoing this post because I found out there are a bunch of cases that people have used with the X10SL7-F and I'm now pretty much set on using this as my motherboard for this build unless someone has a good reason not to.

The question now is what case would be best to go with for this motherboard?​

I won't be filling all the bays right away but want something that will hold all the drives I can attach to this board. So 12+ bay chassis are what I'm looking for I think. I see some with a SAS backplane that allows the use of breakout cables to reduce cable clutter. Some have 6Gb/s backplanes while others seem to only do 3Gb/s. Some just have individual SATA/SAS cables. Some have extra 2 bays on back of the case for drive mirror (sounds great for SSD ZIL).

Here are some that I'm looking at right now and trying to understand all the specs;
SC825TQ-R700LPV / SC825TQ-R700LPB
SC826TQ-R500LPB
SC826TQ-R800LPV / SC826TQ-R800LPB
SC826BAC4-R920LPB

I have about a max of $650 to spend on the case, but rather spend less so I can save that money or spend it elsewhere. Trying to keep the total initial cost at 2k. Can spend extra down the line if necessary (extra RAM, SSD ZIL, more disks). Most likely going to run mirrored for extra speed instead of RAIDZ2.

Case: --------------- ?
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231V3
RAM: Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B (2 x 8GB)
HDD: 4 x HGST Deskstar NAS H3IKNAS40003272SN
==============
Total Cost: $1,360

 

[Void_]

I'm in the same boat but I decided on not taking the x10sl7-f and stick with the x10slh-f combined with a pci-e sas controller which I can equip with a custom cooler.
Still no clue on what case to get though

 

[JayG30]

On ebay I'm coming across two models that seem affordable and wondering if they would be a good fit.

SuperMicro CSE-826A-R1200LPB
SuperMicro CSE-826E16-R1200LPB

Cost from $300 to $500. Just not sure of the feasability of using them with the X10SL7-F board.

 

[JayG30]

I'm thinking the SuperMicro CSE-826A-R1200LPB (or anything with a 826A backplane) is the one that makes the most sense. I'm going to talk to someone tomorrow that has this with 800W PSU's in it for cheap (honestly think I need less PSU than that even). The backplane has 3 x SFF8087 ports. So you would use 3 reverse breakout SFF8087 cables. This should be easier to manage than the TQ models which from what I've read would require individual sata/sas cables (in this case 12 cables).

My biggest issue is trying to understand how this would work and what shortcomings I might expect by spanning across the 8 SAS ports, 2 SATAIII ports, and 2 more SATAII ports.
For the first 8 bays you could just use 2 reverse breakout SFF8087 cables in the 8 SAS ports. The final 4 bays however would either have to connect to the 4 SATAII ports or 2 SATAII + 2 SATAIII. You also have 2 ports that would go unused.

If you go up to the more advanced cases with the "better" backplanes like those supporting 12Gbps, it seems like the cables go down in number. So it looks like in some you would be able to hook all 12 bays up via 2 reverse breakout cables (6:1). This raises even more questions for me. What happens if I was to span 2 SAS ports + 2 SATAIII + 2SATAII ports via that cable?

And I don't think I'm that concerned about this BUT it probably would be best to run SAS drives on the SAS ports. The whole SAS/SATA protocol concerns. Enough people do it that I'm not that concerned however. I don't have the budget to get SAS disks.

 

[Ericloewe]

If the backplane is a straight electrical connection, you can connect whatever SATA or SAS ports you want (as long as you stick to SATA drives).

 

[JayG30]

Right, so the TQ models I believe have a backplane that has 12 individual connectors on the back and front. So 12 individual cables.
The A models have 4 x SFF8087 connectors on the backside of the backplan and 12 individual SAS connectors on the front. Thus for this motherboard requiring the reverse breakout cables that go 4 into 1.

Because I'm not that familiar with using reverse breakout SFF8087 cables, I'm not sure if that setup would be acceptable. Because basically you would have 2 SAS/SATA connectors plugged into the LSI SAS ports on the motherboard and 2 in the plain SATA ports. But those would all funnel into the SFF8087 connection on the backplane that then obviously get sent to 4 of the connectors on the front of the backplane.

I suspect it doesn't matter but hoping others with more experience with this can inform me if not.

 

[Ericloewe]

The cables don't mix channels, there's nothing to worry about. They're just a nifty way of grouping four SATA cables and enclosure management stuff. For dumb backplanes, the channels are sent directly to individual connectors.

 

[JayG30]

Say I wanted to get a CSE-826E16-R1200LPB. This uses the E16 backplane. From what I gather you have 2 SFF8087 on the backplane to 12 drives. Could this work with the X10SL7-F motherboard? Is there a reverse breakout cable that would make this work?

The only reverse breakout cables I've seen are 4:1 and if you only have 2 of these SFF8087 connectors I don't see how that would work.

 

[Ericloewe]

Say I wanted to get a CSE-826E16-R1200LPB. This uses the E16 backplane. From what I gather you have 2 SFF8087 on the backplane to 12 drives. Could this work with the X10SL7-F motherboard? Is there a reverse breakout cable that would make this work?

The only reverse breakout cables I've seen are 4:1 and if you only have 2 of these SFF8087 connectors I don't see how that would work.

It has an SAS expander that takes four (or eight) lanes and switches them for however many drives you need. Just use the exact same reverse breakout cables (but you can only use the SAS ports, not the SATA ports).

 

[JayG30]

Ahhhh, thanks. That was my bad, I missed the expander info. I don't read to good sometimes. :)

So I'd need another HBA to go alongside the onboard SAS in that case. Sound like the other case would be easier overall.

Basically I'm looking at these on ebay.
CSE-826A-R800LPB: $225
CSE-826E16-R1200LPB w/ CSE-PTJBOD-CB2: $399.95

The A series is cheap and sounds like it would do exactly what I need. The E16 is a steal of a deal and comes with the JBOD controller. I would pull that JBOD out since I don't need it, but could use it down the line. Add an HBA, some cabling, another JBOD case, and expand.

So could I drive all 12 disks in the E16 model using just the 8 SAS ports on the X10SL7-F? And if so what would I use the other SATA ports for (if anything)?

Opinions?

 

[Ericloewe]

You could run the 12 drives and an external JBOD with just the X10SL7-F. At that point, you're definitely looking at more RAM, though.

The SATA ports could be used for boot devices, L2ARC devices (probably not in your case) or SLOG devices (depends).

 

[JayG30]

I like keeping my options open. You never know when someone decides we should use what was initially just a backup server as a VM host.
My plan I think is as follows.

Case: Supermicro CSE-826A-R800LPB: $225.00
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O: $249.99
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231V3: $256.99
RAM: Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B (2 x 8GB): $169.99
HDD: 4 x HGST Deskstar NAS: $659.96
Total: ~$1,500 (+ extras)

I figure even though the E16 case is a good deal it really doesn't make sense for what I need to accomplish. The SAS expander just complicates things. I can use the 8 SAS ports + 4 SATA ports on the motherboard with the reverse breakout cables to fill all 12 of it's bays. It has an x8 and x4 slot, so I can add a quad Intel NIC and I THINK even an HBA (IBM 1015) if I wanted to connect it to a JBOD chassis. Like you said, assuming I could, I might be hitting RAM issues at that point and the X10SL7-F has a 32GB limit. So if that was the plan from the gate (needing more storage) I should probably step up to the UP E5-2600 boards (like a X10SRi-F or X10SRH-CF or X10SRH-CLN4F).

 

[JayG30]

Hello guys, I've started this build and I'm looking for some specific info.
What I ended up going with was;

Code:

SuperMicro CSE-826E16-R1200LPB
SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O

The issue/question/concern is related to connecting the cases E16 backplane and X10SL7 SAS ports/SGPIO in a way that will provide LED lights to work correctly (activity/failure/etc). This backplane does not have any SGPIO connectors. It appears that it expects the SGPIO signal to come over with the iPass SFF-8087 cable (36pin). The motherboard however doesn't have an SFF-8087 port, it has the 8 individual SAS ports and separate SGPIO pins for the SAS and SATA ports.

If I was using an HBA, I could just use a standard SFF-8087 (mini-SAS) to SFF-8087 (mini-SAS) cable (36-pin connectors). Supermicro makes these (CML-0108L-02, CML-0109L-02, CML-0110L-02) and they carry sideband (SGPIO). You can see that in the image;

The issue I have is that the motherboard doesn't have an SFF-8087 port, it has individual SAS ports. This requires the use of a reverse breakout cable (4 port "host" to 1 SFF-8087 "target"). However I don't have any idea if this provides the drive activity information to the backplane or not.

The motherboard has an SGPIO connection for the SAS and SATA ports, but I have not seen a single "reverse breakout cable" that also has a sideband connector (ie. 4port+sideband "host" to 1 SFF-8087 "target"). And even if it did I'm not so sure that would work anyway.

So unless this "just works" and I'm missing something, it might make more sense to just get a simpler motherboard and add an HBA that you can wire up to the backplane using an SFF-8087 cable.

 

[Ericloewe]

The X10SL7-F exposes the enclosure management stuff via a header which you can connect with an appropriate reverse breakout cable.

Unfortunately, don't expect that stuff to work unless you're buying something like a TrueNAS system. It's poorly standardized and a pain to get working, which is why only very controlled configurations actually work.

 

[JayG30]

The X10SL7-F exposes the enclosure management stuff via a header which you can connect with an appropriate reverse breakout cable.

Unfortunately, don't expect that stuff to work unless you're buying something like a TrueNAS system. It's poorly standardized and a pain to get working, which is why only very controlled configurations actually work.

Can you tell me which header that might be?
Manual is HERE.

I thought it was the SGPIO headers (for SAS it's 6-SGPIO 1/2 & for SATA ports it's T-SGPIO 1/2) that would provide this info, but like I said I haven't ever seen a "reverse breakout cable" that had 4ports+sideband to 1 SFF-8087. I've seen forward breakout cables with the SGPIO cable however. The only other cable I can see is the Power SMB (System Management Bus), connector JPI2C1, which I believe is just for information on the PSU's.

The backplane, BPN-SAS2-826EL1, manual is HERE.
I see no useful connectors for this purpose. Only the SFF-8087 connectors which in the manual they mention can be used with the 36pin cables they sell, which appear to provide the sideband from an HBA to the backplane in that single cable. It has no SGPIO headers. It has a 3 pin I2C connection at the top (which is used to connect to the CSE-PTJBOD-CB2 power board for JBOD).

Thus why I'm a bit lost if there is any way to wire this up "correctly".

 

[Ericloewe]

Can you tell me which header that might be?
Manual is HERE.

I thought it was the SGPIO headers (for SAS it's 6-SGPIO 1/2 & for SATA ports it's T-SGPIO 1/2) that would provide this info, but like I said I haven't ever seen a "reverse breakout cable" that had 4ports+sideband to 1 SFF-8087. I've seen forward breakout cables with the SGPIO cable however.

You'd need such a cable, but configured as reverse-breakout. The headers sound right.

 

[JayG30]

Thanks. My understanding is that forward/reverse cables of this nature are electrically wired to only work in one path or the other. So I wouldn't be able to use a forward cable (which I can find no problem with the extra sideband cable) unless I'm mistaken. Which leaves me with trying to find a reverse breakout cable with sideband (which has been impossible from what I've seen).

If I was doing this again I'd probably get a cheaper board without the onboard SAS and buy an HBA with the difference. Wire it up using the supermicro ipass SFF8087 cable shown above. Hummm, I wonder what newegg's policy is on returning motherboards that haven't been turned on yet...will have to check.

 

[Ericloewe]

Thanks. My understanding is that forward/reverse cables of this nature are electrically wired to only work in one path or the other. So I wouldn't be able to use a forward cable (which I can find no problem with the extra sideband cable) unless I'm mistaken..

Yeah, they're incompatible.

 

[JayG30]

Soooo, interesting find perhaps...

http://www.techcable.com/HTML/SFF-8087-cables.htm
Look at model 2136476SB-1M
SATA x4 Fanout to SFF-8087 with Side Band

However my lack of understanding of the details of this leaves me unsure if this will work since the Supermicro X10SL7-F seems to have sideband provided via separate SGPIO pins. However, I guess it is possible that the sideband could be sent in multiple ways...

I figure this boards has been so popular that someone probably has used it with a supermicro case with this or similar backplane and reverse breakout cables. So they would probably know for a fact that this works or doesn't.

 

[Ericloewe]

Soooo, interesting find perhaps...

http://www.techcable.com/HTML/SFF-8087-cables.htm
Look at model 2136476SB-1M
SATA x4 Fanout to SFF-8087 with Side Band

However my lack of understanding of the details of this leaves me unsure if this will work since the Supermicro X10SL7-F seems to have sideband provided via separate SGPIO pins. However, I guess it is possible that the sideband could be sent in multiple ways...

I figure this boards has been so popular that someone probably has used it with a supermicro case with this or similar backplane and reverse breakout cables. So they would probably know for a fact that this works or doesn't.

Honestly, I don't know. Few people care, since the software side is rather painful, so there's not much data about that around here.