SOLVED Supermicro X11SDV-4C-TP8F - HBA needed for backplane?

[Gorge50]

When I go to this page: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/accessories/addon/AOC-S3008L-L8e.php
I don't see your board listed under tested boards:

Tested Motherboards and Servers
Motherboards	X9DRH-7TF X9DR3-LN4F+ X9DRT-PIBQ X9DRT-P

Don't worry about it - the HBA works perfectly fine with my X11 board, it even came preflashed with latest IT firmware ;)
One thing that I noticed though is that AOC-S3008L shows my disks as if they were in other enclosure slots than they are physically:

And here is how hot swap bays are populated (seen from front):

As it was before, the HBA is connected to PRI-J1 and PRI-J2 on the backplane.

 

[Gorge50]

One thing that I noticed though is that AOC-S3008L shows my disks as if they were in other enclosure slots than they are physically:

Answering my own question. Disks should be rearranged so that:
slot 10 -> slot 1
slot 11 -> slot 2
slot 12 -> slot 3
slot 7 -> slot 4
....

also, run storcli /c0 delete NVRAM

 

[francisaugusto]

I went ahead and contacted Supermicro and it seems a HBA is required.

Question:
I am using the X11SDV-4C-TP8F motherboard with chassis that contains an SAS3 expander backplane (model: BPN-SAS3-826EL1). Can the two SAS ports on the motherboard SATA controller be connected to this chassis using SFF-8643 to SFF-8643 cable? I tried connecting it to PRI-J1 through PRI-J4 on backplane without any of 8 installed drives (WD Red 6TB) showing up in BIOS.

Answer:
The onboard controller cannot function with a expander backplane. You would need to use a add-on sata/sas controller. We do not advise to use WD RED drives in a server chassis, especialy when the cahssis would be placed ina rack, These drives are not desigend for such configuration, and we see a lot of customers having problems with WD RED in server chassis.

Now could anyone explain why is this the case?
I am planning to buy the CSE-825TQC-600LPB for my motherboard (same as yours), and when I read this thread I wrote to SuperMicro immediately, and they said it should work fine. I wonder what makes the backplane of your chassis to be incompatible with the onboard controller. And I feel a bit funny about ordering the chassis now.

 

[cobrakiller58]

The onboard controller is listed as SATA which cannot control SAS devices

 

[francisaugusto]

The onboard controller is listed as SATA which cannot control SAS devices

But why would the backplane of the 825 chassis work, according to Supermicro? It’s also SAS/SATA, isn’t it?

 

[cobrakiller58]

The TQ series does not have a SAS expander, my understanding of the TQ series is it is simple wire traces from each hot-swap bay. If you use SATA drives in it, the motherboard with see them as exactly that however if you try to use SAS drives in the chassis without a SAS controller it will not be able to read the drives.

 

[francisaugusto]

The TQ series does not have a SAS expander, my understanding of the TQ series is it is simple wire traces from each hot-swap bay. If you use SATA drives in it, the motherboard with see them as exactly that however if you try to use SAS drives in the chassis without a SAS controller it will not be able to read the drives.

Thanks a lot, that was a good explanation.
I wonder, when looking for a 2U chassis with SAS/SATA backplanes, what should I look for to see if the onboard controller will work? I am contemplating getting others, though I might go for the SuperMicro anyway.

 

[cobrakiller58]

If you are looking for recommendations you should start a new thread, as far as telling which have backplanes that include SAS expanders and which do no you will have to carefully read the spec sheets. For example the OP in this thread it clearly says on the supermicro page about their case.

12-port 2U SAS3 12Gbps single-expander backplane, support up to 12x 3.5-inch SAS3/SATA3 HDD/SSD

the Norco RPC-2008 has no mention of a SAS expander

Eight SATA connectors support up to eight 3.5″ or 2.5″ SATA or SAS hard disk drives

there are a couple Norco case users in the forum and I do not believe any of their cases have SAS expander backplanes

 

[francisaugusto]

If you are looking for recommendations you should start a new thread, as far as telling which have backplanes that include SAS expanders and which do no you will have to carefully read the spec sheets. For example the OP in this thread it clearly says on the supermicro page about their case.

the Norco RPC-2008 has no mention of a SAS expander


there are a couple Norco case users in the forum and I do not believe any of their cases have SAS expander backplanes

 

[francisaugusto]

Thanks! I was actually looking for advice on how to avoid the same trouble the author of this thread had to go through (though of course tips on chassis are always welcome :))