supermicro x9dr3-f (onboard intel sas chip, IT mode??)

High Voltage

Explorer
Joined
Jul 7, 2017
Messages
56
sooo, I'm a bit out of my element here, and need some thoughts of those that know more than me, I have a supermicro x9dr3-f motherboard, and it seems that its SAS chip is running off the intel chipset, c602, and all my attempts at googling are not proving helpful here, the best I could find, was a reddit thread from a while back where someone said that the chip is running by way of fakeraid, and not actually using any sas chip/raid chip and that its software on the chip by way of the chipset, well thats all fine and good, but my question is whether or not that can actually be used at that point at all. I currently have an LSI2008 sas HBA, but I'm trying to condense down the number of add-in cards I HAVE to use, to see if I cant get some of those ports back open to use for alternative add-in cards or not, and I cant find a definitive answer as to whether or not that will work with truenas (at this point its truenas) and all the info I CAN find, is few and far between, and rather useless at that.



 

Ericloewe

Server Wrangler
Moderator
Joined
Feb 15, 2014
Messages
20,175
its SAS chip is running off the intel chipset, c602
It's integrated into the PCH, yes.

IIRC, and Intel's docs aren't helping me with this, the C60x PCH only supported SAS1, so you're limited to 3 Gb/s. That said, it should not be affected by any 32-bit LBA nonsense like the LSI SAS1 stuff was, so it should still be usable for spinning rust.
Driver support is the wildcard here. I haven't heard of many people actually using the SAS part of the PCH. Plain HBAs weren't en vogue quite the same way they are these days, and HW RAID controllers were ubiquitous.
If the SAS part is as good as the SATA part, it should be decent.

So, tl:dr - Try it out, I guess.
 

danb35

Hall of Famer
Joined
Aug 16, 2011
Messages
15,457
The reddit link you post makes it look like the C606 chipset provides SAS-capable SATA ports--any "RAID" would be software-based RAID. I'd think it should be good to go, but I'm not sure how much experience anyone here has with that device.
 

High Voltage

Explorer
Joined
Jul 7, 2017
Messages
56
@danb35 yea, that's literally what I read somewhere, that exact phrase, so good to know, I'm waiting right now on my latest stimulus check (next month sometime) in order to purchase an external JBOD chassis I have had my eyes on for a good while now first, but that exact phrase "SAS-capable sata ports" I read somewhere earlier today that was not your reply.

@Ericloewe good to know, thank you both, I guess I'll give it a shot and find out then once my stuff gets here, after the check obviously, and will post back if it either worked or not then.
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
sooo, I'm a bit out of my element here, and need some thoughts of those that know more than me, I have a supermicro x9dr3-f motherboard, and it seems that its SAS chip is running off the intel chipset, c602, and all my attempts at googling are not proving helpful here, the best I could find, was a reddit thread from a while back where someone said that the chip is running by way of fakeraid, and not actually using any sas chip/raid chip and that its software on the chip by way of the chipset, well thats all fine and good, but my question is whether or not that can actually be used at that point at all. I currently have an LSI2008 sas HBA, but I'm trying to condense down the number of add-in cards I HAVE to use, to see if I cant get some of those ports back open to use for alternative add-in cards or not, and I cant find a definitive answer as to whether or not that will work with truenas (at this point its truenas) and all the info I CAN find, is few and far between, and rather useless at that.




The Intel Patsburg SCU? Yes, Intel SCU's are just fine and dandy. I find them extremely handy in a 2U 12 drive chassis to take care of those "last four" drives alongside an HBA. Our hypervisors tend to fill every slot so being able to reduce the number of cards is a good thing. Shows up as isci0 and works great with PCI-passthru in a VM.

Be aware that you do need to bludgeon out extra "PCH RAID" functionality in the BIOS.

isci0: <Intel(R) C600 Series Chipset SAS Controller (SATA mode)> port 0x6000-0x60ff mem 0xe7afc000-0xe7afffff,0xe7400000-0xe77fffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci10
mps0: <Avago Technologies (LSI) SAS2008> port 0x5000-0x50ff mem 0xfd4f0000-0xfd4fffff,0xfd480000-0xfd4bffff irq 19 at device 0.0 on pci7
mps0: Firmware: 20.00.07.00, Driver: 21.02.00.00-fbsd
mps0: IOCCapabilities: 1285c<ScsiTaskFull,DiagTrace,SnapBuf,EEDP,TransRetry,EventReplay,HostDisc>
da1 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 9 lun 0
da1: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da1: 600.000MB/s transfers
da1: Command Queueing enabled
da1: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da3 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 11 lun 0
da3: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da3: 600.000MB/s transfers
da3: Command Queueing enabled
da3: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da2 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 10 lun 0
da2: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da2: 600.000MB/s transfers
da2: Command Queueing enabled
da2: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da4 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 12 lun 0
da4: <ATA WDC WD120EMAZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da4: 600.000MB/s transfers
da4: Command Queueing enabled
da4: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da5 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 13 lun 0
da5: <ATA WDC WD120EMAZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da5: 600.000MB/s transfers
da5: Command Queueing enabled
da5: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da7 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 15 lun 0
da7: <ATA WDC WD120EMAZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da7: 600.000MB/s transfers
da7: Command Queueing enabled
da7: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da6 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 14 lun 0
da6: <ATA WDC WD120EMAZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da6: 600.000MB/s transfers
da6: Command Queueing enabled
da6: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da8 at mps0 bus 0 scbus3 target 16 lun 0
da8: <ATA WDC WD120EMAZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da8: 600.000MB/s transfers
da8: Command Queueing enabled
da8: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da9 at isci0 bus 0 scbus4 target 0 lun 0
da9: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device
da9: 300.000MB/s transfers
da9: Command Queueing enabled
da9: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da11 at isci0 bus 0 scbus4 target 2 lun 0
da11: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device
da11: 300.000MB/s transfers
da11: Command Queueing enabled
da11: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da10 at isci0 bus 0 scbus4 target 1 lun 0
da10: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device
da10: 300.000MB/s transfers
da10: Command Queueing enabled
da10: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
da12 at isci0 bus 0 scbus4 target 3 lun 0
da12: <ATA WDC WD120EMFZ-11 0A81> Fixed Direct Access SPC-3 SCSI device
da12: 300.000MB/s transfers
da12: Command Queueing enabled
da12: 11444224MB (23437770752 512 byte sectors)
 
Top