Supermicro X9SCM-F-O Questions

[ninjai]

First one is silly: what's the -O stand for in this model? I can't seem to figure that out.

Secondly, I plan to do a RAID 1-0 setup. Am I able to use all 6 SATA ports for this purpose, or am I limited to the 4 SATA2 ports?

 

[Ericloewe]

For Supermicro boards, a final -O means retail packaging. -B means bulk packaging. The motherboard inside is always an X9SCM-F.

And no, you're not limited. Sounds like you could use Cyberjock's guide (link in my sig).

 

[ninjai]

Thanks, I started reading through this now I've got a different question.

I'm not very familiar with ZFS in general, but here was my intent for my NAS:

Start with 4 drives (4x4TB) in a RAIDZ2 (which is like RAID 6) setup to allow for up to 2 disk failures.

This guide is telling me that I can't add more drives to a VDEV once created.

Is this even technically possible with 4 drives? There is no way to grow it in the future?

 

[danb35]

As the guide says, you can't add drives to a vdev once it's created. If you create a 4-disk RAIDZ2, you can expand your pool by either replacing the disks with larger ones, or adding another vdev. If you want to add another vdev, it should be (but is not required to be) of similar redundancy. You can add a single disk to your 4-disk RAIDZ2, but that would result in that single disk being striped with the RAIDZ2, and if that single disk were to fail, you'd lose your entire pool.

 

[ninjai]

So my best bet here is to just fill the damn thing up with 6 disks. $$$$. Too bad.

 

[danb35]

A 6-disk RAIDZ2 is going to be the best combination of capacity and redundancy. Another option would be two mirrored pairs of disks, to which you could later add another mirrored pair of disks, giving you a net capacity of 3 x the disk capacity.

 

[ninjai]

A 6-disk RAIDZ2 is going to be the best combination of capacity and redundancy. Another option would be two mirrored pairs of disks, to which you could later add another mirrored pair of disks, giving you a net capacity of 3 x the disk capacity.

If I understand this correctly, you are suggesting RAID 1? Isn't RAID 1 no longer recommended? How would this give me 3x net capacity if I added a third mirror?

 

[danb35]

I'm not suggesting RAID 1, I'm suggesting mirrors, which are similar, but not the same thing. More specifically, I'm suggesting striped mirrors, which is similar to RAID 10. A pool consisting of three pairs of mirrors, assuming that all disks are the same size, will have 3x the capacity of a single disk.

RAIDZ1, which is similar to (but not the same as) RAID 5, is not recommended with larger disks.