BUILD what to replace 4x m1015's with

[subzer011]

does anyone know of any good HBAs with at least 8 mini-sas connectors?

I have 2 Norco 4224 cases. I have them stashed in a closet with very little ventilation. Now before you say horrible idea--I live in an apartment. I understand the importance of cooling but I have no choice. Noise, space and heat are an issue.

One of the Norcos works as a DAS through an Intel expander, the other is the main server and has 4x crossflashed m1015 cards on a supermicro X8ST3-F (which i'm considering upgrading as well)

the m1015 cards generate ALOT of heat. I've placed a 120mm fan, suspended by magnets, directly over the 4 cards to help keep them cool. But with summer coming around, the heat is getting pretty bad and the drives are hovering around 42c

i'd like to swap the 4x m1015 with a single HBA card to possibly lower power consumption and address the heat issues. i was considering the Rocket 750 from the blackblaze pods config but everyone on these forums say HPT + ZFS are a bad combination. I've also read that there're SMART issues with HPT HBAs. and i'm not even sure if the Rocket 750 will work with an expander.

anyone have any suggestions?

 

[marbus90]

Only thing comes to mind is a Rocket 750 HBA, but it's SATA on 10x direct attached SFF-8087 only. The Rocket 750 is a different kind of breed with driver files mentioning FreeNAS 9.3 specific bugs. Most Highpoint cards are hardware RAID cards, the Rocket 750 is a dumb HBA. SMART has to work because Backblaze wouldn't use these HBAs without working SMART.

So one Rocket 750 + one M1015 might work out... Alternatively upgrading to Supermicro 846 chassis with integrated expanders, with this you could cut down to a single M1015 without paying a lot for a Rocket 750 card.

Depending on how many bays you're using, maybe switch to a 45drives.com chassis. They've got 60bay chassis now too, either 2 Rocket 750, 4 LSI 9201-16i or go mad with Expander boards. Absolutely silent since they use 6x standard 120mm fans plus a standard ATX PSU.

 

[Ericloewe]

Didn't someone try (and fail) to get a Rocket 750 working about two months ago?

An expander would be safer and probably significantly cut power consumption, compared to your current setup.

However, I must point out that 20W (4 * 10W for the M1015s, minus three M1015s, plus one expander guesstimated at 10W) of extra thermal load are close to insignificant, given the 32 drives you're apparently running.

 

[marbus90]

That was just cyberjock disliking Highpoint in general and making assumptions.

Poor guy did never use AMD, now Intel failed him too... So he's stuck to ARM CPUs now. Someone ought to pity him.

 

[TXAG26]

Unless you're already using 4TB or 6TB disks, I'd look into upgrading capacity/consolidating, before dumping a lot of extra money on hardware. Taking 24 drives down to 6-8 drives would probably do wonders regarding heat/noise. Just a thought!

 

[cyberjock]

SMART has to work because Backblaze wouldn't use these HBAs without working SMART.

Yeah, fail for assumptions bro.

Backblaze isn't FreeNAS. You *can* use Highpoints and get SMART. The problem is that you need to install the highpoint cli to get SMART. Oh, but you can't install that on FreeNAS for a bunch of reasons I won't bother to discuss.

But when money is an issue, and you own your OS (backblaze has both of these) then it's easy to make work. But for FreeNAS it's a fail. There is no SMART support via smartctl and you cannot get the highpoint CLI tool to work.

So yes, it is totally possible for Backblaze to use them, with SMART while simultaneously saying that they are a poor choice for FreeNAS.

Less assumptions and more facts make for more accurate posts. ;)

 

[marbus90]

Here's the BSD 9.3 driver changelog. If I'm not mistaken smartmontools is smartctl. If that driver version hasn't been integrated yet, I'd rather open a bug report for that.

Code:

3. Revision History
====================
   v1.1.0 01/09/2015
        *Error handling to avoid scsi command lost which caused system hang up.
        *Fix a bug that fail to get the devcie's serial number via FreeNAS WebGUI.

   v1.0.3 10/09/2014
        *Fix a bug that command would be timeout because of improper interrupt service routine.
        
   v1.0.2 09/03/2014
        *Change the SCSI target ID of the disk to be the index of physical connection to the HBA.
        *Support staggered drive spin up.

   v1.0.1 06/30/2014
        *Support smartmontool for R750.

   v1.0   07/03/2013
        *First source code release

 

[cyberjock]

No clue what driver is running. And since nobody has validated it to work properly with said hardware, there's no reason to really discuss it any further in terms of recommending it.

If (or when) someone decides to test said hardware, and can validate that it works properly, then you will see me recommend it. But, until it has been validated to work properly with SMART, etc, the better assumption is to assume it won't work. Seems to be a nice conservative decision to make before you convince someone to drop "just" $700 on the controller. Am I wrong? Seems like you are arguing against this, and I cannot see any logic in that.

 

[marbus90]

It's a 40port Controller. The price and energy consumption is considerably lower than 3 16port controllers. The driver has FreeNAS specific bugfixes and that issue with smartctl has seemingly been fixed in a 11 month old version, as it is listed in that changelog. I see no reason to actively advise against it. I'll keep stating the changelog over and over if you decide to state 1+ year old information without having tested the newer drivers with this card.

If we'd stick to the information from 1 year ago, we wouldn't use X10 mobos, we'd not even use Ivy Bridge but would all stick to good old Sandy Bridge. While acceptable for most users, there are these edge cases - like 48 drives directly attached - where the old, trusted and proven solution is more expensive than a new solution. There's no ROI for the OP anyway.

 

[cyberjock]

It's a 40port Controller. The price and energy consumption is considerably lower than 3 16port controllers. The driver has FreeNAS specific bugfixes and that issue with smartctl has seemingly been fixed in a 11 month old version, as it is listed in that changelog. I see no reason to actively advise against it. I'll keep stating the changelog over and over if you decide to state 1+ year old information without having tested the newer drivers with this card.

Sorry, but claiming it's okay because it's driver revision is 11 months old is a BS reason to tell people to buy it. When someone has validated it works, THEN you can make the claim. Until then, you're potentially telling people to spend money on stuff that might not work.

If we followed your logic, we'd be on P20 for the mps driver (P20 is 9 months old right now). But we're not. We're on P16, which came out on May 1, 2013. Yes, it's over 2 years old. And we're still using it. Right now there's a chance we'll still be using it on FreeNAS 10 too!

So yeah, I tell people what to buy based on facts. Not on some supposition that I "think" should work. People will quickly figure out you are a fraud when they spend $700+ on a card that doesn't work, and you'll be the fool the point to and say "never trust that guy, he told me to buy an untested $700 card!"

I'd be pretty pissed if I bought something because someone in a forum with 800+ posts told me it would work, and then it didn't work after I sunk $700+ into it.

 

[jgreco]

I'd be pretty pissed if I bought something because someone in a forum with 800+ posts told me it would work, and then it didn't work after I sunk $700+ into it.

And people wonder why I'm so cautious and careful when making suggestions about hardware.

 

[cyberjock]

And people wonder why I'm so cautious and careful when making suggestions about hardware.

+1 Brotha!

I'm very cautious. I'd hate being given bad advice, and I'm very conservative about giving the advice as a result.

I'm not made of money, and I'd be furious if I dropped $1k+ on a system that didn't do everything I wanted except give me sweet tender lovin' every night.

 

[jgreco]

except give me sweet tender lovin' every night.

They make USB attachments for that, I hear.

 

[Ericloewe]

They make USB attachments for that, I hear.

A generalization of Rule 34 states that "If you can imagine a USB gizmo, someone's selling it on the internet (probably for porn)".

USB Peltier drink cooler with horrid efficiency and awful power? Check.
USB missile turret for office warfare? Yup.
USB plasma globe? Seen one of those in person.

Little did the engineers know just how appropriate the "Universal" in USB would be.

 

[jgreco]

A generalization of Rule 34 states that "If you can imagine a USB gizmo, someone's selling it on the internet (probably for porn)".

USB Peltier drink cooler with horrid efficiency and awful power? Check.
USB missile turret for office warfare? Yup.
USB plasma globe? Seen one of those in person.

Little did the engineers know just how appropriate the "Universal" in USB would be.

NSFW: http://www.gizmag.com/nsfw-review-realtouch-sex-toy-for-men/26804/

 

[marbus90]

Sorry, but claiming it's okay because it's driver revision is 11 months old is a BS reason to tell people to buy it. When someone has validated it works, THEN you can make the claim. Until then, you're potentially telling people to spend money on stuff that might not work.

If we followed your logic, we'd be on P20 for the mps driver (P20 is 9 months old right now). But we're not. We're on P16, which came out on May 1, 2013. Yes, it's over 2 years old. And we're still using it. Right now there's a chance we'll still be using it on FreeNAS 10 too!

The P20 driver has been seen in 9.3 nightlies already. Also the P16 was an error-free version. The very first highpoint driver for the Rocket 750 is not error free. It's buggy. It needs to be updated, because updated driver versions where issues have been fixed are available. P16 would not be the used firmware version if SMART is broken and serial number display in the GUI is broken. That's like saying the P5 firmware for LSI 3008 chips is good to go for production, even though there are still issues and newer drivers/firmwares where those issues have been fixed are around.

So yeah, I tell people what to buy based on facts. Not on some supposition that I "think" should work. People will quickly figure out you are a fraud when they spend $700+ on a card that doesn't work, and you'll be the fool the point to and say "never trust that guy, he told me to buy an untested $700 card!"

I'd be pretty pissed if I bought something because someone in a forum with 800+ posts told me it would work, and then it didn't work after I sunk $700+ into it.

OP mentioned the card by himself by the way. Due to reasons stated, the Rocket 750 HBA is not an as bad choice as the RocketRAID cards. There is no mention of non-RAID cards in your Highpoint thread.

Even with the original release driver the card works. It would lack SMART features, because the driver has not been updated to a version with bugfixes. This warrants a bug report in the FreeNAS bug tracker so that FreeNAS devs can look at the issue and fix it.

Also it's not 739USD burned, turned into ash. lookie here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C7JNPSQ/?tag=ozlp-20 Amazon offers a 30-day full refund policy. You get all your money back. That means: you're not a single USD out of pocket if the card doesn't work as indented.

 

[cyberjock]

The P20 driver has been seen in 9.3 nightlies already. Also the P16 was an error-free version. The very first highpoint driver for the Rocket 750 is not error free. It's buggy. It needs to be updated, because updated driver versions where issues have been fixed are available. P16 would not be the used firmware version if SMART is broken and serial number display in the GUI is broken. That's like saying the P5 firmware for LSI 3008 chips is good to go for production, even though there are still issues and newer drivers/firmwares where those issues have been fixed are around.

So? It's not currently running on P20, and there's no solid answer as to if we are going to roll with it. Nightlies are where the devs experiment. So the fact it's in nightlies means nothing and isn't even worth being mentioned by you, let alone discussed by me.

OP mentioned the card by himself by the way. Due to reasons stated, the Rocket 750 HBA is not an as bad choice as the RocketRAID cards. There is no mention of non-RAID cards in your Highpoint thread.

Yep, because Highpoint really didn't have any worthwhile HBAs when I wrote the post, and nobody has "taken one for the team" and bought it and tested it thoroughly.

Even with the original release driver the card works. It would lack SMART features, because the driver has not been updated to a version with bugfixes. This warrants a bug report in the FreeNAS bug tracker so that FreeNAS devs can look at the issue and fix it.

So what? "works" is subjective, as you explained in your comment. It doesn't have SMART, and if someone here had 800+ posts and recommended hardware that didn't support SMART, they'd probably be squashed by 20 people laughing at the person that recommended it. Even the hardware I still have doesn't do SMART at all with smartmontools. You *have* to use the highpoint cli tool.

Also it's not 739USD burned, turned into ash. lookie here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C7JNPSQ/?tag=ozlp-20 Amazon offers a 30-day full refund policy. You get all your money back. That means: you're not a single USD out of pocket if the card doesn't work as indented.

So you are assuming people are in the USA, have the ability to wait a week or more for a refund of $700+, will actually get the full refund, etc. I can tell you that some countries do NOT have that kind of guarantee from Amazon. Not nice to make those kinds of assumptions in a world where Amazon is not even available everywhere, doesn't offer those kinds of refunds everwhere, etc. It's totally inappropriate for *you* to assume others want to be *your* test platform with *their* money.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

 

[jgreco]

Ok, guys, settle down, I'll buy a round of beers...

 

[cyberjock]

I'm calm. I just know that I shouldn't take advice from marbus90 on what hardware to buy without verify for myself that it should "just work". ;)

Ideally I'd like to see the high posters generally agree. If 2 or 3 high-posters disagree on something, then argue about it, the poor guy that is a newbie to FreeNAS doesn't know what to do... and that won't help anyone.

 

[jgreco]

I'm calm. I just know that I shouldn't take advice from marbus90 on what hardware to buy without verify for myself that it should "just work". ;)

Yeah, yeah... have a beer anyways.