X-Case RM 424 - 24HDD + M1015 question about SFF-8087

[Manuel F. Almeida]

With this (http://www.xcase.co.uk/24-bay-Hotswap-rackmount-chassis-norco-RPC-4224-p/case-xcase-rm424.htm) case i shall have Six internal SFF-8087 Mini SAS connectors, ok, but the connectors on the SATA adaptor board from IBM are the same so how do i connect them?

 

[jgreco]

I don't believe the Norco has an SAS expander, and the 8087 lanes probably just map to individual drives. So you use some 3ware CBL-SFF8087-05M cables. 24 drives means six of them and three M1015's to control all ports.

Or you can add in an SAS expander.


The Supermicro chassis can be ordered with an SAS expander which means you only need half an M1015 to control it. On the other hand, a single SFF8087 is limited to 4x6Gbps= 24Gbps throughput, so for best performance with the fastest hard drives or SSD's, the three M1015 solution is a winner. For most practical uses, it may make the most sense to go SAS expander.

 

[vegaman]

Yeah, the Norco/X-Case chassis doesn't have an expander.

To help you decide on which way to go with the HBA and Expander, the SAS2008 cards (such as the M1015) will be bottlenecked by the controller/PCI-E bus before they hit 24Gbps (see http://www.servethehome.com/lsi-sas-9207-8e-sas-ii-sata-iii-hba-benchmarks/). So if you want more than that you'll need a second card or a SAS2308 based card anyway.

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, and even if you have dual 10Gb LAN ports, you still will be bottlenecked at the LAN. :P

 

[Manuel F. Almeida]

Jgreco you were crystal clear as always but the other posters and the end of your post left me with doubts


I want the server to be only for streaming HD mkv's to 2/3 mediaplayers (and ofc moving files[movies] onto the hdd´s in the server)
So 3x IBM M1015 its the cheapest/average solution?

I am afraid of this because ive read somewhere that putting 3 of those connected (and IT flashed etc) on the Motherboard I want (X9SCA), is giving troubles on pci ports 3/4 not detecting

Is there a board that you guys can recomend which has 6 ports at once without being that expensive?
Raid card or HBA ?
A SAS expander like Chenbro CK23601 (36port) only works if powered up by an HBA card like m1015 right?


Also, would I have to flash to IT mode on whichever board I go or just with the m1015's ?

Im going zfs btw
And I guess the motherboard Im looking at does not work with either 3 m1015 or the sas2308 cards because of pci right?

cyberjock/vegaman did not understand your posts, you are not encouraging me to use 3 m1015 ?
What does that bottleneck dual port by the LAN mean?

my system would be:

Motherboard - Super Micro D-X9SCA-F-O

CPU - Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1220L v2 (3M Cache, 2.30 GHz) (or the quad core)

RAM - Kingston ECC 16GB KVR16E11/8I

 

[jgreco]

Well, I think the takeaway is that as you increase the number of drives, you have to carefully consider the attachment hardware you plan to use.

For example, I know that people who are comfortable with the idea of building their own system "affordably" often trend towards the Norco chassis, because they are inexpensive. However, without an SAS expander, the number of "adds" you have to do, to add a power supply, fix cooling deficiencies, figure out how to arrange SATA attachment for large numbers of drives, I'm not sure the added frustration is worth any possible savings. You're adding extra dollars, and maybe extra controllers and extra watts.

On the flip side, Supermicro's backplane-with-SAS-expander option is somewhat limiting in the bandwidth available to the backplane (x8 wide porting didn't seem to work but I didn't investigate too deeply). For non-extreme-performance NAS uses, it ought to be perfectly acceptable. If all you have is an X9SCA with an E3-1220L and two gigabit Ethernets, you are definitely in the "non-extreme-performance" realm. As a practical matter, today's standard SATA drives like the ST4000DM000 probably peak out around 150MBytes/sec, which is about 1.2Gbps. Of course there's overhead not factored in there. So let's say 1.5Gbps per disk. For a 12 drive chassis, that means 18Gbps. For 24, 36Gbps. Well, a single 4 lane SAS SFF8087 gets you 24Gbps.

There's nothing magic about Supermicro's backplane-with-SAS-expander by the way. Except the cost-to-solution winds up somewhat better IMO. Buying preintegrated stuff from an OEM is often cheaper than beating your way through the retail product maze.

 

[vegaman]

cyberjock/vegaman did not understand your posts, you are not encouraging me to use 3 m1015 ?
What does that bottleneck dual port by the LAN mean?

Sorry for the confusion. I was trying to clarify that there is other places the bandwidth will be limited. So the bandwidth limits of an expander may not be a problem in some cases.

I'm not discouraging the 3 M1015 route, but like you say it creates the problem of finding a board that will support 3 cards.

The LAN bottleneck means you'll be limited in the speed you can transfer to other computers. It will still be quite fast, but a lot slower than the disks are capable of.

 

[Manuel F. Almeida]

But do you advise a SAS expander with 6 ports or 3 m1015 ?
the x-case or one of those supermicro's u mention?

Can you give me an example of a supermicro with sas expander option?

 

[wussy]

Manuel,
In my opinion a HP SAS expander could be the way to go. Of course it may give you a bottle neck but I think that for you prupose it won´t matter at all.

As I´m seeing it you would need SAS to SATA cables as described aboth

All the best

 

[panz]

Xcase offers the RM 424 Pro with _expander_ 6GB SGPIO backplane. One cable (I think a SFF-8087 one) for 24 drives. I've just emailed them for the specs.

View: http://youtu.be/BW7hpty1i9A

 

[panz]

On the flip side, Supermicro's backplane-with-SAS-expander option is somewhat limiting in the bandwidth available to the backplane (x8 wide porting didn't seem to work but I didn't investigate too deeply).

So, is it possible to connect both SFF8087 connectors of IBM M1015 to 2 connectors of the Intel RES2SV240 SAS expander to increase the bandwidth?

There's nothing magic about Supermicro's backplane-with-SAS-expander by the way. Except the cost-to-solution winds up somewhat better IMO. Buying preintegrated stuff from an OEM is often cheaper than beating your way through the retail product maze.

It seems cheaper but if you change your mind after, you have to replace the entire backplane. Moreover, the Supermicro 846BE16-R920B mounts a non-standard PSU... not good for me...

View: http://youtu.be/iBpb5TMZFCs

 

[cyberjock]

You mentioned 2 of the good reasons why people avoid Supermicro "pre-built" solutions, panz. It's not for everyone. If you want "no-hassle" Supermicro is definitely a good choice. I've spent many hours customizing my server and I'm relatively happy with it. If I had known ahead of time the time and money involved with making my Norco case I would probably have gone with the Supermicro right off the bat.

 

[panz]

I'm going to go with Supermicro; I'll purchase a case with the "A" suffix (like 836A or 846A). They have 1 SFF-8087 every 4 drives. I don't want to be stuck with an expander backplane: I prefer using an expander card and buy another M1015 if I need more bandwidth in the future. (BTW I've just ordered another M1015 for "redundancy" as a spare part.).