On Wed, 02 May 2012 17:49:53 +0000, Camaleón wrote: > On Wed, 02 May 2012 16:19:40 +0000, Ramon Hofer wrote: > >> On Wed, 02 May 2012 14:21:36 +0000, Camaleón wrote: > >>> Ah, okay. This one: >>> >>> http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Core/P67/C7P67.cfm >>> >>> The board has no SAS ports but it features 8 SATA ports (4 SATA2 and 4 >>> SATA3), aren't those enough your your purpose? :-? >> >> Yes, that's the mainboard I got. >> >> The case has two places to add os drives, one for a cdrom and 20 hot >> swapable disks. >> It was available with either SAS or SATA connectors. But I would have >> needed 23 SATA connectors on the mainboard or addon cards. The case >> with 5 SAS connectors was available and the SATA one had much later >> delivery date so I went for the SAS case. > > But you are still physically limited to the eight-ports provided by the > add-on card, right? :-?
Well, I have two cards and eight sata ports on the mainboard. With a 4xsata to sas cable I can connect another four hot swap drives and the os drives plus cdrom. Until now I have four 2 TB and four 1.5 TB disks. But I wanted to be able to expand when I need more space. >>> Well, I wonder why is that you chose to go with SAS drives instead >>> using SATA given that the motehrboard only has SATA ports. When >>> someone adds a SAS controller is usually because he/she wnats to build >>> a mainstream server or expectes more performance/reliability than the >>> average :-) >> >> Since I couldn't find any mainboards with more than 20 SATA ports and >> enough slots for addon cards (1x PCI, 2x PCI-Ex1 only for the tv >> cards). > > Okay, I didn't realize you were planning to use all of the available > hard disk trays of the case :-) > > But then, you will need SAS controller with expansion capabilities, > don't you? I maybe overlooked but the SuperMicro SAS controller you > first pointed out does not seem to support more than 8 devices. I have two of these cards. This makes 16 drives which can be attached to the controllers. >>>> Now I have one 500 GB disk as system drive but I'm thinking of adding >>>> another one as RAID1. >>> >>> This leads me to another question. Why RAID 1 for a media server? >> >> Just because the case has two places for os disks. But on the other >> hand it's seems to be interesting to set up a bootable raid1. And >> because it's calming to have the safety of the raid as it serves all >> the media I have: MythTV, LogitechMediaServer, etc. So my family relies >> on it and isn't amused when the system is down ;-) > > Okay :-) > > Just let me add a note of warning here: whatever SAS/SATA card you > finally choose, ensure that has support for big hard disks (>2-3TiB) > just in case, because this information is not usually displayed on the > specs. Thanks for the warning. I will carefully check about the LSI 9240-4i and the Intel 6Gb SAS expander. I was just googling for the LSI SAS 9240-4i. It seems as it uses the same chipset as the Intel expansion card (see post #5 in [1]). They should be supported by the hwraid packages [2]. [1] http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1037845618 [2] http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages So I think this looks promising for the controller and expansion cards? >>> Okay, let's see what we have for now: >>> >>> - A motherboard with 8 SATA ports >>> - A 4U case with up to 20 hot-swap drive bays for the disks (SATA/SAS) >>> >>> I wonder why is that you have not considered using SATA hard disks :-) >> >> Besides the fact of the longer delivery because I couldn't find cheaper >> solution than the two Supermicro SAS cards. The rest of the disks and >> optical drive. > > Ah, so your plan was adding two of this eight-port SAS addon card to get > a total of 16 hard disks. Yes exactly :-) But I should have searched infos more carefully :-? >>>> But in the meantime I have installed the bpo kernel and it seems to >>>> be working now... >>>> At least it never run the disk check for so long, the raid is >>>> rebuilding and I can see the details as much as I want... >>> >>> Glag it's more stable now with an updated kernel but I'd be keep >>> monitoring the array during some days... and if you experience another >>> issue with the disks, I would reconsider in replacing the hard disk >>> controller or moving to SATA disks, instead. >> >> Thanks. >> I think I'll go with the solution Stan posted (LSI 9240-4i and Intel >> SAS expander). > > Mmm, yes. I can't tell for that specific model but LSI is a good > manufacturer for HBA solutions and also linux-friendly, at least that's > what I've heard :-) Yes, I hope I won't have any problems with them. Especially because they too promise SuSE and Red Hat support but only have a Debian 5 driver on their homepage. But since the hwraid page shows good support for MegaRAID cards I'm optimistic :-) >>>> But I'm confused about the two different versions too. lspci shows: >>> >>> (I'm copying the rest of the message here) >>> >>>> 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. >>>> MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01) >>> >>> Well, lspci should display two different sets for the hard disk >>> controller: the SAS adapter (Marvell 88SE6480) and the motherboard >>> embedded chipset (Marvell 88SE9128) but none of these two matches with >>> the lscpi output :-? >> >> You're right: >> http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=JQtrS5J2 >> >> Why don't they match :-? > > Mmm, yes, there's something strange there. Ah, I think I got it :-) > >> $ sudo lspci | grep Marvel >> 01:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. >> MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01) > > This can be the motherboard SATA 2 controller. > >> 02:00.0 RAID bus controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. >> MV64460/64461/64462 System Controller, Revision B (rev 01) > > This can be the SAS add-on card. I think they probably are the two SAS cards >> 03:00.0 SATA controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE9123 PCIe >> SATA 6.0 Gb/s controller (rev 11) > > This is the motherboard SATA 3 controller. > >> 03:00.1 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Device 91a4 (rev >> 11) > > And finally, this is the IDE/ATA port of the motherboard. And these two are from the mainboard. > Does this make more sense? Yes, exact numbers do not match but this can > be due to a simple identification problem ("update-pciids" could solve > this). I did update-pciids but the numbers didn't change. But anyhow they are the same as on the debian wiki pci database. Or what numbers don't match? Best regards Ramon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/jnu2bh$uf8$1...@dough.gmane.org
