Marvel AOC-SASLP-MV8 - 8 Sata PCI-E 4x non-raid controller card

With remyzero's pics and [H]'s forum problems, I never posted my photos. However, the card did arrive promptly, but people should be aware they're being drop-shipped directly from Supermicro when ordered from Wiredzone. The shipping box had Supermicro taped and written all over it.

The inner box was just a plain white container with the card, the slim bracket preinstalled, a full-height bracket, and driver CD (which had the same driver version as on Supermicro's website - for once, a driver CD that was "up to date").

This was installed in a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard running the x64 6068 build of Windows 7 in a Norco 4020. I had to insert it in my last PCIe 8x/16x slot (the board only has two), which would otherwise have seen another videocard, which is not an issue. However, there is one biggie - I can't install two using this motherboard without trying to find a videocard that can go into a PCIe 1x slot. This board only has three PCIe x1 slots (no x4).

This makes the Tekram board much more attractive, even if the cost is four times that of the Supermicro. I might wind-up selling the Supermicro, but only for this reason. It's otherwise a badass little card.
 
fleggett said:
With remyzero's pics and [H]'s forum problems, I never posted my photos. However, the card did arrive promptly, but people should be aware they're being drop-shipped directly from Supermicro when ordered from Wiredzone. The shipping box had Supermicro taped and written all over it.

The inner box was just a plain white container with the card, the slim bracket preinstalled, a full-height bracket, and driver CD (which had the same driver version as on Supermicro's website - for once, a driver CD that was "up to date").

This was installed in a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard running the x64 6068 build of Windows 7 in a Norco 4020. I had to insert it in my last PCIe 8x/16x slot (the board only has two), which would otherwise have seen another videocard, which is not an issue. However, there is one biggie - I can't install two using this motherboard without trying to find a videocard that can go into a PCIe 1x slot. This board only has three PCIe x1 slots (no x4).

This makes the Tekram board much more attractive, even if the cost is four times that of the Supermicro. I might wind-up selling the Supermicro, but only for this reason. It's otherwise a badass little card.
Click to expand...



Get an x1 video card, thats what I did a long time ago.
 
I can't (in both cases). The Norco is directly attached to my living room TV/receiver setup via one HDMI cable, so I need the horsepower and connectivity that a full-on PCIe x16 card delivers for HD content. I thought about putting the 4020 somewhere else in the house, but you can't stream an HD feed fast enough over wireless and a wired setup is just currently not in the cards. Plus, that would require yet another piece of hardware (to tie to the receiver).

Otherwise, it's a good idea. ;)
 
How in the heck can you stand having the Norco in the living room? Mine was pretty loud stock. Even after I replaced the fans it would be too loud for my living room.
 
epimetheus said:
How in the heck can you stand having the Norco in the living room? Mine was pretty loud stock. Even after I replaced the fans it would be too loud for my living room.
Click to expand...
Three steps:


  • Removed three of the stock Deltas - the one covering the molexes and the two in the back. The ultimate plan is to replace all the fans with quieter ones, but I haven't found any 80mm makes/models that I'm yet happy with (dBA vs. CFM). I know others have modified or outright replaced the fan midplane to accommodate 120mm fans, but I'm just not that skilled or adventuresome.
  • Placed the Norco a bit behind the A/V stand.
  • Cranked up the receiver volume.

With all seven fans, the thing is definitely like a constant Saturn V liftoff. With the three removed, it's bearable once the other two steps are implemented.

I was really disappointed that not even wireless N has the bandwidth to stream HD content, but that was my fault for having such an expectation. And besides, if I can get the thing even 50% quieter than it is now, there's really no point for it to go anywhere else but the living room.
 
Is anyone else with the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards having stability issues with 8 drives connected in WHS?

My setup is:
1. MSI K9N Platinum AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
2. Norco 4020
3. 2 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards installed, 1 in the PCI-E x16 slot, the other in the secondary PCI-E x16 slot (which I believe is limited to x1 but should work either way)
4. In the first and second row of drives (connected to the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 in the primary PCI-E x16 slot) I have 4 Seagate 1.5TB drives and 2 Western Digital 1TB 'Green' drives

The issue arises when I attempt to insert 2 more WD 1TB green drives into the last two hot swap bays on row 2 (the last two available spots on the first controller). If I am logged into WHS when I attempt to do this I can see both drives appear in the WHS console briefly and then the entire console locks up and the server becomes completely unstable, forcing me generally to hard reboot it. The server then POSTS normally and the SuperMicro controller detects ALL the drives correctly (including the 2 new additional drives). However, after the controller drive detection the WHS boot screen never shows up, it just stays at a black screen until the server is rebooted the 2 1TB WD drives are removed from the hot swap drive bays. Installing two 1TB WD drives in the next 'row' of hot swap drive bays (ie connecting them to the other Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8) allows the drives to work properly and does not cause any stability issues within WHS.

Based on these symptoms any ideas about what to try next or do I just have a bad card?
 
try putting all 8 on the other card. if it works then you just got a bad card.
 
nitrobass24 said:
try putting all 8 on the other card. if it works then you just got a bad card.
Click to expand...

Based on my limited knowledge of WHS (only a couple of weeks) as long as I move the drives to the other controller while the machine is powered off WHS shouldn't have any issues with this, should it? I assume it won't think these are 'different' drives if they get moved to another controller. I don't want to lose any data on the 6 drives I have in there currently :).
 
pirivan said:
Is anyone else with the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards having stability issues with 8 drives connected in WHS?

My setup is:
1. MSI K9N Platinum AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
2. Norco 4020
3. 2 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards installed, 1 in the PCI-E x16 slot, the other in the secondary PCI-E x16 slot (which I believe is limited to x1 but should work either way)
4. In the first and second row of drives (connected to the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 in the primary PCI-E x16 slot) I have 4 Seagate 1.5TB drives and 2 Western Digital 1TB 'Green' drives

The issue arises when I attempt to insert 2 more WD 1TB green drives into the last two hot swap bays on row 2 (the last two available spots on the first controller). If I am logged into WHS when I attempt to do this I can see both drives appear in the WHS console briefly and then the entire console locks up and the server becomes completely unstable, forcing me generally to hard reboot it. The server then POSTS normally and the SuperMicro controller detects ALL the drives correctly (including the 2 new additional drives). However, after the controller drive detection the WHS boot screen never shows up, it just stays at a black screen until the server is rebooted the 2 1TB WD drives are removed from the hot swap drive bays. Installing two 1TB WD drives in the next 'row' of hot swap drive bays (ie connecting them to the other Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8) allows the drives to work properly and does not cause any stability issues within WHS.

Based on these symptoms any ideas about what to try next or do I just have a bad card?
Click to expand...


Sounds like a bad controller. Lets hope!!! :eek:
 
pirivan said:
Based on my limited knowledge of WHS (only a couple of weeks) as long as I move the drives to the other controller while the machine is powered off WHS shouldn't have any issues with this, should it? I assume it won't think these are 'different' drives if they get moved to another controller. I don't want to lose any data on the 6 drives I have in there currently :).
Click to expand...

Yea power down.
move the drives to the other card
Turn it on.
 
Ockie said:
Sounds like a bad controller. Lets hope!!! :eek:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also sent an e-mail about it to SuperMicro support so we shall see what they say about it, though I am not sure I expect to hear a reply.

The good news is that I have two of the cards and only 8 drives I currently want to put into the 4020, so if it turns out moving them to the secondary card allows me to access all 8 with no issues, I will move it into the primary PCI-E x16 slot and can RMA the 'bad' card. Though it does seem a bit odd to me that it would work fine with 6 drives but not with 8 connected if it truly is a malfunctioning card.

I will try swapping them around as soon as I get home from work!
 
pirivan said:
Based on my limited knowledge of WHS (only a couple of weeks) as long as I move the drives to the other controller while the machine is powered off WHS shouldn't have any issues with this, should it? I assume it won't think these are 'different' drives if they get moved to another controller. I don't want to lose any data on the 6 drives I have in there currently :).
Click to expand...
Yeah, I actually had an esata port go bad and I just plugged the drive into a USB port and WHS picked it right up without any problems.
 
Update:

I took all 8 drives and moved them to the "3rd and 4th" rows of the Norco 4020 (if you are counting with 1 starting at the top). This way they are all completely out of the 1st and 2nd portion of the backplane (now on the 3rd and 4th) AND they are now on the totally separate controller. Same exact symptoms; all the drives are detected properly when the controller posts and then after that completes it goes to a black screen instead of showing the WHS boot screen.

I was able to get the system to boot with 6 drives on the secondary controller though it did sit at the black screen for 5 minutes or so before it displays the WHS loading screen. It exhibits the same issue when on the original controller; it sits at the black screen for 5 minutes or so before showing the WHS loading screen. I am still only able to get the 7th and 8th disks to be accessible in WHS by putting them in the hot swap drive bays on another controller while WHS is running. If I have 8 drives installed in the drive bays (while booting) the server hangs at the black screen. When it boots normally it takes 3-4 minutes, (seems like a long time to me) so I am not sure how long I should wait now to see if it's responsive when booting with 8 drives, 6 on one controller 2 on the other. It appears that I can only have 8 drives installed under the following conditions:

1. WHS is fully booted
2. The last 2 drives are installed on a separate controller from the first 6

I am starting to wonder if this is some sort of WHS issue or controller driver issue and not a controller hardware malfunctioning issue. Partially based on the fact that the controller configuration utility you can access during POST sees the drives without any issues but afterward it just sits at the black screen for 5 minutes before showing the WHS loading screen. You can press ctrl + alt + delete at the black screen to reboot the server, which leads me to believe it is not hard locked but it doesn't appear to be doing anything. This may be unrelated but I should also note that when I attempt to shut the server down from within WHS, it restarts instead of shutting down.
 
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The more I think about it the more I am wondering if this is somehow something to do with the rest of my setup and not the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller cards themselves. Basically how I have the Norco 4020 setup is, top two rows of the backplane connected to the first AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card sitting in a PCI-E x16 slot. Third and fourth rows of the backplane connected to the second AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card sitting in a PCI-E x16 slot which is limited to PCI-E x1. The final row of the backplane is connected to 4 available ports on my MSI K9N Platinum AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 Ultra MCP ATX AMD Motherboard.

From what I can tell WHS becomes nonbootable with 8 drives connected no matter the configuration. From boot I have had 6 drives on the first controller and the final 2 on either the secondary controller OR the final 2 on the motherboard controller. Either way from boot the system finishes the controller boot screen and then goes to black. Now, I haven't tried swapping drives all over the place yet (4 on one controller, 2 on another, 2 on another) to see if I can get the server to be bootable with 8 total. However, I feel like that is defeating the purpose. Even if I got that to work, I want to be able to use ALL available drive bays on the server.

So, to recap, so far the ONLY way I have been able to operate the server with 8 drives installed in the following conditions:

1. Startup WHS with only 6 drives installed in the hot swap drive bays (none of this is counting the 1 OS drive internally). It will sit at a black screen for 3-4 minutes before showing the WHS loading screen.
2. Insert 2 additional hard drives connected to a SEPARATE CONTROLLER from the other 6 after WHS has fully booted. If these are placed on the same controller as the other 6 the server becomes unresponsive and has to be hard rebooted.
3. The 2 additional drives appear to function fine while on the other controller but if the server is rebooted the controllers detect all the drives fine and then it hangs at a black screen prior to the WHS loading screen
4. It is also worth noting that it appears the server is not 'hard locked' at this point, the monitor does not go to sleep, it acts as if it should be displaying something and is a 'bright black' not the "It's turned off" black. You can also press ctrl + alt + delete at this point and reboot it so it is responding to keyboard presses

At this point I am running out of ideas. This afternoon I am going to try booting into WHS, inserting 2 drives on another controller and then 'add' them to WHS so that they are formatted as backup drives so that they aren't added to the storage pool; I don't want any data placed on them (they are currently full of data that I already migrated over to other drives in the server). We shall see if the server is bootable after I do this.

I have a ticket in with supermicro but I don't believe they will be able to help me for two reasons. A) All the drives are correctly detected in the controller configuration prior to WHS loading, almost leading me to think this is a WHS software issue B) Their English language skills didn't appear to be top-notch which leads me to wonder how easily they will understand my support ticket. Hopefully they will simply provide me with a different/newer driver or controller BIOS but I have a feeling it won't be that simple. I'm contemplating spending the $80 and opening a support ticket with Microsoft but I am not sure how helpful that will be either. I am wondering if there is some issue with my WHS setup anyhow as it takes sitting 3-4 minutes at a black screen before it shows the WHS loading screen even with just the 6 drives installed; this doesn't seem normal either.

If anyone else has any suggestions I'm open to hearing them. Does anyone else have 8 drives connected using these new controllers? Before all of these issues I also installed an NVIDIA motherboard utility to enable teaming, I may try to uninstall that but I think that's a stretch. I have a PCI-E x1 card in the system was well with 2 e-sata ports. I've tried physically removing that but it didn't appear to make any difference. If I come up with any bright ideas I'll update here.
 
Well, even if it's a WHS issue and this controller this is not a good thing for many of us. Lets hope it's isolated to your system only and not a SM or MS issue.
 
Do you have data on these drives?

If not I would reinstall with the system drive on the Mobo's Sata ports and the rest on the SM.
Also remove the second SM from the x1 slot, temporarily to see if that has any effect.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Do you have data on these drives?

If not I would reinstall with the system drive on the Mobo's Sata ports and the rest on the SM.
Also remove the second SM from the x1 slot, temporarily to see if that has any effect.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, yes I do have data spread across 4 of the 1.5TB drives and 2 of the 1TB drives. I had just finished migrating all my data over to WHS and was going to install the last two drives when I ran into the issue. Which makes things tricky to reinstall as I want to make sure to preserve my data.

Side note, the OS is installed on a 640GB drive connected to one of the motherboards SATA ports. The motherboard has 6 SATA ports. 4 are connected to the 5th row the backplane, 1 is connected directly to the OS drive, the other is connected directly to a CDRW/DVD drive.

I will try to remove the secondary SM controller and see if it has any effect.
 
If the SM card bios correctly detects all the drives then this sounds like a driver issue to me. Honestly that doesn't surprise me considering that these cards are so new. Maybe the drivers are a little premature?
 
Well I tried several solutions today to no avail. I tried:

  1. Rolling back the NVIDIA drivers to the original version, pre update; still not able to have 8 drives connected
  2. Uninstalled the NVIDIA Teaming utility; no change
  3. Attempted booting with 8 drives connected without the secondary SM in the x1 slot; no change
  4. Booted into WHS with 6 drives connected, inserted an additional 2 drives (the additional 2 drives connected to another controller), formatted them as backup drives and then rebooted. It hung on the reboot at the black screen, even though the drives were operable from within the OS after I connected them while the OS was booted

Now I am REALLY running out of ideas. Barring a driver update provided from SuperMicro (not likely) I am looking at:

1. Trying to reinstall WHS without losing any of the data on my drives
2. Start a Microsoft WHS support call
3. Start migrating all my data off of the WHS slowly and move to a server 2003, server 2008 platform etc (maybe use DFS?) Or I suppose I could consider Open NAS etc if I could find Linux drivers
 
If you want to keep WHS, you could probably find somebody willing to buy your SASLP cards and then you could get a pair of SAT2 cards. They work fine in WHS with 8 drives.
 
Well, in case anyone is interested I thought I might update this thread just a bit. It has been a long couple of days working on this and I haven't been taking notes so I will do my best to summarize my findings (I have forgotten all that I have tried by now anyhow). Basically, I think that a user on another forum was on to the right train of thought here. I think there IS some sort of IRQ/PCI/motherboard ROM resource/other motherboard related issue going on. I can't seem to get it to behave consistently while posting. Through numerous CMOS resets, disabling items in the BIOS, removing and reinserting PCI video cards I have seen a variety of POST errors and I can only RARELY get it to POST properly with 8 drives (as long as 2 are on a secondary controller).

Based on the advice of another forum user I've experimented a bit with disabling PCI-E Spread Spectrum and SATA Spread Spectrum. I can think of at least one time where after I disabled these, with 8 drives inserted (6 on one controller 2 on another) it rapid booted no problem. Excitedly I shut it down and placed them all on 1 controller; still no luck.

Also I've seen a few times (based on resetting the CMOS usually):

No enough space to copy PCI option rom [05:00:00]”
“No enough space to copy PCI option rom [04:00:00]”
And some error about wanting to load CMOS failsafe defaults and that there is no floppy drive

Occasionally I have seen some graphical errors when attempting to boot and I have a feeling that the PCI video card is causing some of these issues, unfortunately if I remove it the machine doesn't boot. My guess is that it is sitting at a POST screen with some error that says "Press F1" or F11 to continue. I've also tried moving the PCI video card around to various PCI slots to no avail. I've put a solid 10 hours or so into this problem over the last few days and no matter what I can't get it to work with 8 drives consistently. Also, even when it DOES boot properly with 6 inserted it still hangs on the black screen before booting into WHS for FAR too long.

On another forum a user had this insight, which I believe does directly relate to my issue, but I was unable to move cards around to make this solution work for me:

I had a very similar symptom but with, of course, a completely different system. I had two Sil3114 PCI Sata cards and the more drives I added to them the longer and longer it sat on the black screen until finally it around 6 or 7, it would never boot at all. I also had an PCI 4 port IDE card (sil0680a) I only had 4 PCI slots, so I had them lined up sil3144, sil3144, sil0680a, empty.

I think there was some sort of channel interference, because when I lined them up, sil3144, sil0680a, sil3144, empty - it recognized all drives quickly and proceeded to a rapid boot.

This may or may not be your issue, but the symptoms were so similar, I thought I'd share my experience.
Click to expand...

So, like any true American consumer I've given up and have decided to throw some money into the issue. I ordered a replacement motherboard and CPU from newegg instead. This time with several features to combat possible issues:

1. The motherboard has onboard graphics, so no need to use the PCI graphics card
2. The motherboard has 3 x PCI Express x16 (dual x16 or triple x8), instead of 1 PCI-E x16 slot and another PCI-E x16 that runs at x1. At first I was only interested in TWO PCI-E x16 slots but I decided that there was a potential that using my onboard SATA ports was also contributing to the issue. So, this way, with 3 slots, if I need to migrate away from the onboard SATA ports I can buy a third AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card and place an additional 4 drives on it. So that ALL of the 20 hard drives are off the motherboard controller. Heck, I could place the boot disk on controller as well and fully disbale the motherboard ports
4. The CPU I ordered is a 45W AMD dual core CPU. Hopefully, this might reduce any power issues I might be encountering. However. the PSU is a 850W Corsair, so in all honestly I doubt this is poart of the issue.

Hopefully I will be able to migrate to the new motherboard and CPU without requiring a WHS reinstall. I have been able to do this in the past (as in 2 weeks ago) with both a Windows XP and Windows Vista system.

The CPU and motherboard I ordered are:

ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe/HDMI AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor


It was incredibly difficult to find an AMD AM2/AM2+ motherboard that was:

1. A decent price
2. Had 3 or 4 PCI-E slots
3. 6 SATA ports
4. Onboard video
5. Potentially dual NIC's (I gave up on this)

I considered Foxconn Destroyer AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI ATX AMD Motherboard for quite a while but ultimately I decided that I didn't like that it had 2 motherboard ports that REQUIRED you to use AHCI to use them. I liked that it had quad PCI-E and Dual NIC's but I thought I might run into some issues in the future if I had SATA ports that required the use of AHCI. I wasn't sure but at this point I felt like this motherboard and the one I chose were fairly equivalent anyhow. I also looked at a few options from both MSI and DFI that had all the features I wanted but lacked onboard video. Due to all the issues I had had with the PCI video card (potentially) I decided this was a deal breaker for me and looked at other options.

I wasn't thrilled with either Foxxcon OR ASUS's support and RMA track record but I couldn't find many better options. As I said before, it was incredibly hard finding a motherboard that had all these features (at least 3 PCI-E ports really narrowed the selection but I REALLY wanted the option to have a 3rd AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller if it turns out the onboard SATA ports are an issue).
 
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I don't think this will help you but...

"No enough space to copy PCI option rom [05:00:00]”
“No enough space to copy PCI option rom [04:00:00]”
And some error about wanting to load CMOS failsafe defaults and that there is no floppy drive"

OptionROM errors mean that those 2 devices are not going to be able to load their firmware... not necessarily a big deal unless they're needed to boot. Once the OS loads drivers will get loaded to configure everything. During boot is only time option rom is needed.

Usually if OS boots you can ignore any option rom errors. Since you sometimes have issue getting WHS to boot... I wouldn't totally ignore them. If you're not booting off the SM cards you have no reason to load their firmwares, you might check the firmware on them to see if they have an option to disable em'. Desktop board probably won't let you disable specific slots from being scanned. You might try calling up SM and asking if they have any alternate firmware you can flash to the card to-- some companies do-- or if the card supports some type of software raid ask SM if they have non raid firmware you can load as it'll take up less option rom space. Really though I sorta doubt this is the cause of your problems.

Also if you want to rule out power, even though as you say 850w should be fine, you should be able to get your working setup going and then add any additional drives but unhook the data cables that would connect them to a controller. If things still work fine very unlikely its power. If an issue shows up you'll know its power. Really doubtful its power tho.
 
pirivan said:
No enough space to copy PCI option rom [05:00:00]”
“No enough space to copy PCI option rom [04:00:00]”
Click to expand...

I've seen this same type of error with crappy Intel boards and RAID card OPROMs. It was fixable by trying different BIOS revisions til I found one that worked (three different occasions). It's worth noting that all the cards functioned properly, but you couldn't access the RAID BIOS. Take it for what it's worth.
 
Did anything ever get figured out with this thing?
Is it bad drivers or just something to do with your configuration?

Im about to order one so Id like to know.
 
No, I never figured out exactly what is going on with it. I think it's some bizarre BIOS/motherboard/IRQ issue and I basically stopped working on the issue once I ordered the new motherboard and CPU and am focusing on making sure I know how to do a WHS reinstall without losing data (I am hoping I can slide the new CPU and mobo in without even needing to do a reinstall). I should receive the new parts on Thursday. I am a little concerned with the new motherboard because After very carefully reading the PDF manual of the motherboard I chose it turns out that it as well has two ports on it that utilize AHCI mode and can't run in IDE (only 4 of the SATA ports can run in IDE mode). As I installed WHS originally using IDE mode I am going to have to place the OS drive on the IDE mode SATA ports along with the CD/DVDRW drive. That means that 2 ports connected to the backplane will then be inIDE mode, 2 in AHCI. I am not sure how WHS will handle this if I plug a drive into a hot swap bay on the backplane that is in AHCI mode while some are running in IDE mode. I assume that as long as I supply WHS with some AHCI drivers it will be able to interact with the drive without any issues (being as it isn't an OS/boot drive anyhow)?

Anyhow, if the new motherboard and CPU combination don't resolve the issue my secondary plan is to move the OS drive onto the controllers and shut off motherboard SATA ports completely. If this is the fix, I will simply order another SuperMicro controller. Beyond that, if THAT doesn't resolve it I will have to look into if it is some sort of power issue. I know I could have put more time into investigating a PSU issue but in my opinion it seems a bit far fetched based on the symptoms. If it were a PSU issue I feel like it would have problems when the controllers were spinning up the drives. Also, it seems like I wouldn't be able to add in 2 additional drives while the server was running (on a separate controller card) without running into problems if this was a power related issue. Plus, an 850W PSU with 90A on a single 12V rail (as I understand it) should be able to handle 8 drives without any issues.
 
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pirivan, ever give this a shot under OpenSolaris/BSD? Manual says it has XP/Vista/2k3/2k8 drivers + Linux drivers, but no explicit mention of anything else. I'm looking at this card or its predecessor PCI-X model, which is support under BSD, but that will drive costs up (PCI-X'd mobo, etc).
 
I guess in the meantime I will steer clear from these controllers. :(
 
@movax

No I haven't used them under BS/OpenSolaris. Given the issues I have had with WHS I am simply too nervous to dip my foot into the Linux/Unix world with a server that contains all of my almost irreplaceable data. If I had more confidence in my abilities to troubleshoot nix issues I probably would have gone that route but my skill set lies in Windows administration. Anyhow, the older version of these cards, the PCI-X version has known support in the Linux/Unix and I am almost positive Open Solaris world. As for the new PCI-E version my guess is that you'd have to do some config file editing on certain distros :).

@Ockie

New motherboard and CPU arrive on Thursday. I will let you know the results.

Just to update the thread, my new plan is to try to do a complete WHS rebuild using all the onboard SATA ports in AHCI mode on the new motherboard. I was going to do a simple reinstallation but long story short I found out that, much to my dismay, on the motherboard I ordered 2 of the SATA ports ONLY operate in AHCI mode (meaning I couldn't connect the bottom 4 backplane ports with only 4 SATA ports to use). So I am going to migrate all my data/drives back to the eSATA encolsures and reinstall WHS with just the disc drive and OS drive in AHCI mode, then migrate drives and data back. Sadly, it looks like the simplest option is going to be using the old horrible method of supplying the AHCI drivers via a floppy during WHS setup; yuck. The hardest part looks like it will be making sure I copy the proper AHCI drivers for the 780a chipset to the floppy.
 
@pirivan nlite is all that is good in this world when it comes to slipping those drivers onto your install disk. I don't know how/if it would work for WHS though
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/20476af1-c25a-475a-a468-f024df23fed2/
believe me, if you haven't used nlite before it might be a bit daunting, but it is really a lot simpler than it appears. As long as you stick to the basics and only try and slipstream your AHCI drivers.

I don't know why you couldn't run your OS on the IDE ports and everything else on AHCI mode as long as the board has two separate SATA chips setting the modes separately should be a non-issue. Your OS will NOT transfer from IDE mode-drive to AHCI mode drive if it wasn't installed that way (i learned that the hard way the other day when playing with my chipset settings, borked the hal.dll just trying to boot the thing when i forgot to turn them back -.-)
 
The_Engineer said:
@pirivan nlite is all that is good in this world when it comes to slipping those drivers onto your install disk. I don't know how/if it would work for WHS though
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/20476af1-c25a-475a-a468-f024df23fed2/
believe me, if you haven't used nlite before it might be a bit daunting, but it is really a lot simpler than it appears. As long as you stick to the basics and only try and slipstream your AHCI drivers.

I don't know why you couldn't run your OS on the IDE ports and everything else on AHCI mode as long as the board has two separate SATA chips setting the modes separately should be a non-issue. Your OS will NOT transfer from IDE mode-drive to AHCI mode drive if it wasn't installed that way (i learned that the hard way the other day when playing with my chipset settings, borked the hal.dll just trying to boot the thing when i forgot to turn them back -.-)
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Yeah I believe you can use nLite to do it and as you mentioned I WAS a bit daunted by it :). I certainly could figure it out, I just felt like it was just one more 'project' I didn't want to investigate at the moment. Luckily ASUS had a downloadable utility that 'creates' two floppy driver disks for you, which seemed pretty simple.

To address your second point, I don't think I explained properly previously. Sadly, it looks like this motherboard (and the other I looked at) don't have two different SATA controllers. They simply have one SATA controller for all 6 ports BUT ports 1-4 can operate in IDE mode OR AHCI mode where as ports 5-6 ONLY operate in AHCI mode. So, based on what I can garner from the manual it's either you A) Use IDE mode and can thus ONLY use ports 1-4 or B) Use AHCI mode and be able to use all ports (albeit in AHCI mode).

I plan to use the following instructions to install AHCI drivers using a USB floppy I saw on the wegoserved forums (hopefully it won't be any different as my driver requires the use of 2 floppy disks):

1) Go to your bios
2) If you are using a USB floppy ensure you turn off the floppy drive A set to disable
3) If you are using an internal floppy don’t do item 2
4) Now change the bois so it looks at AHCI driver
5) Plug the USB floppy in if you are using it
6) Save your bois changes
7) Reboot your computer
8) Now install WHS
9) When you come to the screen WHS load driver , load the correct driver
10) At a time your computer will reboot
11) When your computer reboots get ready to press F6 ( this will be at windows 2003 blue screen)
12) If you miss item 11 start again
13) It will now ask you to load the driver this will be the same driver as before
14) Load drivers
15) Continue loading WHS
16) Sit back until finished
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Based on the suggestion of a user from another forum who has the same AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller cards and encountered a similiar issue he suggested that I disable INT13H in the controller card BIOS. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that works for this issue. I was very excited when I read the post and went to try it right away. However, even after disabling INT13H on both AOC-SASLP-MV8 controllers it still boots to a black screen. Though, it did, slightly, fix another issue. That other issue being that when I have both controllers in and the server filled with 8 drives on the first controller, I can't select my 640GB hard drive as a bootable drive option. The BIOS boot drive select screen only lists the 8 hard drives on the first controller; none of the onboard ports as selectable boot devices. When I disabled INT 13h I was able to select hard drives connected to the motherboard as boot devices without any of the drives on the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller showing up as bootable devices in the motherboard BIOS. However, even this small fix doesn't appear to be completely repeatable. Sometimes, disabling INT13H still doesn't allow me to select my 640GB drive as a bootable device. It prevents listing the AOC-SASLP-MV8 primary controller devices as bootable but then only lists SOME of the drives connected to the onboard ports, not the 640GB drive.

I should also note that I did get the new motherboard I linked above installed and WHS reinstalled with the SATA ports set to AHCI (I slipstreamed the AHCI drivers onto a flash drive to do the WHS install):

ASUS M3N-HT Deluxe/HDMI AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

However, of course this did not resolve the issue it just changed what the issue is slightly. Here are the differences between the issue now and when I had the previous motherboard:

1. It now shows the WHS loading splash screen and then boots to black, with the prior motherboard it would simply go to black after posting without showing the WHS loading screen
2. The controllers detect drives much quicker, it used to be that there would be 4-5 .... periods before it moved to detecting the next drivem now there is only 1
3. When WHS is booted (only workable when I have only 4-6 drives inserted) the machine obeys shut down commands normally; on the previous motherboard if you told it to shut down it would reboot
4. I was able to get the machine to boot into WHS ONCE with 6 drives on the first controller, 3 on the onboad ports (not counting the OS drive also on onboard) AFTER I DISABLED SATA SPREAD SPECTRUM. However, I am unable to replicate this. Currently even with 6 on the primary, 3 on the secondary, sata spread spectrum disabled it still doesn't seem to work.

I've tried many different combinations of things at this point. I've tried moving around the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controllers to different PCI-E slots, I tried disabling all the onboard SATA ports and moving the boot drive to the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller (this made it easier to select the OS drive as a bootable device), various settings with INT13H disabled, various settings with PCI-E spread spectrum enabled and disabled, various settings with SATA spread sprectrum enabled or disabled. I've tried a variety of settings with only just one controller card installed. The net result seems to be that no matter what now it shows the WHS loading splash screen and then goes to a black screen as long as there is 8 or more drives installed. I have to imagine there is some secret combination of motherboard BIOS settings that will allow this to work, I just can't seem to find it. It may be that I have to do something with setting IRQ's but I wouldn't have the foggiest idea of how to start with that.

I have to say I am just a tad more than slightly agitated at this point; it's difficult when it doesn't SEEM to follow any pattern. I may try to reinstall the OS with INT13H disabled on both controllers and if that doesn't work try another OS reinstall with the boot drive connected to the controllers and the motherboard ports disabled (I will probably have to slipstream AOC-SASLP-MV8 drives into the WHS install if I do this).
 
I decided to reinstall WHS again and take a few notes this time.

BIOS Setup Prior to OS Installation:

1. Basically disabled anything I don't use (audio, HDMI, COM ports, serial ports, IDE drives etc)
2. Set SATA devices to AHCI mode
3. SATA spread spectrum and PCI-E Spread Spectrum are both set to disabled
4. In the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card BIOS BOTH card are set to have int13h disabled
5. In the motherboard BIOS (with int13h disabled on the controller cards) on the list to select bootable hard drive priorities ONLY the hard drives connected to the internal SATA controller are listed as options and I correctly placed the 640GB drive at the top of the list

Reinstalled WHS

1. Reinstalled WHS via a flash drive that has AHCI drivers for my motherboard SATA ports slipstreamed in
2. While the install was taking place there were 7 disks on the primary AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card and 4 drives connected to the onboard SATA ports in hot swap drive bays, with an internal SATA drive (640GB OS drive) and SATA DVD-RW drive connected as well
3. The installer correctly used the 640GB drive as the installation drive, even though it didn't really noticably let me specify
4. After the installation finished the server booted without any issues
5. All drives on the motherboard SATA controller ports show up in the OS

Driver Installation

1. Installed NVIDIA motherboard drivers, boots without any issues
2. Installed drivers for the primary AOC-SASLP-MV8 card (drivers from the Super Micro disc) by manually pointing the driver installation wizard to the .inf location . After this driver is installed Windows pops up with a notification that it wants to install a 'Marvell RAID virtual device' which I clicked OK to. If you try to manually point the 'Marvell RAID virtual device' installation to the inf file from the supermicro disc it says "access is denied" and won't install. If you let it install 'automatically' it appears to install properly.
3. After this driver installation was done I was able to see the 7 disks on the primary AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card in disk management and was able to briefly see them in the WHS console. Afterwards the entire machine locks up. I am able to press control alt delete and try to force a restart but the machine never responds and eventually I have to just manually press the reboot key.
4. After this the machine boots to a black screen after showing the WHS loading splash screen. You cannot press ctrl alt delete at this screen to start the post/boot process again, you have to manully press the restart button
5. Rebooting the server and pressing F8 to select last known good configuration allows WHS to boot again and as you can imagine it uninstalls the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card driver

To me this all points to a driver issue. What driver is anyone else with these cards using and how did you install it? The only driver I have is the one that came on the SM disc, version 3.1.0.17 and I am selecting the i386 driver, not the amd64 of course. I can't seem to find any other drivers for that card online either.

I am going to play with the driver installation some more and see if there is any way to get it to work under WHS; obviously it looks like it is working for some people. Barring that as a troubleshooting method all I can think of to do is:

1. Try to slipstream the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller card driver into my WHS installation like I did with the motherboard SATA AHCI driver and see if the OS is bootable afterwards
2. Try to install Vista, XP or Server 2008 onto the server and see if I the OS is operable with the controller card drivers installed and multiple drives connected. I would PREFER not to do this because then I would have to again slipstream AHCI drivers again. Chances are if I did this I would use Vista.
3. Install some other OS like FreeNas etc to see if the Linux drivers that SuperMicro provides work from there.
4. Contact SuperMicro again (I have a week or so ago already) and check again to see if there is another driver to use or a different method to install the driver
 
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That's not what the website said last week. Very sure it was out of stock the whole of last week.
 
@pirivan

Im afraid you have some unlucky hardware mobo-card-hdd combination, since here I have just tried hooking up 8 drives on saslp-mv8 card and no problems, have restarted a few times, copied a few gigs of data onto server without a hickup..

im ruining this on asus p5bv/sas mobo with 2× sat2-mv8 and 1× saslp-mv8 card
 
JonTa said:
@pirivan

Im afraid you have some unlucky hardware mobo-card-hdd combination, since here I have just tried hooking up 8 drives on saslp-mv8 card and no problems, have restarted a few times, copied a few gigs of data onto server without a hickup..

im ruining this on asus p5bv/sas mobo with 2× sat2-mv8 and 1× saslp-mv8 card
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That's what I needed to hear. I have that exact mobo in my WHS box.
 
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