Building my first real storage server

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Ncage

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Dec 6, 2010
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Hey guys, i need some help. I'm in the process of building my first real storage server (well its actually going to be a combination server). Anyways i've learned a lot in the past few weeks from googling and from the anandtech forums (one guy in particular)...but unfortunately he seems awall and since i've already ordered some of the parts i'm in kind of a hurry. Anyways i will split my questions it to different threads as to not make it overbearing.

For now i will be running FreeNAS under ESXi. I currently run WHS under hyper-v which has worked fine. Maybe in the future i will want to go to ZFS under FreeNAS but probably not until FreeNAS 8 is released. I will just have a good backup strategy for redudancy. Using a combination of acronis (to replace whs backups) and crashplan to backup data on freenas

Anyways, i'm in the process of trying to pick a HBA right now. I already ordered an RPC-4220 so i need to support up to 20 drives. My motherboard (Asus P5Q Pro) has 6 SATA ports. I will use 2 of those ports for a Raid-1 of the OS partition...the remaining 4 will be used for the backplane. So i pretty much need 4 SFF-8087 ports. Being highly compatible (100% ESXi is required). A guy over at anandtech almost immediately recommended the LSI 1068E based card. Now it seems like there is no perfect options out there. These cards seem to sometimes have problems with power manangement and SMART functionatity. That being said there are a couple options here.

I looked at the supermicro cards but they seem to only be UIO which means they wouldn't be compatible with my case :(. There also is this card:
http://www.scsi4me.com/ibm-serveraid-br10i-8-port-pci-express-sas-raid-controller.html
The price is tempting. I emailed them and they told me it is compatible with an ATX case but i don't know. I have a hard time believing it. Low profile md2 adaptor?

Then there is the Intel SASUC8I. Its ATX but its priced about $40 more per card. Should i just don't bother with the headache and get the intel card?

I see a lot of people flashing the intel card to the LSI firmware? Why? I looked on LSI site & intel site and actually intels firmware revision was newer. What advatanges does it offer?

So guys what should i do here? Or should i not go with a 1068e based card? I also looked at a LSI 2008 based card but i don't see any ESXi support.

thanks for your help,
Ncage
 
You can modify the UIO cards to work with regular ATX setups.
 
They are just PCIe ports with the bracket in the wrong side. I believe have to use longer screws and spacers to get the bracket to work.
 
drescherjm said:
They are just PCIe ports with the bracket in the wrong side. I believe have to use longer screws and spacers to get the bracket to work.
Click to expand...

Where woudl be a good place to get these longer screws & brackets?
 
Ncage said:
I see a lot of people flashing the intel card to the LSI firmware? Why? I looked on LSI site & intel site and actually intels firmware revision was newer. What advatanges does it offer?

So guys what should i do here? Or should i not go with a 1068e based card? I also looked at a LSI 2008 based card but i don't see any ESXi support.
Click to expand...

LSI IT firmware basically allows pass-through of disks to OS. (also in ESXi you'll want to pass-through the controller).

As for SAS 2008 compatibility, see http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?device_cat=io&device_id=13971

The 9211-8i = SAS 2008 based.

For screws and spacers, I like to use Home Depot, Ace, or a local hardware shop.
 
I've just recently embarked on the same endevour. I've ordered the Norco RPC-4224 (24 bay) case and an LSI 9211-8i (http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/hba/sas_sata_hbas/internal/lsisas92118i/index.html). I chose this card for 2 reasons:

1) wide support for Solaris, Linux, BSD, Windows
2) 6GB/s - it'll last me a while :)

Initially, I'll be connecting the card to 2 of the backplanes (total of 6), giving me 8 disks to play with. This should be enough for now (8 disk raidz2 using 2TB drives). Later on I'm going to connect this card to an HP SAS expander and let the expander connect to all the Norco backplanes. As I'll be using ZFS in this configuration, I did not want a RAID card, just a straight HBA.

I know the LSI cards tend to be more expensive, and you can probably get an OEM re-badge (eg: intel or Suprmicro), however I want this system to last me at least 3 years, so I'm willing to spend more on the controller now, rather than have problems later.

The way I figure is disks are cheap, and ZFS should make up for any issues on the disk quality end (from a redundancy and resiliency point of view), so I should spend a little more on a quality HBA as it will be my main single point of failure. And even if the controller does go bad, LSI has 3 years warranty, and you'll always be able to find replacements.

My 2 cents.
 
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