What sata controllers are you guys using with Open Indiana/Solaris?

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swalker08

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I am trying to find a 4 port sata controller that will work good with Open Indiana. I currently own the following:

Syba PCI Express SATA II 4 x Ports RAID Controller Card SY-PEX40008

It worked to install Open Indiana but locks up during boot. I would like to know what pci-e cards you guys are using that work well with OI. I can get Freenas to install and work perfectly using the above card, but see some performance issues that i don't like.

My hardware:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ Windsor 2.4GHz Socket AM2 89W Dual-Core Processor ADA4600CUBOX

ASUS M2N AM2 NVIDIA nForce 430 MCP ATX AMD Motherboard

2 x A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model AD2U800B1G5-DRH

MSI NX7300LE-TD256EH GeForce 7300LE 256MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card

Syba PCI Express SATA II 4 x Ports RAID Controller Card SY-PEX40008

8x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

1X Seagate 80 GB Ide hard drive (for OS)

1 x LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model GH22NP20

Any help will be appreciated.
 
Based on what I have read on here, I am using an intel SASUC8i that I bought from the egg. It works flawlessly so far, but I'm only about 3 weeks in to this build. It will support up to 8 drives. You need one of the 4 port SATA breakout cables for each of the two ports. I bought those as well from the egg. It was $150, but it performs quite well, even fully loaded with 8 drives. I know you specified wanting a 4-port card, not an 8, but it will do the job quite well.

I believe the SASUC8i is a PCIe 8x card. I have it in one of the two PCIe 8x slots on an ASUS P5Q Pro. I have a normal PCI graphics card in one of the other slots, with the plan to eventually add a second SASUC8i in the other PCIe 8x slot. I didn't want to waste a PCIe slot on video I will never use.

If you read up on that card, you may see lots of stuff about having to flash the BIOS on the card. I did not have to do any flashing of the card's BIOS, but if you did, then you could find instructions on here.
 
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IBM ServerRaid1015, flashed to LSI 9240-8i firmware. Works perfectly on Solaris 11 Express.
 
jedigeorge said:
Based on what I have read on here, I am using an intel SASUC8i that I bought from the egg. It works flawlessly so far, but I'm only about 3 weeks in to this build. It will support up to 8 drives. You need one of the 4 port SATA breakout cables for each of the two ports. I bought those as well from the egg. It was $150, but it performs quite well, even fully loaded with 8 drives. I know you specified wanting a 4-port card, not an 8, but it will do the job quite well.

I believe the SASUC8i is a PCIe 8x card. I have it in one of the two PCIe 8x slots on an ASUS P5Q Pro. I have a normal PCI graphics card in one of the other slots, with the plan to eventually add a second SASUC8i in the other PCIe 8x slot. I didn't want to waste a PCIe slot on video I will never use.

If you read up on that card, you may see lots of stuff about having to flash the BIOS on the card. I did not have to do any flashing of the card's BIOS, but if you did, then you could find instructions on here.
Click to expand...
This card uses LSI2008 chip, and that one is good. Many Solaris people use this SASUC8i card. But the Intel version is expensive, look for another 8 sata port LSI2008 card.
 
It is important to flash a hw raid card, to get rid of raid functionality. ZFS needs the card to be JBOD mode, HBA. raid bios can hinder ZFS to protect the data. Read the wikipedia article on ZFS, for more info.
 
brutalizer said:
It is important to flash a hw raid card, to get rid of raid functionality. ZFS needs the card to be JBOD mode, HBA. raid bios can hinder ZFS to protect the data. Read the wikipedia article on ZFS, for more info.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I emailed support about the card firmware and they sent me some download information about flashing it to a non-raid based firmware. I'm going to try that and re-install OI and see if that stops it from locking up.
 
I ordered the SASUC8I and got the equivalent LSI version (forget the name) and it works flawlessly. The good thing about this card is that it by default works like a "dumb" SATA controller, so that the drives are readily available in solaris.
 
brutalizer said:
This card uses LSI2008 chip, and that one is good. Many Solaris people use this SASUC8i card. But the Intel version is expensive, look for another 8 sata port LSI2008 card.
Click to expand...
Just fyi - that card uses the older LSI1068 controller, not the LSI2008.

I would like to hear more about what IT mode does on LSI controllers that JBOD mode doesn't. Supposedly JBOD mode is "lightweight" and IT mode is "more lightweight", but I'm not sure what that means. It's a tough choice because the LSI9240 JBOD firmware was tweaked to fix SSD performance but AFAIK the LSI9211 still suffers from very poor random 4k reads/writes.
 
So you don't need to flash the SASUC8I? I thought i read online that you did. I might take a look at this card if I cant get mine to work after flashing.
 
thefreeaccount said:
Just fyi - that card uses the older LSI1068 controller, not the LSI2008.

I would like to hear more about what IT mode does on LSI controllers that JBOD mode doesn't. Supposedly JBOD mode is "lightweight" and IT mode is "more lightweight", but I'm not sure what that means. It's a tough choice because the LSI9240 JBOD firmware was tweaked to fix SSD performance but AFAIK the LSI9211 still suffers from very poor random 4k reads/writes.
Click to expand...


Its not JBOD (just a bunch of disk) vs IT-mode (Initiator-Target mode) - it is
IT- mode (native SAS) vs IR-mode (integrated Raid-mode)

That is the same like Mainbaord AHCI (native-Sata) vs Mainboard-Raid mode.
The second adds a Raid-Layer and needs separate driver.

With ZFS, you want to use native SAS/ Sata without Raid-functionality from
the controller and you want to use the native SAS controller-driver with better OS-support.

With Solaris, IR-Raid driver are often ok (Expander?, less drives possible!), but if you have
the choice, avoid Controller Raid. But you should not use Raid functionality - use JBOD mode.
(means: Do not build a Raid from controller bios)

Mostly these sort of controllers you want are called HBA (host-bus adapters)


and
LSI 2008 are currently "best to use" for ZFS
the very best is in my opinion: http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/hba/sas_sata_hbas/internal/lsisas92118i/index.html flashed to IT-mode, see http://www.servethehome.com/howto-flash-supermicro-x8si6f-lsi-sas-2008-controller-lsi-firmware/

Gea
 
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I didn't have to flash mine. I had planned to, but when I booted up from the OpenIndiana disc, it saw all the drives. I don't know whether my card had already been flashed or what. Maybe I am just using JBOD mode. I am definitely not using any hardware RAID from the card. If I hit "Ctrl-C to enter LSI configuration" it just skips on to booting the OS. I didn't have to do anything special, the drives all just showed up in OI. Hot swapping works. I should probably look into it more deeply, but it seems fine so I am not inclined to mess with it.
 
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