Adaptec ASR 2405 possible problem?

[Spud]

Hi,

I'm building myself a new box with more storage and the motherboard doesn't have enough SATA ports.

So after going here http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.1R/hardware.html and having a read

I found that I can use this "Adaptec ASR 2405" which I already had one sitting in the cupboard.

So if I do use this card (setup as JBOD of course) and one or more drives fail that are connected to that controller is it just a matter of removing the drive in Freenas and replacing it or will the drive have to be imported back into the controller card first and then into Freenas?

The reason I'm concerned is that removing the failed drive and replacing it in the 2405 controllers ACU menu as JBOD might delete/loss data on the other 3 drives connected wouldn't it?

 

[cyberjock]

If you are having to do *any* setup of hard drives on your controller, it is NOT JBOD.

Hint: Adaptecs are NOT appropriate for FreeNAS or ZFS. Please search the forum for "Adaptec" to find all of the other information (if interested). But the short answer is that the Adaptec hardware is NOT suitable for FreeNAS or ZFS and there's not much you can do about it except get better hardware.

 

[Spud]

Right so it is a problem then...

Was looking at one of these "IBM ServeRaid M1015 46M0861 SAS/SATA" but to hard to find so now looking at a brand new one of these HighPoint Rocket 640L

Thanks for the help.

 

[danb35]

This is too hard to find?
eBay link
It's $4 more than the Highpoint you linked.

 

[cyberjock]

I also find it pretty funny you'd choose a card that has 2 versions. One works, and one doesn't. And you won't know which it is until you try it. I just did a search for "highpoint 640L" and could find info on this...

You're really not off to a good start with picking good hardware for a FreeNAS machine.

 

[Spud]

This is too hard to find?
eBay link
It's $4 more than the Highpoint you linked.

Yeah thanks for the link to the faulty card, although it is just the battery and doesn't include the necessary cables.

 

[Spud]

I also find it pretty funny you'd choose a card that has 2 versions. One works, and one doesn't. And you won't know which it is until you try it. I just did a search for "highpoint 640L" and could find info on this...

You're really not off to a good start with picking good hardware for a FreeNAS machine.

Didn't know the 640 had 2 different versions, after searching here and around the traps it looked to me like there was a problem with this card years ago and it had been fixed back at 8.2 I think. I was looking at a brand new one from Amazon but after reading this it looks like its back to the drawing board.

And as for picking good hardware well thats why one comes here to try and find answers and get help...

I have found quite a few IBM ServeRaid M1015 around the place but NONE come with cables and I have no idea which ones I would need so are any of these usable?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3ware-cbl-sff8087ocf-10m-sff-8087-to-discrete-forward-breakout-cable

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3war...ni-sas-to-sata-fanout-reverse-cable-06-meters

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3ware-cbl-sff8087ocf-06m-mini-sas-to-sata-fanout-06-meters

I'll be using WD reds again as I haven't had any problems with them.

 

[Ericloewe]

Didn't know the 640 had 2 different versions, after searching here and around the traps it looked to me like there was a problem with this card years ago and it had been fixed back at 8.2 I think. I was looking at a brand new one from Amazon but after reading this it looks like its back to the drawing board.

And as for picking good hardware well thats why one comes here to try and find answers and get help...

I have found quite a few IBM ServeRaid M1015 around the place but NONE come with cables and I have no idea which ones I would need so are any of these usable?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3ware-cbl-sff8087ocf-10m-sff-8087-to-discrete-forward-breakout-cable

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3war...ni-sas-to-sata-fanout-reverse-cable-06-meters

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3ware-cbl-sff8087ocf-06m-mini-sas-to-sata-fanout-06-meters

I'll be using WD reds again as I haven't had any problems with them.

Everyone sells cables, don't you worry about that.

The first one you listed connects an SAS plug on a controller to four SATA plugs on HDDs. That's the type you want to connect an M1015 to individual drives.

The second one is a reverse breakout cable, which connects four host-side SATA plugs to a single SAS plug on the device end. It's useful to connect motherboards which expose all SAS channels as individual SATA-style ports to a backplane which takes SFF8087.

 

[danb35]

Yeah thanks for the link to the faulty card, although it is just the battery and doesn't include the necessary cables.

My bad, I hadn't noticed that when I posted the link. There are others there as well that don't appear to be faulty, for example:
Link - $135, brand new

As @Ericloewe stated, don't worry about the cables; they're standard items you can get anywhere.

 

[Spud]

Everyone sells cables, don't you worry about that.

The first one you listed connects an SAS plug on a controller to four SATA plugs on HDDs. That's the type you want to connect an M1015 to individual drives.

The second one is a reverse breakout cable, which connects four host-side SATA plugs to a single SAS plug on the device end. It's useful to connect motherboards which expose all SAS channels as individual SATA-style ports to a backplane which takes SFF8087.

Right a bit wiser now thanks for the help!

 

[Spud]

My bad, I hadn't noticed that when I posted the link. There are others there as well that don't appear to be faulty, for example:
Link - $135, brand new

As @Ericloewe stated, don't worry about the cables; they're standard items you can get anywhere.

That card is a bit sus also when you read the fine print, say "The item may be a factory second or a new, unused item with defects." I'm still looking though thank for the help also!

 

[jgreco]

If you are having to do *any* setup of hard drives on your controller, it is NOT JBOD.

minor nit: It could well be JBOD, and if so, it is probably the stuff nightmares are made of when the controller fails and you need to replace it. RAID card manufacturers often refer to non-RAID configurations (which may still be subject to caching etc) as JBOD and - worse - the disk may have a special magic partition header on it denoting the RAID controller's configuration, which of course no regular OS using a plain SATA controller will understand. So you are hosed and have to replace that controller with another from the same manufacturer, etc. And of course then we run into the SMART monitoring issues.

Better to say: If you are having to do setup of your hard drives on your controller, it is quite possibly bad.

 

[Spud]

Better to say: If you are having to do setup of your hard drives on your controller, it is quite possibly bad.

Ok just so we're crystal clear here, if I decide to go with this IBM M5015 it pretty much acts like just another sata port on the motherboard (after cross flashing). Meaning you could easily swap a drive from the M5015 with one on the MB sata port and freenas would just pick where it left off and keep working. Not that you'd do that but in theory.

And I'm pretty sure I'll be able to use the cable I have here with the Adaptec card going on what you guys said about the cables.

 

[jgreco]

The M5015 is a RAID controller that you don't want. The M1015 is an entry-level RAID controller that can be crossflashed into being an HBA which is what you do want. You can also buy an HBA outright.

The HBA will give you 8 SAS ports, which are also able to speak SATA, and do so very competently. They're enterprise-grade SAS ports and so have a high degree of compatibility with a huge variety of applications and gear, because someone spent more than two weeks designing it and writing drivers for it, which is probably what the average Windows-certified SATA controller gets.

The ports on an LSI -8i are delivered as SFF-8087, which is fairly standard. It delivers four SAS channels per SFF-8087 and you can get a breakout cable to bring that to individual SAS (think: SATA) connectors.

Meaning you could easily swap a drive from the M5015 (M1015!!!) with one on the MB sata port and freenas would just pick where it left off and keep working. Not that you'd do that but in theory.

Yes, that's the point. It might seem like I was being pedantic above - I was - but "JBOD" on a RAID often means bad things like a proprietary partition scheme for the RAID controller's convenience. We really want you to be able to peel off a drive and put it on another port without issue. From the OS's device-oriented point of view, a disk on a SATA port is the same as a disk on a HBA port is the same as a disk on a SAS expander attached to an HBA ... and you can shuffle all of those at will (assuming SATA disk. SAS disks cannot be put on SATA ports.). This is really nice if you develop a bad controller or bad disk backplane or whatever. And then you'd do that and yes you'd do that and it is very much not just theory.

 

[cyberjock]

minor nit: It could well be JBOD, and if so, it is probably the stuff nightmares are made of when the controller fails and you need to replace it. RAID card manufacturers often refer to non-RAID configurations (which may still be subject to caching etc) as JBOD and - worse - the disk may have a special magic partition header on it denoting the RAID controller's configuration, which of course no regular OS using a plain SATA controller will understand. So you are hosed and have to replace that controller with another from the same manufacturer, etc. And of course then we run into the SMART monitoring issues.

Better to say: If you are having to do setup of your hard drives on your controller, it is quite possibly bad.

Not exactly. A JBOD, by the definition, is a disk that is as good as "unconfigured" in your controller. So when I said "if you have to do any configuration in the controller it isn't a JBOD" I'm still technically correct. Configuring of disks in a controller, even when doing what they may call a "JBOD" is still not a JBOD. The manufacturers call it that, but it's not much more than a RAID0 of a single disk. It's just renaming bullshit and then calling it something else and expecting people to be dumb enough to buy it. :P

99% of the time, if you have to "configure" a JBOD, it's putting the magic partition header on the card. :P

 

[jgreco]

Technical correctness won't save you; I specifically said "RAID card manufacturers often refer to non-RAID configurations [...] as JBOD"

The fundamental problem is that you might be technically correct about the definition of JBOD, but then that means it is fine to tell people that they want "JBOD" mode, and that is a fail, because people will take it to mean that "oh my RAID controller supports JBOD."

Telling a user who knows he has set up "JBOD" mode on his RAID controller ...

this card (setup as JBOD of course)

that it is

NOT JBOD

is basically an exercise in pointless pedantry and unhelpfulness, since you gave no info as to why: we both know the term has been corrupted by the RAID manufacturers. Your response was therefore just adding confusion without explanation. It is better to assume that the term "JBOD" means "a single disk very likely to have a screwed up magic RAID partition header." This is always a safer bet. That was the point of my response.

 

[cyberjock]

And that's why I said "if you have to configure it in the RAID it's not JBOD". ;)

If you are having to do *any* setup of hard drives on your controller, it is NOT JBOD.

It's all good though. I think we're arguing the same point at this point. ;)

 

[Ericloewe]

Who the %!#@ had that brilliant idea part 2:

Sticking metadata at the beginning of the drive, instead of the end. While still silly, at least the drive is mostly readable and can be saved.

 

[jgreco]

Indicates the drive's purpose more unambiguously.

 

[BigDave]

Indicates the drive's purpose more unambiguously.

Where's my friggin dictionary