BUILD Building a server for FreeNas primary for Plex

[mjws00]

Da1 was likely because your USB took da0. But you have something repeatable for a bug report. Especially if all devices work nicely under Windows and Linux. The 3008 driver is new so not really a surprise to find something interesting on a bit of an outlier. Interesting that driving the sas3 backplane does not seem to exhibit this.

 

[AltecBX]

Da1 was likely because your USB took da0. But you have something repeatable for a bug report. Especially if all devices work nicely under Windows and Linux. The 3008 driver is new so not really a surprise to find something interesting on a bit of an outlier. Interesting that driving the sas3 backplane does not seem to exhibit this.

I thought that was kind of odd too. Since FreeNAS plays nice with a SAS3 controller & a SAS3 Backplane, but not nice with a SAS3 controller & a SAS2 Backplane.
Yet all other OS's play nice with either setup.

 

[mjws00]

An interesting test might also be a freebsd 9.3 or 10.1 livecd or install. Would isolate FN vs those as well.

I probably couldn't resist trying all those. Plus esxi ;) Gotta test it all and find the quirks. But it may be fun to just slam some drives in and benchmark or play.

 

[AltecBX]

An interesting test might also be a freebsd 9.3 or 10.1 livecd or install. Would isolate FN vs those as well.

Good idea. I'll try that tomorrow with FreeBSD 10.1. Running a few things on machine for the night.

 

[cyberjock]

I have no personal experience with your hardware, but it has been said before that the driver is included but is basically "experimental". For that reason its not necessarily expected to work but may work. It looks like in your case it may not work.

 

[Ericloewe]

I have no personal experience with your hardware, but it has been said before that the driver is included but is basically "experimental". For that reason its not necessarily expected to work but may work. It looks like in your case it may not work.

The old mps3 driver was said to be experimental, but mpr is supposed to be LSI's official driver.
I'd say this needs to be reported to them, if it can be reproduced in FreeBSD.

 

[cyberjock]

The old mps3 driver was said to be experimental, but mpr is supposed to be LSI's official driver.
I'd say this needs to be reported to them, if it can be reproduced in FreeBSD.

Oh? I thought jpaetzel said it was for the mpr. Maybe I'm wrong then. :P

 

[Ericloewe]

Oh? I thought jpaetzel said it was for the mpr. Maybe I'm wrong then. :p

From the 9.2.1.6 Release Notes:

o FreeNAS now includes the mpr driver, which is the officially sanctioned
LSI 12 Gbps SAS HBA driver. Users who were using a tunable to load mps3
(the beta LSI driver) can safely delete that tunable as that driver has
been removed from the build and replaced by the official driver.

Of course, it could very well be that it's Beta, in practice, despite being officially released. Even their phase 6 firmware seems to be little beyond Beta.

 

[depasseg]

@AltecBX (or anyone with SAS3) are you able to start the SMART service? Mine fails, and I'm wondering if it's due to a compatibility issue.

 

[AltecBX]

I haven't checked it yet. I left mem86 running to stress check the cpu and memory of the machine. I'm currently away and won't be back until Sunday. But if I remember currently, SMART service was enabled in the services tab.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[AltecBX]

Depasseg my S.M.A.R.T service is on. What do you want me to check?

 

[depasseg]

Thanks. Just trying to figure out compatibility issues.

 

[AltecBX]

Ok. I just got another cable and now have two cables going from the the MB 3008 to the backplane. So far no problems.
I just started moving my media files over.

 

[ggoldfingerd]

Ok. I just got another cable and now have two cables going from the the MB 3008 to the backplane. So far no problems.
I just started moving my media files over.

Does this mean that the second cable solved your compatibility issue with da0 not showing up?

I want to know because I am planning to go with the same chassis and motherboard.

 

[mjws00]

If you know you are grabbing the sas3 controller. You should look at the chassis with the sas3 backplane. Unless it is extremely cost prohibitive, it would be a better choice. Essentially you are buying deppaseg's barebones server at that point. No drive enumeration issue or cabling surprises.

 

[ggoldfingerd]

If you know you are grabbing the sas3 controller. You should look at the chassis with the sas3 backplane. Unless it is extremely cost prohibitive, it would be a better choice. Essentially you are buying deppaseg's barebones server at that point. No drive enumeration issue or cabling surprises.

I agree that it would be a better choice, but it doesn't make sense due to the cost. The price difference between the chassic that @AltecBX and @depasseg has is about $1000 and I would lose 4 bays. I also looked into purchasing an SAS3 expander to install on the 16 bay chassis. A 16 bay SAS expander is $500, so a SAS3 version, if a 16 bay is even made, will cost more. If SAS3 isn't backwards compatible with the SAS2 expander in FreeNAS, then is makes more sense to purchase a SAS2 HBA card for now. @AltecBX has shown that the hardware is compatible in other OS's.

 

[depasseg]

True, you lose 4 bays, but it works and you have a SAS3 backplane. There are also 2 expansion ports on the rear to attach enclosures in the future. Looking at pricing on superbiiz today, the price difference is 700 bucks. I'm also amazed at how quiet it is. Good luck and have fun!

 

[ggoldfingerd]

True, you lose 4 bays, but it works and you have a SAS3 backplane. There are also 2 expansion ports on the rear to attach enclosures in the future. Looking at pricing on superbiiz today, the price difference is 700 bucks. I'm also amazed at how quiet it is. Good luck and have fun! :)

Thanks for the info. I am very tempted and I will have to think about it. I am just getting into NAS, so I am trying to keep my investment down. I do think I can get by with 12 bays!

 

[AltecBX]

I went the SAS2 because of cost too. With 12x 6TB drives, 64GB ram, Xeon E5, etc.. I couldn't justify the extra $800 for a SAS3 backplane.

@ggoldfingerd , I didn't notice any difference by adding the 2nd cable. I only added it for dependability and performance. My setup is still the same

As far as I can tell, there isn't a compatibility issue between the LSI 3008(SAS3) and this Backplane SAS2; SAS3 was designed to be backward compatible with SAS2. Every other OS I tested worked fine with Bay 0 and was able to see and access the drive just fine. FreeNAS was the only OS not to see the bay. The way I see it, is that instead of 16 bays I was anticipating of using in the future, I now have 15 bays to use with FreeNAS. I have 3 more bays free to use in the future. I can use it to create another vdev with future 8TB drives when I need the space. And if I ever need more, like @depasseg mentioned before to me, I can just go out and buy an inexpensive JBOD and daisy chain it to my SAS2 backplane. I've been running over 20TB of media to 5 plex users without a hitch. The only problem I encounter was the other day I notice a memory channel error.

So I don't think you can go wrong with this chassis and backplane, unless you need to utilize all 16 bays with FreeNAS. When I compare my option (a 12 bay SAS3 for $1,200 or a 16 bay SAS2 for $400) I decided to go with the 16 bay on eBay. Even if I now could only use 15 bays with FreeNAS, it's still better than 12 at a way lower cost. The only thing I'm probably losing is performance compared to SAS3(SAS3 12Gbps vs SAS2 6Gbps). But I think to saturate the higher bandwidth, you'll need a faster network backbone (10Gbs). I'm getting an average of (105-115MB/s~SSD) (90-95MB/s~HDD) between my workstation and this chassis through a 1Gbs network. My question to @depasseg, how fast is your transfer rate? And do you see a difference in speed between SSD and HDD when transferring from those peripherals?

In conclusion, it sounds like you're thinking like me and want to save money and not really throw money in unnecessary parts of the built. Since I concluded in testing that this motherboard and chassis works with every other OS using a SFF8643 to SFF8087 cable with all 16 bays, then the problem lies with FreeNAS and not the hardware. I think FreeNAS has to work on getting their driver to work with this setup so we can enjoy all 16 drives just like every other OS.

 

[depasseg]

It easily saturates my 1G network. I've got some 10Gb Chelsio NIC's on order from ebay. Then it will be an interesting test. I haven't tried w/o my ssd's. They are there as a SLOG and L2ARC, not as a separate pool.