LSI SAS 9207-8i. Compatibility.

[panman]

Asus P7P55d
CPU i7-860?
4HDDs WD 4TB Blue
3HDDs WD 3TB Blue
3HDDs WD 2TB Green
Be Quiet Dark 550w
8GB ddr3, 1600"flash

This is the setup i intend to use as a nas. Is the chip from the title ok and compatible? Should i prefer something like LSI SAS 9202?I heard that i must flash fitmware at IT mode in the 9207 chip or use the LSI 9202 firmware. I find them in the same price and 9207 is PCI express 3. I don't care for raid, just seperate single volumes. All i care is for good tranfer speed and stability. Thanks in advance,
Best Regards, Panos

 

[MikeyG]

You might want a CPU that is a bit newer from a power and performance perspective. Also does not support ECC which is recommended.

You don't want RAID - do you mean that you want to have 10 separate pools, one for each drive? That's pretty risky, cumbersome, and not really how FreeNAS is supposed to be set up. Do you not care at all about the data you are storing? You are not exactly setting yourself up for speed or stability here.

What is meant by "1600"flash"?

I'm pretty sure that the 9207-8i will be fine.

Have you checked out the hardware recommendations? They were very helpful to me in building my system.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

I find them in the same price and 9207 is PCI express 3. I don't care for raid, just separate single volumes. All i care is for good tranfer speed and stability.

Do you plan to use many more drives? If you don't, I expect the PCIe 2 cards will have plenty of bandwidth for your spinning disks.

Asus P7P55d

Also, unless I'm mistaken in my reading of the specs for this board it doesn't support PCIe 3 so buying a PCIe 3 card won't give you any more bandwidth over a PCIe 2 card.

If you don't already own this board you may consider looking for a different board. This board has sound support and other features that you'd be paying for which are of no use in a FreeNAS build. It also only supports 16GB of ram which may be limiting for you depending on your use case. Furthermore it has a Realtek 8112L NIC which are generally advised against for compatibility and performance reasons.

8GB ddr3, 1600"flash

This is the bare minimum for current versions of FreeNAS. Some good advice I received early on when selecting my hardware was to buy the largest DIMMs supported by my board. If all you can afford it 8GB and your board supports 8GB DIMMs, pick up an 8GB DIMM. This allows you to grow your system's memory over time more efficiently.

A couple of important questions though that will help folks give you better answers.

1. How much of the above hardware do you already own?
2. What is your budget for this build? Even a ballpark is useful.
3. How do you plan to use your nas? Will it be simply a backup file server or will you be serving media off it or serving multiple clients?
4. How serious are you about the integrity of your data and do you understand the potential risks involved in not using ECC memory. Some folks are fine with using non ECC memory. I think it is valuable to know the tradeoff before you make it though.

Hopefully this helps. Answer the above questions and folks can offer you some more specific advice.

 

[panman]

You might want a CPU that is a bit newer from a power and performance perspective. Also does not support ECC which is recommended.

You don't want RAID - do you mean that you want to have 10 separate pools, one for each drive? That's pretty risky, cumbersome, and not really how FreeNAS is supposed to be set up. Do you not care at all about the data you are storing? You are not exactly setting yourself up for speed or stability here.

What is meant by "1600"flash"?

I'm pretty sure that the 9207-8i will be fine.

Have you checked out the hardware recommendations? They were very helpful to me in building my system.

Thank you for your answer. I allready own the hardware. I just built a new pc and this is my old one. Data is not that important, ripped blu rays and cd's. I found your forum looking, to be honest i didn't knew the free nas software before. I Just wanted to know if the card works and i will study later.
About the flash, i really don't know how it's there :) . Propably by mistake. It means nothing.

Do you plan to use many more drives? If you don't, I expect the PCIe 2 cards will have plenty of bandwidth for your spinning disks.


Also, unless I'm mistaken in my reading of the specs for this board it doesn't support PCIe 3 so buying a PCIe 3 card won't give you any more bandwidth over a PCIe 2 card.

If you don't already own this board you may consider looking for a different board. This board has sound support and other features that you'd be paying for which are of no use in a FreeNAS build. It also only supports 16GB of ram which may be limiting for you depending on your use case. Furthermore it has a Realtek 8112L NIC which are generally advised against for compatibility and performance reasons.


This is the bare minimum for current versions of FreeNAS. Some good advice I received early on when selecting my hardware was to buy the largest DIMMs supported by my board. If all you can afford it 8GB and your board supports 8GB DIMMs, pick up an 8GB DIMM. This allows you to grow your system's memory over time more efficiently.

A couple of important questions though that will help folks give you better answers.

1. How much of the above hardware do you already own?
2. What is your budget for this build? Even a ballpark is useful.
3. How do you plan to use your nas? Will it be simply a backup file server or will you be serving media off it or serving multiple clients?
4. How serious are you about the integrity of your data and do you understand the potential risks involved in not using ECC memory. Some folks are fine with using non ECC memory. I think it is valuable to know the tradeoff before you make it though.

Hopefully this helps. Answer the above questions and folks can offer you some more specific advice.

Thanks for your answer

I already own the hardware. I will upgrade after a while that's why i prefer the PCI Express 3 card. I can't afford to change the mb right now since i just builted a new main pc. I intend to add 8gb more on the 1156.


So i understand that i won't have a problem to make the card work but, i need to upgrade cpu, mb and memories for the software to run smoothly. I also understand that i have to reconsider my idea for seperate volumes and start thinking raid. Propably i will sell the mb, and cpu and memory and buy something like an 1151 with a i3 8100 and 16 mb of ddr 4 with ECC.

Thanks again guys

ps I found what was the "flash" . When i type, sometimes words skip columns and appear in different sentences.

 

[Mihalich]

I bought HBA already with it firmware, but it could not initialize properly. I had to update the BIOS on the motherboard and on the HBA firmware plus BIOS by connecting the card to another computer. Keep that in mind.

You have 10 disks, and ports with direct connection only 8.
And the power supply is not enough, in my opinion.

 

[panman]

I bought HBA already with it firmware, but it could not initialize properly. I had to update the BIOS on the motherboard and on the HBA firmware plus BIOS by connecting the card to another computer. Keep that in mind.

You have 10 disks, and ports with direct connection only 8.
And the power supply is not enough, in my opinion.

Thanks for your tips. (plus i found the thanks button )
I was thinking i could use some of my mb sata ports (it has 8). I read everywhere that i have to play with firmware and bios. I might need some help on that later. I have a coolermaster 850 if the be quiet is not enough. I just want the discs to be visible on my htpc, no big deal. In my old home (just divorced) i had a network with 5 so now i have to put the disks in two. I will decommission all my 1 tb hard disks (about 8) and by an 8tb instead. Thats the story more or less.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

So i understand that i won't have a problem to make the card work but, i need to upgrade cpu, mb and memories for the software to run smoothly. I also understand that i have to reconsider my idea for separate volumes and start thinking raid. Propably i will sell the mb, and cpu and memory and buy something like an 1151 with a i3 8100 and 16 mb of ddr 4 with ECC.

Best of luck as you put together a build. If I may offer a bit more advice;

1. Do a ton of research and consider posting to the forums before you buy anything. Read the Hardware Recommendation Guide, the slideshow for new folks, this terminology guide and many of the other great resources online about FreeNAS and ZFS
2. Think hard about what you want your system to do
3. Decide on a budget
4. Identify (don't buy) parts you think you'd use. Consider used parts if possible as a serious way to save a lot of money
5. Post what you put together from steps 2-4 to these forums
6. Based on advice and the steps above buy your parts, build your system, and have fun!

Folks take data integrity quite seriously around here. Don't be surprised if folks focus heavily on specific hardware choices because of compatibility or driver reasons. For example, for 1Gbps NICs folks generally recommend intel largely due to reliability and OS support.

Finally, I'll add this. You absolutely can install FreeNAS on the system you have. So long as that NIC works you'll be able to get it up and running and test it to play around with it. As I said above the board really isn't ideal but you can learn a lot by playing with it. I wouldn't recommend putting any serious data on it until you decide what your final system will be like. Keep in mind that a test system may seem to work just fine to start. You may be tempted to trust your data on the machine because it worked fine to start. Do keep in mind though the potential issues with non ECC memory and the realtek NIC though. Before you trust any system with your data make sure you understand its limitations. For relatively little money you can buy a board, cpu, and memory that will be much more appropriate in the long run.

Best of luck putting together a build! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

 

[panman]

Best of luck as you put together a build. If I may offer a bit more advice;

1. Do a ton of research and consider posting to the forums before you buy anything. Read the Hardware Recommendation Guide, the slideshow for new folks, this terminology guide and many of the other great resources online about FreeNAS and ZFS
2. Think hard about what you want your system to do
3. Decide on a budget
4. Identify (don't buy) parts you think you'd use. Consider used parts if possible as a serious way to save a lot of money
5. Post what you put together from steps 2-4 to these forums
6. Based on advice and the steps above buy your parts, build your system, and have fun!

Folks take data integrity quite seriously around here. Don't be surprised if folks focus heavily on specific hardware choices because of compatibility or driver reasons. For example, for 1Gbps NICs folks generally recommend intel largely due to reliability and OS support.

Finally, I'll add this. You absolutely can install FreeNAS on the system you have. So long as that NIC works you'll be able to get it up and running and test it to play around with it. As I said above the board really isn't ideal but you can learn a lot by playing with it. I wouldn't recommend putting any serious data on it until you decide what your final system will be like. Keep in mind that a test system may seem to work just fine to start. You may be tempted to trust your data on the machine because it worked fine to start. Do keep in mind though the potential issues with non ECC memory and the realtek NIC though. Before you trust any system with your data make sure you understand its limitations. For relatively little money you can buy a board, cpu, and memory that will be much more appropriate in the long run.

Best of luck putting together a build! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

At first i am glad to see that my card of choise is at your system. I will follow your "guide". I will try to find used some of your hardware like the mb and i ll do some reading. You were very helpfull but i realize that i have to study. I thought that just buying a card and put it could be ok. I also wanted to keep the power consuption low. Anyway, even though i built my pc since 1995, i know nothing about this topic issues. Study it is then.

 

[Mihalich]

I was thinking i could use some of my mb sata ports (it has 8).

I advise you not to distribute the disks from one pool on different controllers.

 

[JaimieV]

@Mihalich That's the first time I've seen that recommendation - can you give a technical pointer as to why? One of the great joys of ZFS is that it doesn't care about where any particular drive is connected.

 

[Mihalich]

@Mihalich That's the first time I've seen that recommendation - can you give a technical pointer as to why? One of the great joys of ZFS is that it doesn't care about where any particular drive is connected.

These are my personal beliefs. It is logically incorrect to allocate one pool to different controllers, as well as to use disks of different performance or volume in the same pool or RAID. This design will work, of course, but, for example, it is possible to reduce performance.

 

[PhiloEpisteme]

logically incorrect to allocate one pool to different controllers

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by logically incorrect. The system certainly won't stop you as far as I know. Since it is software RAID there isn't a card or controller that has to manage the disk pool configuration, that is all handled by ZFS.

This design will work, of course, but, for example, it is possible to reduce performance.

I haven't seen any evidence of this in any searching, but I don't recall seeing anyone specifically testing of it yet. Have you seen performance drop if say you use 5400 and 7200 rpm drives for example? I use mixed rpm drives for some of my pools because it is what I happened to have and have had no issues whatsoever. I imagine the slightly faster drives don't slow down the slower drives any more than if all of the drives were of the slower variety.

 

[panman]

I don't want to open another thread so i will ask here. I builted the pc
MB Gigabyte Z270P-D3
CPU Intel G4560, 16gb ddr 4 2400
I received the lsi sas 9702-8i. It is in IT mode but it needs firmware update. I downloaded all that is needed but since i know almost nothing about dos and my MB doesn't have EFI Shell (i think) can someone tell me how to do it. I found this
https://kbhost.nl/knowledgebase/flash-lsi-sas-9207-8i-hba-to-it-mode/
but i can't understand where to do it. I mean i go into dos and then what ? Same with broadbands instructions. I would really appreciate any help.

 

[Holt Andrei Tiberiu]

The link is correct
Make a bootable drive with RUFUS, select freedos. Put the files in a folder inside the LOCALE folder, say LSI.
After booting from the USB drive go to the locale\lsi folder:

cd locale -> hit enter
cd lsi -> hit enter,
after that follow the tutorial in the link.

 

[panman]

Thank you. Do you know how to use the sas2flash.efi ?
https://www.broadcom.com/support/kn...44/flashing-firmware-and-bios-on-lsi-sas-hbas
It seems i can update also bios with that utility.