Need Mobo/cpu combo for quality but entry level TrueNAS core build.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I dont really want to order form china or the US, i dont usually see the recommended supermicros in the UK. Also, id really not want to build from the ground up unless i absolutely have to.

CPU already on board, add SC721TQ-250B chassis and you are ready to go if 4x 3.5" HDD is enough.
Readily available from Germany. Although I do not know what that means post Brexit.

 

[Etorix]

I dont really want to order form china or the US, i dont usually see the recommended supermicros in the UK.

I'm sure Supermicro boards are available in the UK and you're just not looking at the right shops.

Also, id really not want to build from the ground up unless i absolutely have to.

Fair enough. And from ebay.co.uk I know that second-hand servers are readily available locally.

I was just thinking about the z420, and the sata ports. It only has 2 6Gb ports so do you just use the 3Gb ones as it really does not matter for a storage system?

A HDD cannot saturate a 3 Gb link, so it indeed does not matter.

Or do you use the built in SAS connections, but they are raid (i believe), can the z420 turn the raid off and make these just HBA's with sas to sata breakout cables?
Else, would you buy a pcie hba card that is specifically non-raid (i think thats called an HBA card)?

Mostly correct. SAS controllers are compatible with SATA drives. Cables are the same, but make sure to use shorter ones (< 1 m, preferably 50 cm) for SATA drives. If the Z420 comes with a RAID controller, you "lobotomise" it to be a plain SAS controller (HBA) or replace it with a HBA.

Don't be afraid to be SAS-sy ... a primer on basic SAS and SATA

With the introduction of SAS 12Gbps, seems like "it's time" to do a braindump on SAS. Work in progress, as usual. History By the late '90's, SCSI and PATA were the dominant technologies to attach disks. Both were parallel bus multiple drop...

www.truenas.com

 

[jackdinn]

4x 3.5" HDD is enough

4 is definitely not enough :(

Question:- What is the difference between a HBA without RAID (IT mode) card and a PCIe to SATA card, apart from the cabling and connectors?

10 Port SATA 3.0 to PCIe X1 Expansion Card PCI Express SATA Adapter SATA3 S6I2 | eBay

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">10 Port SATA 3.0 to PCIe X1 Expansion Card PCI Express SATA Adapter SATA3 S6I2.</p> <br> <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Used, removed from working computer</p> <br> <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Adding...

www.ebay.co.uk

HP H220 IT Mode HBA 6GB/s SAS SATA Mini-SAS PCI-e 3.0 x8 TrueNAS unRAID ZFS | eBay

The HP H220 is a SAS 2 / SATA III, PCI Express 3.0 x8 HBA (Host Bus Adapter). It has been flashed to the latest P20 IT Mode firmware.

www.ebay.co.uk

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

4 is definitely not enough :(

Then you need a different case.

mini itx nas case 8 bay | Newegg.com

Search Newegg.com for mini itx nas case 8 bay. Get fast shipping and top-rated customer service.

www.newegg.com

Question:- What is the difference between a HBA without RAID (IT mode) card and a PCIe to SATA card, apart from the cabling and connectors?

The chipset on the card. The LSI/Broadcom line of HBAs is known well supported. With mass market PCIe SATA controllers you might be lucky, then again you might not. The 8 or 12 ports on the Supermicro boards I listed are definitely safe, too.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[jackdinn]

What about a Supermicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F (8x SATA) or A2SDi-8C-HLN4F (12x SATA)?

A2SDi-4C-HLN4F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro
480€ or 700€ retail.

You keep mentioning a Supermicro mobo/uPro in Germany, priced in Euros but i think im going senile, your links here go to supermicro.com, no prices and not in Germany. Sorry but where are you looking?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I was referring you to the technical documentation. The prices are from https://jacob.de ... but any other distributor will call a similar amount.

 

[Etorix]

Question:- What is the difference between a HBA without RAID (IT mode) card and a PCIe to SATA card, apart from the cabling and connectors?

10 Port SATA 3.0 to PCIe X1 Expansion Card PCI Express SATA Adapter SATA3 S6I2 | eBay

<p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">10 Port SATA 3.0 to PCIe X1 Expansion Card PCI Express SATA Adapter SATA3 S6I2.</p> <br> <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Used, removed from working computer</p> <br> <p dir="ltr" style="margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0;">Adding...

www.ebay.co.uk

Without even looking at the technical details (which likely involve some port multiplier, a definite "no go" with ZFS), a PCIe 3.0 x1 link is clearly insufficient to handle 10 drives. Stay clear of that thing!

You keep mentioning a Supermicro mobo/uPro in Germany, priced in Euros but i think im going senile, your links here go to supermicro.com, no prices and not in Germany. Sorry but where are you looking?

Geizahls.de is your friend. (But check that the seller is reliable. One which regularly comes first on price is known to do grey imports..)

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Geizhals does not list the discussed mainboards at all. "Keine Angebote".

I just check the regular B2B and B2C distributors that I have come to work with over the years:

https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/Supermicro-A2SDi-4C-HLN4F--Mini-ITX--SoC--retail--MBD-A2SDI-4C-HLN4F-O-_1220505.html

SUPERMICRO A2SDi-4C-HLN4F Motherboard Mini-ITX MBD-A2SDI-4C-HLN4F-O

SUPERMICRO A2SDi-4C-HLN4F Motherboard Mini-ITX, MBD-A2SDI-4C-HLN4F-O, EAN 0672042268474 günstig - ab 0 € portofrei kaufen

www.jacob.de

"Also" is also very good and reliable, but B2B only. We by many components from them, but they don't sell Supermicro. So it's mostly SSDs and disk drives:

ALSO Deutschland GmbH

Das ALSO Ökosystem hat ein Potenzial von ≈ 120000 Resellern und wir Hardware, Software & IT-Services von ≈ 700 Vendoren in ≈ 1450 Produkt-Kategorien anbieten.

www.also.com

Tonitrus is great for refurbished Cisco and similar, also serves B2C:

https://www.tonitrus.com

HTH,
Patrick

 

[jackdinn]

@Etorix @Patrick M. Hausen
Don't worry chaps, It's all just too much, I don't speak German, I don't want to build from scratch, even you are disputing items. I do appreciate the help.

I shall buy the Z420, I shall stick with just 6 LFF drives (maybe stick a couple of SSDs for the boot OS somewhere/anywhere.) To me, it really doesn't matter where drives go, if I can cram them in I will (taking airflow into account).
I just want to get a NAS setup without the hassle. I don't like the proprietary NASs. And I don't like servers (to noisy).

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

That's why these Atom based mainboards are so great - passive cooling. Just saying
Add a decent chassis and you are set. The barebones Supermicro offers all come with just 4x LFF bays, unfortunately.

 

[Etorix]

Don't worry chaps, It's all just too much, I don't speak German,

Fair enough. Since I don't know where "ehh" is, I take any hint to try and give local advice if possible.

I don't want to build from scratch, even you are disputing items.

No dispute—even though I do find A2SDi boards on Geizahls.

I shall buy the Z420, I shall stick with just 6 LFF drives (maybe stick a couple of SSDs for the boot OS somewhere/anywhere.)

Should be a fine build. A single boot drive is enough. Always keep a recent copy of the configuration file outside of the NAS and you're ready to reinstall in case of boot drive failure.
Otherwise you may actually need a hardware RAID controller for boot. As pointed out by @jgreco , even though the boot pool is mirrored, the bootloader may reside on a single drive and/or the BIOS may not know that there's a fallback.

 

[jackdinn]

Fair enough. Since I don't know where "ehh" is,

No?! Have you not been to Ehh? Magnificent walks on the long sandy beaches as this time of year and the people are just lovely. Not so much myself, I'm the loner who lives in the shack up on the forested hill to the south of Ehh.

even though the boot pool is mirrored, the bootloader may reside on a single drive and/or the BIOS may not know that there's a fallback.

Interesting point, does Truenas not "deal" with this? i mean, why have the ability of multiple boot mirrors if the bios won't be pointing at (or see a bootloader) the correct boot drive in the event of a failure?

Regardless, i may not even have a RAID on-board because as @Patrick M. Hausen puts it, I may try to "lobotomize" the mobo to I can use the SAS connectors for some extra SATA.

 

[Davvo]

Interesting point, does Truenas not "deal" with this? i mean, why have the ability of multiple boot mirrors if the bios won't be pointing at (or see a bootloader) the correct boot drive in the event of a failure?

TrueNAS has no power in dealing with BIOS issues.

 

[jackdinn]

But you can manually change the bootup to the other mirrored drive and recover? I assume, else why have mirrored boots.

 

[jgreco]

Interesting point, does Truenas not "deal" with this? i mean, why have the ability of multiple boot mirrors if the bios won't be pointing at (or see a bootloader) the correct boot drive in the event of a failure?

How do you envision this working, if TrueNAS were to "deal" with this?

You're a PC. You've got a moron-grade BIOS. You are powered on. Your first flash device is dying. You look into the BIOS (/CMOS/whatever you want to call it) config, and it says "Boot from USB device." So you call your crusty old routines to access USB out of the BIOS ROM, read the first block, succeed, and then you proceed to try to load the next ... I don't know what a modern bootloader is anymore, 50 blocks maybe? Just for argument. You now have the first stage bootloader in memory, which is used to draw in the second stage bootloader, which is what offers you the LUA menu.

But the flash device is dying. It spams some bad bits out its cruddy flash, and instead of 50 correct first blocks, it introduces some random noise. The BIOS executes this, the PC freaks and crashes.

There is no point in this process where "TrueNAS" has any control over what the BIOS is doing. You are reliant on the BIOS successfully loading the appropriate bits from a storage device.

You may find the following relevant.

Highly Available Boot Pool Strategy

I've pounded a few versions of this out over the years, but I hate explaining over and over. TrueNAS allows a ZFS boot mirror pool to be created to increase the reliability of the NAS. This sounds great in theory, but there's a flaw. Due to...

www.truenas.com

 

[jgreco]

But you can manually change the bootup to the other mirrored drive and recover? I assume, else why have mirrored boots.

This is still BIOS-dependent. Not every BIOS allows you to specify WHICH USB boot device to use. When testing this in the shop, I would normally set up two boot devices, mirrored, then pull the first one and replace it with a blank SSD to simulate failures. This isn't a perfect simulation since it fails to deal with corrupt bits and stuff like that.

 

[Davvo]

 

[jackdinn]

Ok i pulled the trigger on a second hand Z420. I just need a couple (perhaps 4) more sata ports from one of the pci-e slots. (yea i know its a common question but mine is not quite the same as the rest).
I dont need advice on which card/s to get what i do need is advise on where to get genuine ones in the UK?

I have been watching a lot of vids regarding the LSI 9211-8i and the few IT mode cards that use this chipset, maybe LSI 9207-8i or LSI 9220-8i (prob not the dell PERC H310) and the fact that it seems a lot of the second-hand market is saturated with fakes.

Can someone advise (or better still link) to a business or an eBay/Amazon seller in the UK that can be trusted? Also how do you go about being sure you have picked a genuine product because even after watching loads of videos explaining the tiny difference to look out for, to me all LSI cards look fake now?

Even the "LSI" i linked above now looks fake to me, it has zero LSI stamps on it or the LSI copyright text stamp https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304389458013

Thx,

 

[Etorix]

Another picture shows this is a HP OEM card. You should then look for signs to spot a genuine HP card… I would not expect HP to advertise for LSI.

 

[jackdinn]

Another picture shows this is a HP OEM card. You should then look for signs to spot a genuine HP card… I would not expect HP to advertise for LSI.

So you're saying this card is fine? Well, if you are sure, i shall buy it.