[OpenIndiana-discuss] 2x Xeon XS8600

Sat Jul 19 02:32:06 UTC 2014

In some cases, the SATA ports in these configurations will report as being
attached to the motherboard chipset. You'll see 4 SATA ports, and 4 SAS
ports. I don't remember off the top of my head how they report in all cases.

" 'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the
first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all
irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie as wisdom and
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episode "The Drumhead"
- Alex Smith
- Huntsville, Alabama metropolitan area USA

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 7:10 PM, Timothy Coalson <tsc5yc at mst.edu> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 5:32 PM, Harry Putnam <reader at newsguy.com> wrote:
>
> > "Alex Smith (K4RNT)" <shadowhunter at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > SATA disks can run on a SAS controller no problem - they are backwards
> > > compatible, however SAS disks will NOT work on a SATA only controller.
> > >
> > > The blue colored SATA socket is port 0, probably for the boot volume. I
> > > can't see from the angle of the photo, but I bet the white colored
> > sockets
> > > are for SAS. Are there any SFF-8087 connectors on the mainboard, by
> > chance?
> >
> > Googling SFF-8087 I find more than one shape of plug, so, not sure
> > what they look like.  Are those just the plugs used to connect SATA
> > discs?  The bigger of the 2 plugs required for each sata hdd. If so,
> > there are 1 each on all discs now connected (4) and several free on the
> > electrical harness.
>
>
> No, those are SATA power connectors, SFF-8087 is an internal data connector
> for 4 channels of SAS:
>
> http://www.cs-electronics.com/images-large/Fem%20SFF-8087-b.JPG
>
> This shows both plug and receptacle, the bit on the circuit board is the
> receptacle, and is usually on a larger card/board, not with a cable coming
> out the back.
>
> However, I believe your board has only one SAS chip, and the 8 ports on it
> are connected to the sata-like connectors, with only color coding telling
> them apart, so I don't expect it to have any SFF-8087 ports.
>
> > With the LSI HBA, if it requires it, just make each individual disk a
> RAID
> > > 0 volume. That's how I did it with MegaRAID.
> >
> > Err, you left me in the ditch a ways back.  Are you saying if I have
> > to do something with LSI HBA and I set discs to RAID 0, then oi will
> > just see non-raid discs and I can just set things up as if each disc
> > was not raided?  Also, is the setting you mention done in OI?
> >
>
> From the info from AIDA64, I would guess that you don't need to worry about
> configuring the card for RAID 0, the storage controller says "3000 series",
> which from some brief perusal of lsi's site, suggests that it is the
> HBA-configured version of the SAS chip, rather than the RAID-configured
> version.  You'd need to look through a manual or the SAS bios to make sure,
> though, as AIDA64 may not actually try to distinguish them.
>
> More terminology - HBA means it just shows the OS the disks directly, while
> the RAID version can't do that, and instead puts a layer of virtual raid
> devices between the OS and the drives - ZFS works better on raw disks
> because then you don't have special RAID labeling on the disks (so you can
> move them to a system without a RAID card), and because ZFS itself can do
> RAID-like redundancy with better integrity guarantees.  The way to get
> around the second part of that, if you only have a RAID-style adapter, is
> to make a separate RAID-0 device (no redundancy) for each disk, making it
> close to pass-through for each disk.
>
>
> > Can we start a little further back please: Is there something on this
> > machines hardware that will give me problems in setting up mirrored
> > whole disks for vpools once OI is installed?
> >
>
> If you can run OI at all, with more than one disk attached, there should be
> no problems making a mirrored zpool, that is software, not hardware.  The
> main question is how many disks (and of what size, as was mentioned, the
> SAS ports will only support up to 2TB drives due to the older generation
> SAS chip) you can attach with that hardware.  You could also acquire an HBA
> card with a more up to date chip in it for more/larger disks (assuming you
> can fit them in the chassis).
>
>
> > I am posting a very detailed report on the hardware and software using
> > the current (windows 7) OS and a tool called Aida64 that pulls all
> > relevant info.  It generates a 2+ mb html file but I can post it on my
> > web pages so not to overload this message.
> >
> > It also includes certain performance tests and lots of other junk.
> >
> > Some of the hawkeyes here will no doubt be able to make some sense of
> > it.
> >
> > If anyone is willing to look thru that lengthy report... I guess I'll
> > post it now.
> >
> > zeus.jtan.com/~reader/vu1/Aida64_rpt-140718.html
>
>
> Something slightly worrisome - AIDA64 only finds 4 of the 8 SAS ports.  I
> don't know if this means anything, I haven't worked with a similar system.
>
>
> >
> > (Absolutely piles of information).
> >
> > Further, if anyone is interested enough, I've posted some more images
> > that are stepped back compared to the first two.  Stepped back far enough
> > to see the whole motherboard.
> >
> > I had poor lighting and so the flash glare makes them a little hard to
> > see, but I find if I blow up the image in whatever viewer I'm
> > using... the flash glare becomes negligible
> >
> > Even without any special handling the images are fairly decent.
> >
> > Maybe some of you will recognize what all is going on in there.
> >
> >
> >
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> >
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