[OpenIndiana-discuss] 2x Xeon XS8600

Sat Jul 19 03:13:37 UTC 2014

Actually, in the motherboard pictures I see 6 SATA ports (blue/black/red)
and 8 SAS ports (white/gray), and the AIDA64 output shows 6 SATA ports, as
expected.  It says the LSI 1068 chip is an 8-port chip, so 8 SAS ports
would make sense.

Tim

On Fri, Jul 18, 2014 at 9:32 PM, Alex Smith (K4RNT) <shadowhunter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
> warning... The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we’re all
> damaged." - Jean-Luc Picard, quoting Judge Aaron Satie, Star Trek: TNG
> 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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