Hi everyone, I'm looking to build a new ZFS storage server on 9-STABLE. The zpool will be running multiple raid2z vdevs. To accommodate a larger number of disks, I'd like to use a SAS Expander. I'm leaning towards the combination of the LSI SAS 9211-4i HBA (via mps) and the Supermicro 846E16 expander chassis (via ses). Does anyone here have experience with this specific hardware combination? Is it supported? Is it stable? Thanks! Daniel
On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Daniel Duerr <dd at gizmocreative.com> wrote:> Hi everyone, > > I'm looking to build a new ZFS storage server on 9-STABLE. The zpool will be running multiple raid2z vdevs. To accommodate a larger number of disks, I'd like to use a SAS Expander. I'm leaning towards the combination of the LSI SAS 9211-4i HBA (via mps) and the Supermicro 846E16 expander chassis (via ses). Does anyone here have experience with this specific hardware combination? Is it supported? Is it stable?I have copious experience with that exact expander using a similar HBA. The expander works, but there are a few caveats: 1) Early expander firmware versions had lots of bugs. You will want at least firmware 55.14.18.0 or later. They are upgradeable in the field, with difficulty. 2) Daisy chaining does not work reliably. The expander has one upstream SFF-8087 connector and two downstream SFF-8087 connectors. If you don't use the downstream connectors, then you should be fine. If you do, you'll need some luck. In certain configurations, the expander won't reliably complete discovery. -Alan> > Thanks! > Daniel > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-stable at freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
On Jun 4, 2014 9:26 AM, "Daniel Duerr" <dd at gizmocreative.com> wrote:> > Hi everyone, > > I'm looking to build a new ZFS storage server on 9-STABLE. The zpoolwill be running multiple raid2z vdevs. To accommodate a larger number of disks, I'd like to use a SAS Expander. I'm leaning towards the combination of the LSI SAS 9211-4i HBA (via mps) and the Supermicro 846E16 expander chassis (via ses). Does anyone here have experience with this specific hardware combination? Is it supported? Is it stable? We use LSI 9211-8i, and LSI 9211-8e connected to either SC836E16, SC836E26, SC846E16, SC846E26, and the JBOD version of the last 2. All using SATA HDs, SATA SSDs, Super Micro H8DGi-F6 mobo, and AMD CPUs. With FreeBSD 9.2. ZFS. Raidz2. And dedupe on some systems. So far, things are extremely stable and working well. These are backups storage boxes, though, not NFS or anything like that.> Thanks! > Daniel > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-stable at freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"