Hi,
I just came across this box [0] (McKay Creek). Seems to be exceptional
building material for ZFS based NAS/iSCSI unit. I especially liked the
two extra system disks hidden inside the box !
Any one have an experience with these ?
[0] http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ssr212mc2
--
Regards,
Cyril
It''s a pity that Sun does not manufacture something like this. The x4500 Thumper, with 48 disks is way over the top for most companies, and too expensive. And the new X4150 only has 8 disks. This Intel box with 12 hot-swap drives and two internal boot drives looks like the sweet-spot to me. The only problem is that Intel are not listing Solaris as a supported operating system. The question is how are all those SAS/SATA disks interfaced to the motherboard. As far as I can see it''s using some new chipset called ''Blackford''. Has Solaris got a driver for that chipset? I don''t think so, but I''d love to be wrong on that. It looks like the chipset provide 4-ports on the motherboard, and then they use four lane SAS cables. Has anyone tried the HP ProLiant DL320s with Solaris & ZFS? http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-241475-3232017.html It has a similar 12+2 drive bay arrangement, and I believe HP do support Solaris and have drivers for their disk interface cards. Regards Nigel Smith This message posted from opensolaris.org
Nigel Smith wrote:> It''s a pity that Sun does not manufacture something like this. > The x4500 Thumper, with 48 disks is way over the top for most companies, > and too expensive. And the new X4150 only has 8 disks. > This Intel box with 12 hot-swap drives and two internal boot drives > looks like the sweet-spot to me.Internal drives suck. If you go through the trouble of putting in a drive, at least make it hot pluggable.> The only problem is that Intel are not listing Solaris as a > supported operating system.argv! surely this is a clerical error?> The question is how are all those SAS/SATA disks interfaced to the > motherboard. As far as I can see it''s using some new chipset > called ''Blackford''. Has Solaris got a driver for that chipset?Blackford is the 2-socket bridge chip for the latest Intel quad cores. We use the Blackford on the X4150.> I don''t think so, but I''d love to be wrong on that.I love it when you''re wrong :-) -- richard
On 26 September, 2007 - Nigel Smith sent me these 1,2K bytes:> It''s a pity that Sun does not manufacture something like this. > The x4500 Thumper, with 48 disks is way over the top for most companies, > and too expensive. And the new X4150 only has 8 disks. > This Intel box with 12 hot-swap drives and two internal boot drives > looks like the sweet-spot to me. > The only problem is that Intel are not listing Solaris as a > supported operating system. > The question is how are all those SAS/SATA disks interfaced to the > motherboard. As far as I can see it''s using some new chipset > called ''Blackford''. Has Solaris got a driver for that chipset? > I don''t think so, but I''d love to be wrong on that. > It looks like the chipset provide 4-ports on the motherboard, > and then they use four lane SAS cables. > > Has anyone tried the HP ProLiant DL320s with Solaris & ZFS? > http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-241475-3232017.html > It has a similar 12+2 drive bay arrangement, and I believe > HP do support Solaris and have drivers for their disk interface cards.Tried booting u3 (I think, could have been a sxcr ~50-60) on one of those.. Required drivers for the HBA was additional stuff, but the USB controller was not working under Solaris, so I couldn''t stick it onto an USB cd and adding it to the miniroot required another x86 Solaris machine to loopback mount the UFS file (only have sparc, not compatible). Gave up due to time constraints (borrowed machine for this test). So, "not straight out of the bot" but "maybe". /Tomas -- Tomas ?gren, stric at acc.umu.se, http://www.acc.umu.se/~stric/ |- Student at Computing Science, University of Ume? `- Sysadmin at {cs,acc}.umu.se
Sun did something like this with the v60 and v65 servers, and they should do it
again with the SSR212MC2.
The heart of the SAS subsystem of the SSR212MC2 is the SRCSAS144E .
This card is interfacing with a Vitesse VSC410 SAS-expander and is plugged into
a S5000PSL motherboard.
This card is closely related to the MegaRAID SAS 8208ELP .
All the drives, 12, in front are SAS/SATA-II hotswappable.
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ssr212mc2/index.htm .
This is a pure Intel reference design. This is the most drives that fits into a
2U **EVER**. This is the best storage product in existence today.
The SRCSAS144E is a MegaRAID SAS controller.
Sun''s "own" v60 and Sun v65 were pure Intel reference servers
that worked GREAT!
Everything works in Linux, want to see?
cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 5 (Final)
uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.18-8.1.15.el5 #1 SMP Mon Oct 22 08:32:28 EDT
2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
megasas: 00.00.03.05 Mon Oct 02 11:21:32 PDT 2006
megasas: 0x1000:0x0411:0x8086:0x1003: bus 9:slot 14:func 0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:09:0e.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 185
megasas: FW now in Ready state
scsi0 : LSI Logic SAS based MegaRAID driver
Vendor: Intel Model: SSR212MC Rev: 01A
Type: Enclosure ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Vendor: INTEL Model: SRCSAS144E Rev: 1.03
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 2919915520 512-byte hdwr sectors (1494997 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 1f 00 00 08
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 2919915520 512-byte hdwr sectors (1494997 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 1f 00 00 08
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
sd 0:2:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
Fusion MPT base driver 3.04.02
Copyright (c) 1999-2005 LSI Logic Corporation
Fusion MPT SAS Host driver 3.04.02
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:04:00.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
mptbase: Initiating ioc0 bringup
ioc0: SAS1064E: Capabilities={Initiator}
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:04:00.0 to 64
scsi1 : ioc0: LSISAS1064E, FwRev=01100000h, Ports=1, MaxQ=511, IRQ=177
09:0e.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS
Subsystem: Intel Corporation SRCSAS144E RAID Controller
09:0e.0 0104: 1000:0411
Subsystem: 8086:1003
I know that Google and Yahoo are buying these chassis in droves, and many of the
other folks I know "in the industry" are seeing massive sales of this
box.
This message posted from opensolaris.org
>Internal drives suck. If you go through the trouble of putting in a >drive, at least make it hot pluggable.They are all hot-swappable/pluggable on the the SSR212MC2. There are two additional internal 2.5" SAS bonus drives that arent, but the front 12 are. I for one think external enclosures are annoying. Whats wrong with God-boxes like this? You will invariably use up more than 2U for every 12 3.5" drivers with **all** other alternatives to this.>argv! surely this is a clerical error?No, its annoying with the best platforms, especially from vendors like Intel who go a long way to support the product properly over long periods of time, do not land on the HCL. These are the best platforms to certify. Hope this box lands on the HCL, its a beaut. This message posted from opensolaris.org
Mick Russom wrote:> Sun''s "own" v60 and Sun v65 were pure Intel reference servers that worked GREAT!I''m glad they worked for you. But I''ll note that the critical deficiencies in those platforms is solved by the newer Sun AMD/Intel/SPARC small form factor rackmount servers. The new chassis are far superior to the V60/V65 chassis, which were not data center class designs even though they were rack-mountable. -- richard
Intel show a configuration of this chassis in the Hardware Technical Specification: http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/ssr212mc2/sb/ssr212mc2_tps_12.pdf without the RAID controller. I assume that then the 4xSAS ports on the Blackford chipset are then used, rather than the 4xSAS on the RAID card. As Blackford is supported in Opensolaris, then this configuration would be the one to choose? Anyone tried this yet? Many thanks. This message posted from opensolaris.org
Rumours are that Dell are going to start supporting ZFS now they''re shipping Solaris. I''m waiting to see if there are going to be some nice little boxes from them :) This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Nov 29, 2007, at 2:56 PM, Ross wrote:> Rumours are that Dell are going to start supporting ZFS now they''re > shipping Solaris. I''m waiting to see if there are going to be some > nice little boxes from them :)I evaled one of these too. Worked great with ZFS. <http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4150/> -john
> I evaled one of these too. Worked great with ZFS.Was that with OpenSolaris and was that with or without the Intel RAID controller? Cheers. This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Nov 30, 2007, at 2:47 AM, MP wrote:>> I evaled one of these too. Worked great with ZFS. > > Was that with OpenSolaris and was that with or without the Intel > RAID controller? > Cheers.Solaris 10 8/07, it was with the built-in RAID controller. -john
On November 29, 2007 5:56:04 AM -0800 MP <gildenman at gmail.com> wrote:> Intel show a configuration of this chassis in the Hardware Technical > Specification: > > http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/ssr212mc2/sb/ssr212 > mc2_tps_12.pdf > > without the RAID controller. I assume that then the 4xSAS ports on the > Blackford chipset are then used, rather than the 4xSAS on the RAID card. > As Blackford is supported in Opensolaris, then this configuration would > be the one to choose?Makes no difference. The host running Solaris, OpenSolaris or whatever talks SAS to the enclosure. The chipset used by the enclosure doesn''t make any difference to the host OS (bug workarounds excepted). -frank
Hi all,
Did anyone ever confirm whether this ssr212 box, without hardware raid
option, works reliably under OpenSolaris without fooling around with external
drivers, etc.? I need a box like this, but can''t find a vendor that
will give me a try & buy. (Yes, I''m spoiled by Sun).
thx
jake
This message posted from opensolaris.org