zfs discuss - Jun 2009 - Mobo SATA migration to AOC-SAT2-MV8 SATA card

Hi,

I''m using 6 SATA ports from the motherboard but I''ve now run
out of SATA ports, and so I''m thinking of adding a Supermicro
AOC-SAT2-MV8 8-port SATA controller card.

What is the procedure for migrating the drives to this card?
Is it a simple case of (1) issuing a ''zpool export pool_name''
command, (2) shutdown, (3) insert card and move all SATA cables for drives from
mobo to card, (4) boot and issue a ''zpool import pool_name''
command ?

Thanks,
Simon

http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/
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Yep, right again.

Jeff

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 04:21:42PM -0700, Simon Breden
wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I''m using 6 SATA ports from the motherboard but I''ve now
run out of SATA ports, and so I''m thinking of adding a Supermicro
AOC-SAT2-MV8 8-port SATA controller card.
> 
> What is the procedure for migrating the drives to this card?
> Is it a simple case of (1) issuing a ''zpool export
pool_name'' command, (2) shutdown, (3) insert card and move all SATA
cables for drives from mobo to card, (4) boot and issue a ''zpool import
pool_name'' command ?
> 
> Thanks,
> Simon
> 
> http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/
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> This message posted from opensolaris.org
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> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

On Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:42:43 -0700
Jeff Bonwick <Jeff.Bonwick at sun.com> wrote:
> Yep, right again.
That is, if the boot drives are not one of those.. ;-)

-- 
Dick Hoogendijk -- PGP/GnuPG key: 01D2433D
+ http://nagual.nl/ | nevada / OpenSolaris 2009.06 release
+ All that''s really worth doing is what we do for others (Lewis Carrol)

A couple questions out of pure curiosity.

Working on the assumption that you are going to be adding more drives to
your server, why not just add the new drives to the Supermicro
controller and keep the existing pool (well vdev) where it is?

Reading your blog, it seems that you need one (or two if you are
mirroring) SATA ports for your rpool.  Why not just migrate two drives
to the new controller and leave the others where they are?  OpenSolaris
won''t card where the drives are physically connected as long as you
export/import.

-Jebnor

On Fri, 2009-06-19 at 16:21 -0700, Simon Breden wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I''m using 6 SATA ports from the motherboard but I''ve now
run out of SATA ports, and so I''m thinking of adding a Supermicro
AOC-SAT2-MV8 8-port SATA controller card.
> 
> What is the procedure for migrating the drives to this card?
> Is it a simple case of (1) issuing a ''zpool export
pool_name'' command, (2) shutdown, (3) insert card and move all SATA
cables for drives from mobo to card, (4) boot and issue a ''zpool import
pool_name'' command ?
> 
> Thanks,
> Simon
> 
> http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/
-- 
Louis-Fr?d?ric Feuillette <jebnor at gmail.com>

OK, thanks again Jeff.

Cheers,
Simon
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OK, that should work then, as my boot drive is currently an old IDE drive, which
I''m hoping to replace with a SATA SSD.
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> Working on the assumption that you are going to be adding more drives to
your server, why not just add the new drives to the Supermicro
controller and keep the existing pool (well vdev) where it is?

That''s not a bad idea. I just thought that the AOC-SAT2-MV8 has 2 more
SATA ports than my mobo (M2N-SLI Deluxe), and so it gives me room for another 2
drives, as I would prefer to keep the *data* zpool running from a single SATA
controller if possible, to help guarantee uniform & consistent behaviour.

Also, as the AOC-SAT2-MV8 has the same Marvell chipset as the Thumper, so
I''ve read, it should be a rock-solid solution.

Having said that, the existing on-motherboard SATA controller is powered by the
NVidia MCP55 chipset as far as I recall (mobo: NVidia 570 SLI chipset), and I
chose this as some Sun workstations also used it and so it seemed to be
supported.

Mirrored BOOT:
As an aside, my idea is to add 2 SSD drives as boot drives so I have a mirrored
ZFS boot environment (named rpool, right?) within OpenSolaris 2009.06, but I
need to read up a bit, as this may not even be possible right now, and I might
need to just use a single SSD as a boot drive now...

My idea would be to keep the boot SSD drive(s) powered by the exsisting
motherboard SATA controller, and move the existing data pool onto the
AOC-SAT2-MV8.

AOC-SAT2-MV8 or AOC-USAS-L8i ?:
I have to see if the AOC-SAT2-MV8 will work on the M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. I
know that the mobo doesn''t have PCI-X slots so I won''t be able
to run it at full speed, but I seem to remember people saying that it will work
in 32-bit mode, a bit slower, from a PCI Express 2.0 slot... but I need to check
this.
>From the supermicro site for the AOC-SAT2-MV8, I see that they
don''t list Solaris in the list of supported OSes, so I suppose the
drivers for this card/chipset are made by Sun?
One last point is that I''ve seen some people say that a possibly better
card than the AOC-SAT2-MV8 is the AOC-USAS-L8i, which uses PCIe. I have to check
with compatibility with this mobo though as it might not have PCIe. Just checked
Asus''s page for the M2N-SLI Deluxe mobo and it shows that it has the
following expansion slots:
2 x PCI Express x16 slot at x16, x8 speed 
Support NVIDIA?SLI? technology (both at x8 mode)
2 x PCI Express x1 
3 x PCI 2.2

So it looks like running the AOC-USAS-L8i in one of the "PCI Express
x16" slots might be a possibility too.

Any tips/advice greatfully received :)
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There are probably too many questions in my last post, so I will post the
questions as separate forum threads.
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