puithove 208 Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 (edited) What's a good 8 drive controller card under $200? I was looking at these: LSI and High Point I'll be plugging my 8 NAS drives into it. IBM 1015 is a good one. Can by default do hardware raid 0, 1, 10 or can be upgraded if you want raid 5. Or you can pass through raw drives (non-raid setup in card) so you can do software raid (my preference under Linux). There are different firmwares for different purposes so check into that. https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Serveraid-M1015-Controller-46M0831/dp/B0034DMSO6 - or you can often find them on ebay as people pull them from servers to put in upgraded / larger cards. You'd need two sets of the mini-SAS to SATA breakout cables. Edited November 7, 2016 by puithove Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Thanks. That looks good, and cheaper than the two I was looking at. I've started using drive pools, so I won't be using RAID, I just need extra ports and good transfer rates Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 (edited) What's a good 8 drive controller card under $200? I was looking at these: LSI and High Point I'll be plugging my 8 NAS drives into it. I strongly suggest you avoid the Highpoint cards especially if you are using them with Win 10 - i had three (all new same model as you are looking at!!!!!l) that are supposed to work with win 10 - nightmare of hassle over the last 6 weeks trying to get them to work consistently and together which is supported. Work well in linux just not windows. I have rma/sold two of them and gone with HP P410 (about £40 on ebay - loads about) and a HP sas expander as i have more than 8 disks - its what's in Boris running 24 disks - seen by win 2012R2 at install (assume it will work fine in win 10 as well) - you create the array using HP software (free to download) and then the disks are seen by Windows - if you want to pass them through as single disks (IIRC - you are going to use Drivepool) - just create a raid 0 for each disk. - if you go with the P410 make sure you get one with 256/512 meg of cache on the card otherwise it will limit the speed - i have gone for the battery as well but its not needed if you have a ups etc The IBM card is actually a re-branded LSI and a lot of people use them so would be fine as well The Dell H310 perc cards are good as well - not tried one myself though If you going with Drivepool check out their forums for controller people use Make sure the SAS breakout cables are Forward cables not reverse or you will be disappointed! Oh and if you still want to get a 2720SGL i have one left in its original box if you want to buy it only light use and one careful owner Basically i would go with a server raid card rather than a consumer one and usually if they have been around for a few years there are lots of cheap second hand ones you can pick up for buttons rather than paying 4-5 times the price for a new card - and if it does not work try another one and you will still have saved lots of mooooooooooooooooola Edited November 7, 2016 by PenkethBoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 (edited) That's great information, thanks. I've got a bit more research to do. I don't need it to be the best, just pretty good and stable. Right now, I'm just using a couple of 'regular' cards. I was looking for a bit of an upgrade when I build the rack. Edited November 7, 2016 by Doofus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 The card will be used in this; https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B007PW1GXG/ref=ox_sc_act_image_7?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3SQ9YFE6CSCS0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 I would do a bit of research on the Norco - ive heard a few people have issues with the backplane with some cards - oh and get some gloves the case is a tad on the sharp side apparently incidentally to just through in an alternative Boris's Lian-li case was about the same or slightly cheaper in price and has the potential to hold 37 disks with no mods other than drive cages in the front - and 45 would be an easy get as well - powering them might be the limit though - lol Oh and heeeeres Frankie Yes he is a tad battered and bent but Frankie likes 3.5 sata disks - just don't know yet if he likes ones more than a TB in size - if he does then bing! I have a storage server for £40 + disks - most of which i already have - and he has dual Opteron cpu's - not going to set the world alight in speed terms but more than enough for what i want. Have fun doing your research @ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 (edited) Nice! Looks like you're gonna have some fun with Frankie I chose that Norco because of the dual 5.25" drive bays. I'm going to get a fan controller to go in one and I have an optical drive to go in the other. My first choice was this one (it looks nicer), but the Norco has more of what I want. I'm not ready to order, yet. So I may still find something better. Does Boris have hot swap drive bays? Edited November 10, 2016 by Doofus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 Yes nice looking case have seen it or similar a few times. The thing that put me off buying a rack case was the amount of wasted space in a 4u case - not seen any innovative designs that have more options than the drives at the front and none internally - unless you go 2.5" where they put a couple round the back - actually i think Frankie supports this Oh and scratch the P410/P400 cards off your list as they are "only" raid cards so no smart or temp info gets to the OS - its in the HP software - but dont think its externally accessible by other apps - and DrivePool/Scanner cant get the data The Dell/IBM/LSI etc should be ok but make sure it says somewhere it supports HBA (Host Bus Adapter) to allow pass through - I assumed the HP did but it doesn't - not a problem for me as i can use it elsewhere or sell it. Questions - why optical in a server? and can you not get 3.5" fan controllers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 I'm not going out of my way to use an optical drive, I just have the one I took out of the present case, to make room for more HDDs. There may be a 3.5" fan controller, but I really like the one I've chosen, and it has great reviews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puithove 208 Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 One other thing I discovered recently is that TRIM isn't always passed even in HBA mode. I have a newer generation Adaptec (Microsemi?) 16-port card (it's what replaced my IBM M1015). Discovered the hard way that it wasn't passing TRIM through to the couple SSDs I had attached to it. No worries for me, I just attached them to the onboard SATA instead and use the HBA card for the spinning rust. Something to consider though if you're going to run SSD at any point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 This card is entirely for my NAS drives. The rest will be attached to the motherboard. Here's the fan controller I want. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KJGYLNM/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barat 27 Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 Hi, Here is my setup ... looks so tiny comparing to presented here, but I'm happy It's DS916+ 4x3TB SHR BTRFS + 2TB in USB3.0 for Hyper Backup of important files (pictures, documents) - all WD RED Previously I had HP N54L with Xpenology, but after two years I decided to pay Synology ... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 You decided to keep your goodies hidden, Huh? It's a neat setup. I love my tech. I'm always messing with it, so there it sits in front of me, lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barat 27 Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 Hidden + box has some "noise blocker matte" inside ... only HDDs generate noise when they intensively working Box can be taken out in 5s so it's nt a problem to "mess with server" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 Mine is too big to fit under a box, lol. I also have a lot of cabling, which I'll be tidying up at some point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 9, 2016 Share Posted November 9, 2016 One other thing I discovered recently is that TRIM isn't always passed even in HBA mode. I have a newer generation Adaptec (Microsemi?) 16-port card (it's what replaced my IBM M1015). Discovered the hard way that it wasn't passing TRIM through to the couple SSDs I had attached to it. No worries for me, I just attached them to the onboard SATA instead and use the HBA card for the spinning rust. Something to consider though if you're going to run SSD at any point. Ah yes nice catch did not think of that - but like you i have my ssd's on the m/b sata rather than the hba Also if you use SSD's in raid - be sure the software supports trim- some dont in some configs - Raid0 and Raid10 are generally ok but raid1/5/6 etc can be problematic or not supported Also make sure the write life is large if you use them a lot - i bought a couple of bottom end SSD as a test to see if they were any good - SK Hynix and 10% of the life has gone writing less than a 0.5TB of data and lots of "bad" sectors retired - admittedly i was using them as r/w cache for a raid6 array but in less then two months ( only on a backup server on say three - four hours a day) - is a bit pants to say the least - obviously they were cheap but still...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 9, 2016 Share Posted November 9, 2016 This card is entirely for my NAS drives. The rest will be attached to the motherboard. Here's the fan controller I want. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KJGYLNM/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER Nice - i think i like the last option best the one with the sliders Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 9, 2016 Share Posted November 9, 2016 Nice - i think i like the last option best the one with the sliders I watched a few YouTube videos, to see what the real world functionality was like. It works really well, and looks cool 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcook 266 Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 These are going to use a ton power, your better off to build new and get a i5 or i7 CPU then to use these old Xeons Well Frankie has not truned up yet but his donors have Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 Power not so much when i have finished with them as they will be water cooled and have no fans other than a couple for the ram/hdd. Biggest power draw is the 4 to 6 25w fans they each have - the xeons are in the 90W range but they will only pull that when a full chat - no different to the latest i5 or i7 which you cant get for £75 or less than the whole server cost each Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Never_More 19 Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 (edited) Not much of a Backup server compared to others on this thread, but i'm Happy with it- I just installed whs with drive pool(TY emby members for the advice) I wish I could show off my actual server. this is my backup server - I'm wondering why so many have racks servers. Its amazing how big some are I've worked in companies with smaller systems - lol - Yes it small and yes it needs work - I got the case from the last company I worked for, it's a small office server case. I have the drive bays pulled out for now Im waiting to add a 8tb and add it to the drive pool setup. I have all my drives in a drive cage in the first 3 3.5 slots. I use this cage to keep the drive nice and cool. Most of the stuff in this is either from hand me downs or stuff pulled from the HTPC server - My server is stuffed in the a cool master HTPC case. PLEASE - any advice or comments are welcome (good or Bad) Edited November 20, 2016 by Never_More Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 Not much of a Backup server compared to others on this thread, but i'm Happy with it- I just installed whs with drive pool(TY emby members for the advice) I wish I could show off my actual server. this is my backup server - I'm wondering why so many have racks servers. Its amazing how big some are I've worked in companies with smaller systems - lol - Yes it small and yes it needs work - I got the case from the last company I worked for, it's a small office server case. I have the drive bays pulled out for now Im waiting to add a 8tb and add it to the drive pool setup. I have all my drives in a drive cage in the first 3 3.5 slots. I use this cage to keep the drive nice and cool. Most of the stuff in this is either from hand me downs or stuff pulled from the HTPC server - My server is stuffed in the a cool master HTPC case. PLEASE - any advice or comments are welcome (good or Bad) I guess it really depends on your requirements. I'll be building a rack, soon. Do I need to? No...but I want to How much data do you have? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Never_More 19 Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 As of today I have 3600 or so Movies and TV shows - Its all stored on my HTPC in my living room - the drive in it are two 4TB drives. All the movies and TV is in the AVI,MKV,and Dvix formats. When I first started a movie server (2006) I didn't have much storage (250gb was my largest). so the formats I went with saved room. My HTPC setup is : Gigabyte P55A-UD3 w/ I7 860 NVIDA GeForce GTX 750 Samsung 65" Samsung Smart TV in both bedroom and liveing room (I have the TV app but still use the emby theator program). 16GB DDR3 10700 Mem 1gb lan As you can see it the photo - My backup server is an older motherboard BIOStar TZ77XE3 i5 3570 DDR3 - 8GB Mem 14tb Drivepool HDD (made up of the drives I have replaced upgraded my HTPC) Im torn - I realy like the Biostar MB it has onbord HDMI 7.1 audio with THX. Im wondering if it would be a better MB to use for my HTPC. ????? So far the most streaming I have had is 5 at one time- all the same movie - with no problem. I'm just curious why so big of rack would be needed- is it like me - The more the bigger the better - Yes my system isnt all that big or the best - but I was curios why so big lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest asrequested Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 As of today I have 3600 or so Movies and TV shows - Its all stored on my HTPC in my living room - the drive in it are two 4TB drives. All the movies and TV is in the AVI,MKV,and Dvix formats. When I first started a movie server (2006) I didn't have much storage (250gb was my largest). so the formats I went with saved room. My HTPC setup is : Gigabyte P55A-UD3 w/ I7 860 NVIDA GeForce GTX 750 Samsung 65" Samsung Smart TV in both bedroom and liveing room (I have the TV app but still use the emby theator program). 16GB DDR3 10700 Mem 1gb lan As you can see it the photo - My backup server is an older motherboard BIOStar TZ77XE3 i5 3570 DDR3 - 8GB Mem 14tb Drivepool HDD (made up of the drives I have replaced upgraded my HTPC) Im torn - I realy like the Biostar MB it has onbord HDMI 7.1 audio with THX. Im wondering if it would be a better MB to use for my HTPC. ????? So far the most streaming I have had is 5 at one time- all the same movie - with no problem. I'm just curious why so big of rack would be needed- is it like me - The more the bigger the better - Yes my system isnt all that big or the best - but I was curios why so big lol Rack server boxes can usually hold more drives with hot swap capability. Using so many drives allows for greater redundancy. I've switched to drive pooling and have enabled backup. I presently have two pools. a 5.6TB and a 29.1TB. The big one has 8 4TB drives which is able to spread the data out. I have 12 drives at present. The server box I intend to buy holds 16, which will allow me to expand the smaller pool and enable backup for that. In my case, the other reason I'm moving to a rack is that I want to consolidate my hardware. I'll mount the switch, the HTPC, the server box, the PDU and my AVR all in one place. Less cabling and more manageable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PenkethBoy 2063 Posted November 21, 2016 Share Posted November 21, 2016 @@Never_More Hi i already had a big case for my primary store (Lian-Li P-343B) and a 8 Bay NAS - the NAS had been fine but putting all my movies on to it was filling it up fast - got the lian-li as a replacement to swap roles round so nas is backup and Boris (Lian-Li) becomes primary. Also i had been waiting for 10g to become more affordable and ended up getting some business/enterprise grade switches - backups were taking too long - well i thought so anyway So I went with a rack as i wanted to .... 1. Mount the switches properly 2. Boris would fit nicely in the bottom of a rack - keeps cable management easier etc 3. I made the mistake of watching some videos from https://www.youtube.com/user/SirNetrom1/featured 4. Always wanted to mess around with some servers of my own and for that you need a rack to mount them if you have more than one - see pictures in previous posts 5. as Doofus said because i can etc It is a good way to consolidate all you kit in one place and make things a bit tidier etc ...... The other half my give you the "look" occasionally when something big arrives but i am sure you have your BS excuses well practised by now Your case looks like it could take a few more HDD/SSD if you got a cheap LSI 9211 you could have 8 disks plus the sata controllers you already have - might have to upgrade the PSU though - if its just used for backup then the existing board should be fine - if not a bit more ram and a better cpu cooler to allow a bit of overclocking would prolong the life for another year or two A warning though once you get the hardware bug there is no going back as Doofus has found Anyway what ever you may do have fun! T Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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