Project: Galaxy 4.75

gjvrieze said:
I actually was/am going to buy Ockie's card, I just want it for the ports, nothing else, is it at least fast enough to do backup to 1 drive at a time in JBOD mode....???

That is one thing, I do not get why you guys like those Supermicro mobos so much, I just bought an Asus board with almost the same specs for $305, less the fact that all the connectors line so well in that Supermicro case.. I hate consumer Asus mobos, but their server lineup works very well..... just curious, not looking to start a brand fight!!!
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Supermicro boards are "industrial strength", pure and simple. If you go into higher end colocation and data center facilities, it's not uncommon to see rows upon rows of Supermicro based systems. You wouldn't exactly see Asus boards taking up 5 racks of 42 x 1U servers per rack. Not a knock on Asus but they're very well regarded in the industry for server applications.

Would a person be likely to see any major difference between a Supermicro and cheaper alternatives in day-to-day use? Probably not, but I've got "peace of mind" knowing corners weren't cut by Supermicro to increase profit margin by employing such tricks as lower end components, cheaper voltage regs, etc
 
gjvrieze said:
I actually was/am going to buy Ockie's card, I just want it for the ports, nothing else, is it at least fast enough to do backup to 1 drive at a time in JBOD mode....???
Click to expand...

It's fast enough for those tasks, it's just no Areca. Once my backing up completes, I plan on flashing it to the latest revision (apparently it addresses the speed issues).

gjvrieze said:
That is one thing, I do not get why you guys like those Supermicro mobos so much, I just bought an Asus board with almost the same specs for $305, less the fact that all the connectors line so well in that Supermicro case.. I hate consumer Asus mobos, but their server lineup works very well..... just curious, not looking to start a brand fight!!!
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Once you use a supermicro board, you will never go back. Also, most if not all of their products are made right here in the USA, I know my case and board was made here which gives me fuzzies inside, lol

The other boards are also good and nothing is wrong with them, but when you want the best, you go supermicro. I try to stick to supermicro also for other reasons such as their IPMI management... which is top notch.


odditory said:
Supermicro boards are "industrial strength", pure and simple. If you go into higher end colocation and data center facilities, it's not uncommon to see rows upon rows of Supermicro based systems. You wouldn't exactly see Asus boards taking up 5 racks of 42 x 1U servers per rack. Not a knock on Asus but they're very well regarded in the industry for server applications.

Would a person be likely to see any major difference between a Supermicro and cheaper alternatives in day-to-day use? Probably not, but I've got "peace of mind" knowing corners weren't cut by Supermicro to increase profit margin by employing such tricks as lower end components, cheaper voltage regs, etc
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While I don't have any supermicro systems in my data center, I can say that it's still a popular choice for others. Some of the other facilities are stacked with supermicro products. Supermicro actually OEM's out to larger vendors such as Dell, HP, etc so they have a great track record.
 
Ockie said:
It's fast enough for those tasks, it's just no Areca. Once my backing up completes, I plan on flashing it to the latest revision (apparently it addresses the speed issues).
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Ok, I would like to hear if the firmware update helps, I still have not nailed down specs on my backup server, too busy with the main server..


Once you use a supermicro board, you will never go back. Also, most if not all of their products are made right here in the USA, I know my case and board was made here which gives me fuzzies inside, lol

The other boards are also good and nothing is wrong with them, but when you want the best, you go supermicro. I try to stick to supermicro also for other reasons such as their IPMI management... which is top notch.
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Ah, I did not know that they are made in the USA, that is great!!....

I will go Supermicro next time to just get similar with them, but were recommendations go, I am very happy with the server products from Asus, whereas their home mobos have been nothign but issues for me....


While I don't have any supermicro systems in my data center, I can say that it's still a popular choice for others. Some of the other facilities are stacked with supermicro products. Supermicro actually OEM's out to larger vendors such as Dell, HP, etc so they have a great track record.
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Cool, I was wondering what Dell and HP were doing on their servers.....
 
What are thoughts on this Adaptec controller card for WHS where you just need ports and no RAID?
 
nitrobass24 said:
How is that better it doesnt offer anything that the adaptec doesnt have...and it has half as many ports....plus its more expensive.
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It's also PCIE, not an option for some older boards, especially for the backup systems.
 
nitrobass24 said:
How is that better it doesnt offer anything that the adaptec doesnt have...and it has half as many ports....plus its more expensive.
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It's SAS, which adds to the cost some, but it does allow one to use expanders. Combined with a chassis like this (yes, I know it's expensive) it's pretty convenient. For people like me who believe software raid has potential to not suck, it's a great card :p
Ockie said:
It's also PCIE, not an option for some older boards, especially for the backup systems.
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True, but if you're willing to get a desktop board it's cheaper to get PCI express than PCI-X.
 
alan.p said:
That machine looks like it would be acomplete nightmare to maintain or troubleshoot. Not to mention 47 drives holding a mere 12TB... horribly inefficient, you could have thirteen drives holding that much.
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Agreed. You could now replace it with 8 drives (1.5tb drives) and you could fit all of those 8 drives in a SFF case. :D

unhappy_mage said:
It's SAS, which adds to the cost some, but it does allow one to use expanders. Combined with a chassis like this (yes, I know it's expensive) it's pretty convenient. For people like me who believe software raid has potential to not suck, it's a great card :p
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I have been eyeing that case for quite some time now.
 
hahahaha, thats true, your electric bill must not be cheap. BTW happy 10,000 post to me!
 
unhappy_mage said:
It's SAS, which adds to the cost some, but it does allow one to use expanders. Combined with a chassis like this (yes, I know it's expensive) it's pretty convenient. For people like me who believe software raid has potential to not suck, it's a great card :p
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Why would you get a 16-bay Supermicro for $962 (especially when the 24-bay version is about $20 more) when you can get a Norco 4020 on Newegg for $289?
 
odditory said:
Why would you get a 16-bay Supermicro for $962 (especially when the 24-bay version is about $20 more) when you can get a Norco 4020 on Newegg for $289?
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Because it has a SAS expander (and a power supply, for that matter). That means you get to use one cable to connect all of your disks. A small benefit, perhaps, but one I think I'd be willing to pay for, depending on the application.

The 24-disk version is out now, but it's significantly more expensive ($1280).
 
unhappy_mage said:
Because it has a SAS expander (and a power supply, for that matter). That means you get to use one cable to connect all of your disks. A small benefit, perhaps, but one I think I'd be willing to pay for, depending on the application.

The 24-disk version is out now, but it's significantly more expensive ($1280).
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24 disk one is even more tempting.


Odditory, you can take 5 of these cases and run them off one controller... probably will give you some ideas :p
 
Ockie said:
24 disk one is even more tempting.
Odditory, you can take 5 of these cases and run them off one controller... probably will give you some ideas :p
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How would that work? What kind of controller? What kind of cables?
Any Areca controller that could pull it off?
 
Faldaani said:
How would that work? What kind of controller? What kind of cables?
Any Areca controller that could pull it off?
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A SAS controller that supports expanders would do. The 1680 series Arecas claim to support expanders, although I've never seen anyone using them in conjunction with expanders. 128 disks is not too shabby, though ;)
 
Mm, seems to be a bit hard to actually _FIND_ any expanders... a nice little breakout box that one could put in a corner of the case or something would be sweet :p
 
Faldaani said:
Mm, seems to be a bit hard to actually _FIND_ any expanders... a nice little breakout box that one could put in a corner of the case or something would be sweet :p
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Thats why it makes this supermico case so rare :)

Other units which uses sas expanders are fairly expensive, there are some cheap units out there, but you are basically looking at $700+ for 12 drives... and go up drastically from there.
 
Faldaani said:
Mm, seems to be a bit hard to actually _FIND_ any expanders... a nice little breakout box that one could put in a corner of the case or something would be sweet :p
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They exist - the Chenbro 12801, for example, but they're remarkably expensive because they're such low-volume parts. $280 for 16 ports.

Note that the SAS replacement backplane for the Supermicro cases Ockie et al. have is also available separately. $460 for 24 disks.
 
unhappy_mage said:
A SAS controller that supports expanders would do. The 1680 series Arecas claim to support expanders, although I've never seen anyone using them in conjunction with expanders. 128 disks is not too shabby, though ;)
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ARC-1680 = suck... no SAS expander support... I bought it along with a CSE-M28E2 and it didn't see the drives :mad:

I've since switched to an Adaptec 5805 and 8x Maxtor 15K drives and haven't looked back (can't beat a 700MB/s array for my main box :D)
 
So I have decided, I am going to go with the norco case and swap this system out. I just can't stand not having activity leds built in and I would be very happy with a rackmount solution. I am also going to shop around for a better controller.
 
Ockie said:
So I have decided, I am going to go with the norco case and swap this system out. I just can't stand not having activity leds built in and I would be very happy with a rackmount solution. I am also going to shop around for a better controller.
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_AGAIN_?

Yikes. Whats wrong with the Areca this time? =)
 
Faldaani said:
_AGAIN_?

Yikes. Whats wrong with the Areca this time? =)
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4.75 uses an older Adaptec controller. I want to go with something that is at least RAID 5 that can support larger than 2tb volumes.
 
Oh, my bad.. =)

Am trying to get 2 Norco RPC-4020's shipped to Europe myself... Will see how that goes :/
 
Damnit. I'm getting the norco case too. :) I wanted to wait to tell until I could get the addonics port multipliers in though.
 
Ockie said:
4.75 uses an older Adaptec controller. I want to go with something that is at least RAID 5 that can support larger than 2tb volumes.
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I just picked up an Adaptec 31605 PCIe 16 port SAS for $345 on eBay. Haven't checked if it supports over 2TB array, I certainly hope it does. :-D
 
deaddawg said:
I just picked up an Adaptec 31605 PCIe 16 port SAS for $345 on eBay. Haven't checked if it supports over 2TB array, I certainly hope it does. :-D
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That was a good price, it is pretty new controller, 2TB+ should not be a concern.......
 
deaddawg said:
I just picked up an Adaptec 31605 PCIe 16 port SAS for $345 on eBay. Haven't checked if it supports over 2TB array, I certainly hope it does. :-D
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I hope there's nothing wrong with that controller, since it sells for more than twice the price new. In general stay away from ads that say "I have no way to test this" because 99.99% of the time it's crap (most people with a specialized part like a raid controller in their hands can't suddenly play stupid and act like they've never seen the inside of a computer before).

I'm a fan of the Adaptec 5 series, since it's got one of the fastest IOP chips on the market, dualcore 1.2Ghz Intel IOP, which as a sidenote the Areca 1680ix series also has, and yes it definitely has 2Tb+ support. I run a 24-port Areca 5-series card at home and several 24-port, 16-port, 12-port and 8-port versions at work.

The only major gripe I have with Adaptec right now is the maximum of 16 drives per array. Obviously only a problem if you run a 24-port card, or any card with an SAS expander, but they promise a bios upgrade.

You're going to be all set with that 16 port Adaptec card - because of that fast IOP chip the build/rebuild/init times as well as Raid5 and Raid6 WRITE performance are amazing (read performance goes without saying, and having write performance = read performance for raid5 and raid6 is something new with the XOR/IOP chip having gotten as fast as they are now - it's put the throughput bottleneck back in the harddisks' court).
 
Ockie said:
So I have decided, I am going to go with the norco case and swap this system out. I just can't stand not having activity leds built in and I would be very happy with a rackmount solution. I am also going to shop around for a better controller.
Click to expand...

Good move - for an "archival" system. I keep having to stop myself from thinking of component selection in "best practice / server class" terms since that only drives the overall price of a backup system up. As far as all the talk about SAS expanders in this thread, yeah they're sexy, but they're not in line with the low cost requirement of a backup/archival system. If it comes time to expand my main data arrays on the expensive array controllers then I'll look at SAS expanders again.

As far as controller, I too am in the market for the cheapest path that utilizes the least amount of multiport SATA cards. It has to be PCIe (don't want to use a legacy motherboard or an expensive new motherboard and that's the only way to PCI-X) and no less than 8 ports. The Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8I 8-port card looks interesting at the $125 pricepoint as far as buying new, but not sure how three of them would gel on a motherboard.

And then ofcourse there's keeping eyes open on ebay.

If only someone made a 8, 16 or 24 port PCIe card with strictly JBOD functionality, for all the people that want to let software handle redundancy/striping!
 
odditory said:
Good move - for an "archival" system. I keep having to stop myself from thinking of component selection in "best practice / server class" terms since that only drives the overall price of a backup system up. As far as all the talk about SAS expanders in this thread, yeah they're sexy, but they're not in line with the low cost requirement of a backup/archival system. If it comes time to expand my main data arrays on the expensive array controllers then I'll look at SAS expanders again.

As far as controller, I too am in the market for the cheapest path that utilizes the least amount of multiport SATA cards. It has to be PCIe (don't want to use a legacy motherboard or an expensive new motherboard and that's the only way to PCI-X) and no less than 8 ports. The Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8I 8-port card looks interesting at the $125 pricepoint as far as buying new, but not sure how three of them would gel on a motherboard.

And then ofcourse there's keeping eyes open on ebay.

If only someone made a 8, 16 or 24 port PCIe card with strictly JBOD functionality, for all the people that want to let software handle redundancy/striping!
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http://cgi.ebay.ca/Adaptec-31605-16...ryZ90716QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
pc299 said:
couldn't resist, I picked one up for my next server build
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Cool, God, the number of servers here on [h] has like gone nuts in the last 6 months, prolly because of Ockie, he is the best advertising that they "could" buy!!!!
 
gjvrieze said:
Cool, God, the number of servers here on [h] has like gone nuts in the last 6 months, prolly because of Ockie, he is the best advertising that they "could" buy!!!!
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I would agree... it has spiked. I got followers. The only sucky part about leading is that you need to be ahead... and might I add that those 1tb drives at ZZF right now on sale are looking mightly tempting. Now if my dream case will just come down from that ridiculous price.

Anyways, I ordered the norco case.
 
deaddawg said:
http://cgi.ebay.ca/Adaptec-31605-16...ryZ90716QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Click to expand...

Not sure what the point is - $345 for 16 ports is a higher cost per port than $125 for a new Supermicro 8-port card. I've used a 31605 card before (still have one) - meh.

I'm thinking more and more about just keeping a look out for an older Areca card on ebay as my multi-port card of choice for an backup/archival system. Why? Non-destructive pass-through capability is why. Let's say you have a harddisk pre-fomatted with data on it, and you want the array controller to just treat it like the SATA controller on a motherboard would treat it - you connect it and it comes up in Windows and data is still intact with nothing written to the disk. With an Areca controller you set the drive as "pass through" and it does what I described.

In the case of Adaptec, if you try to set a drive as a standalone, say goodbye to the data because it initializes the disk as if it were a single-disk raid0 array. Even the latest 5-series Adaptec cards behave this way, and tech support doesn't seem too concerned about changing it.

The ability to add/remove individual pre-formatted disks to and from an array controller without data being affected and with the ability to connect it to any other PC and have it come up with data intact is key.
 
Dell doesn't use supermicro, atleast not in the tower servers, its foxconn
 
gjvrieze said:
Cool, God, the number of servers here on [h] has like gone nuts in the last 6 months, prolly because of Ockie, he is the best advertising that they "could" buy!!!!
Click to expand...

I've been building servers long before I knew about the Galaxies, just not quite on the scale as Ockie (because I don't have that much spare cash to burn through :()

This is my main server: http://www.commie.cn/boxes/Juarez.htm
VMWare server: http://www.commie.cn/boxes/Puta.htm
Old 1U that I haven't had the heart to get rid of yet: http://www.commie.cn/boxes/Jose.htm

I have everything in an APC Netshelter 42U rack, KVM, 2U LCD/Keyboard setup, Dell 2724 and 2324 switches, etc.

My next build will probably use the same 4U, hopefully a decent Supermicro board, 2x Harpertowns, 8GB FBDIMMs, Adaptec 31605, 16x1TB drives, PCP&C 1KW PSU, etc. Hopefully going to have enough cash to do it by Christmas, or whenever I run out of space in my existing server (down to 2.1TB free now)
 
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