As always a great source of information. Just on the PERC H330/ signaling you discuss at about 10:45 - I ordered the H330 plus the cables from your ebay store as I was originally going to also try and source the extra bay + backplane for my R720 ( and didn't really care about the warning lights etc.) . It turned out to be a lot harder to find the backplane for an R720 where I am than the one for an R730 so I got that, a compatible cable, and some used SAS-3 SSD for my upgrade. So for anyone else thinking about this and in the same boat the 8 bay R730 backplane with the flashed H330 the Art of Server sells works great with no warnings. Just be aware the R730 backplane also uses SFF-8643 so you need an SFF 8643 to SFF-8643 cable. Couldn't be happier with the upgrade - thanks for the inspiration.
This was GREAT! I just bought an r820 and this video helped a lot to figure out how to get the faster SAS3 storage to work. I'm going to run a four-port -16i and split the front SAS into 8 + 8. I only have a single 8 now. :)
In regards to the crash you experienced: rather than the CPU being faulty since it work working before, more likely the culprit would be the thing that supplies the power to all the components: the PSU. If the PSU isn't powerful enough or if it has lost efficiency over time, it may not be able to power all the components and the upgrade as well.
that's very possible. i haven't had enough time to work on this machine since these videos... but when I do, I'll look at that possibility. thanks for sharing!
@Art of Server - congrats for yet another top notch video. Obviously if one thinks this thru, especially this upgrade is worth the effort anyway, given the huge speed differentials from SAS3 over SAS2 drives. I recently did some benchmarking on a different platform (Supermicro SC745) where I modded the backplane (743A instead of 743TQ) and upgraded the controller to a LSI based SAS3 model (think it was a Lenovo). According to my results, the more recent chips - e.g. SAS3408 give extra speed, easily 10-15%, even to SAS2 drives over the older designs e.g. SAS2308 etc. Also big thanks for the astute warning on the improper H330 HBA card (I guess your warning pertains to all these Hx30 cards, HBA or RAID) due to issues with SIDEBAND signalling. I recently did something like this with a Supermicro backplane and it was certainly worth the effort and cost.
This is exactly what I did with my Dell R720 after watching this video. Thank you for sharing it. The only thing I would suggest is to use a proper benchmarking software such as phoronix test suite. They are more accurate at performance testing.
Thanks for your thoughts. Phoronix is great, but a bit more complex to run. And in reality, it just a "benchmark manager" that runs other benchmarks. I wanted to show something that was quick and easy for someone else to follow. For I/O benchmarks, I like iozone and bonnie++.
Performance objectives are different for different use cases. Some use cases focus on IOPS, some on throughput, so it really depends on what your needs are and what applications will run on top of that storage. Although not focused on "performance", I do have series of videos covering some out of the ordinary use cases for ZFS in this playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PL28eVGz5vFQ8UuSvDykut1Ro8cKvhroNt.html
Great video. I'm currently setting up HPE DL385G10+ machines with SAS3 SSDs where the bottleneck for the throughput was the HBA controller PCI3 bus. I'm looking forward for your NVME benchmarks.
@@ArtofServer To overcome the bottleneck of the HPE provided PCI Gen 3 controller, I bought the Broadcom 9560-16i (PCI Gen4, 8 lanes). I know it's Raid controller but according to the documentation it can be easily switched between HBA/Raid with a CLI command. My drives are Toshiba SAS3 SSDs 1.6TB (PX04SVQ160) which according to the specs are able to saturate the SAS3 bandwidth (1.2GB/s) with 1.5GB/s sequential reads. I have 8 of these in Raid10 now on the old controller, but I'll be switching it to some form of RAIDz. Maybe mirrored vdevs of RAIDz2. This projects takes very long as the biggest problem was to get a cable to connect SFF-8654 8i (host) to SFF-8087 4i (backplane). They had to be custom made as nobody offers such cables yet on the market.
@@ArtofServer I like to binge some and you have much better programming than most TV stations! :-) Thanks for taking the time to make them vids. Have a gr day.
Very great video! As alwys. I also like that you let the upsi with the 1.5TB RAM in it. What I would have found VERY interessting to se a compare linux raid5 and raid6 against the zfs. Maybe a followup video ;)
That result has my interest in the systems architecture. There is a limit. Of I think 5.6g on old CPU "paths" which seems to be a limit. If the build is "per CPU" then you could be limited to the single speed/ lanes available I get around 8.6 but my limit is higher. 4.5gb is normal. But should we not include a cached system as this is generally how they should be configured. Obviously not when testing drives. Tbh not impressive speeds, I can push and pull 375mbs on SATA 300. (Raptors) seagate spinners have a single rate of 180mb (very model dependent) in a tri array would. 540mbs (520 real) You could put sas 3 drives into sas 2 bay and you should get performance just from a drive change.
I am starting my own home lab. Dell R710 seem a low cost used server. Or would you recommend R720? My goal is to improve my education and experience so I could work remotely. Three years ago my lower spine was injured. My most recent surgery has helped but limited to working from home. Great video thank you for sharing your experience and expertise.
If you are not able to lift the server much due to the injury, and might need to move it around during your self-education, you might consider a lighter server. Like one of the 1U offerings. It might depend on what you need...
Great video, with one small drawback. Please film with your camera on a tripod, the fpv shaking of your camera as you talk was literally making me seasick.
@Art of Server - Thank you for this informative video. I have a Dell R720 with a 3.5 inch (x8) SAS/SATA backplane. Backplane DP/N: 0Y4HYG. Is this an eligible Direct Attach Backplane to use with an LSI 9341-8i or 9300-8i for 12G SAS3 speeds? If not, is there a such drop-in replacement backplane that performs the direct attach function?
Hi, Thank you for your 3 vidéos.. I'm about viewing, and about 8.30 you said that is not possible to apply the upgrade if the 16SFF if they are not directely attached (I have 16 SFFs model). Is there any way to know how SSFs are done. In fact, I'm buying a used R820 and what I have is the tag service number and some photos. I want to be sure that it well work. Have you some ideas to check? Thanks.
I wouldn't rely just on the svc tag, because that just tells you factory condition, not what the system currently has. Get the part numbers for the backplane. I can them check on that part number to see if it has expander or not. Or, if you can look at the backplane, if it has a heatsink, that's usually the SAS expander chip under it, so that would not work for this type of upgrade. No heatsink usually means no SAS expander so it is directly attached backplane.
@@ArtofServer Hi, Thank you for your reply. I sent you a pic I have of the server on your facebook account. Can you have a look on? Thank you in advance.
32:52 Have you checked all the rams in case any of them to be different voltage than the others . Had countless out of voltage range messages and by change noticed one dim to be ddr3L (1.35v) whilt all the others were dd3 (1.5v).By changing that dimm all errors went away. Else the ladder goes psu or mobo and then cpu
Hey, I have a dell r820 that I need 3.5" drives in. Can I swap all of the components from the r820 to an r720 8 bay 3.5" chassis including the motherboard and ram riser?
I am wondering if those cables could fit the distance with the second hdd cage and not the first one you are using. What length do they have in mm or cm? (Nah found the answer at least to my second question on you ebay store : connectors that is 0.8-meter, or 31-inches long.)
Hi I have Dell R730xd with 24 front bay 2.5” drive and two rear 2.5” drives. Can existing SAS be upgraded to SAS3? I need high speed storage like 7000MBps or more speed.
The R730XD is already SAS-3 based if you're using the integrated "mini" controller. However, SAS-3 won't get you the 7000MB/s speeds.. that requires NVMe. I don't know if it is available for the "XD" version, but there is a NVMe upgrade kit for the R730 that you might want to look into. The other alternative is to get NVMe drives plugged directly into the PCIe slots. R730XD should support PCIe bifurcation so you could even use those x16 quad M.2 adapter boards and get some PM981A NVMe drives.
Could the performance difference of the single SSD tests actually be related to using different SSDs? Most of the test results would't saturate a 6Gbps SAS2 link. A SAS2 link would only bottleneck the sequential 4k read. Maybe re-run the tests with the SAS3 SSDs connected to a SAS2 HBA?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. That said, I think a 6Gbps/SAS-2 link can bottleneck the 1MB record read more than 4k. The 4k test is more likely to hit a IOPS limit before it hits the bandwidth limit.
@@ArtofServer 6Gbps is 768MB/s and only the IOZone 1M reads exceeded that. If you assume that 768MB/s is 'theoretical' and that the real number is a little lower due to overhead, then the rest of the tests that were in the ~650MB/s range could have been somewhere in the range of a SAS2 links 'real' limit. But SAS3 12Gbps works out to 1.536GB/s. Usually, especially these days, and ESPECIALLY with spinning disks (not quite as much with SSDs), the IOPS and read/write speeds are limited by the drive, not the link. Perhaps another test to see if it's the IOPs limit of the drive would be to transfer a HUGE file from on eSSD to another. Say 100GB, and see what kind of throughput you get. One big file straight copied from one SSD to another should saturate a SAS2 link somewhere between 650MB/s and 768MB/s, and a SAS3 link at something close to 1.5GB/s, provided both the read and write speeds of the SSDs can keep up. I have saturated 10Gb Ethernet links transferring large files from one large array to another more than once so the same kind of transfer should saturate the SAS link if the SSDs can keep up.
if the backplane you have is direct attached, meaning there's no SAS expander chip and you have number of SAS lanes matching number of drive bays exactly, then very likely yes you can do the same SAS-3 "upgrade" hack I showed in this video. I've done it on Supermicro and Dell servers, but not HP, so YMMV.
@@ArtofServer thanks for answering, if you don't mind me dig a bit more info from you. there are bunch of R270 and R280 that have mix configuration of CPU. some are gen 1 or v1 (no v1) and some are gen2 or v2 CPU. can we simply swap out CPUs from say 2630 to 2630v2, does the bios/firmware support them?
Usually, systems that support E5-2600(v1) series CPUs also support E5-2600(v2) CPUs, but require a BIOS update before the upgrade. However, some early motherboards don't have sufficient hardware to support the v2 CPUs, so YMMV. See my video about the X9DRi-LN4F+ motherboard as an example.
Yes, the card used in this video is also in IT mode. It is a SAS-3 generation HBA card with LSI IT mode firmware on it. If you're interested in it, link is in the description.
@@ArtofServer Thank you for the quick answer! Question, is the original H710 a SAS-2 version then? Would you recommend the card (Dell WFN6R 9341-8i with SAS-3 IT) in this video for JBODs then? I have a GPU on a PCI line already in my r820, can two of these cards(Dell WFN6R 9341-8i with SAS-3 IT) run on the same PCI lane? Thank you!
There are different configurations with different backplanes. The 4-bay and 8-bay models are usually direct attached backplanes. The 10-bay model I think is a SAS expander backplane.
Hi, In the case of a R820 with 2 x8-bay (so direct attached, no expander), witch card to use? I don't think there is 9341-16i card. What can be the solution? Thank you in advance.
For the 8-bay in the middle of the chassis, I would recommend the setup shown in this video. For the 2nd 8-bay backplane on the right (facing the front of the server), I would recommend the same controller in one of the right side PCIe slots on the riser. I don't know what length cable you would need, as I have not done that type of setup first hand, but you can measure and figure it out. You could consider a -16i SAS controller card, but most of them are still PCIe 3.0 x8, and with fast 12Gbps/SAS-3 SSDs, I think you will bottleneck at the PCIe bus, so I think the better approach, if you want to extract the most performance, is to use 2x -8i controllers to give each backplane it's own PCIe bandwidth. Good question. Thanks for watching!
@@ArtofServer Hi, Thank you. So I will put 2 cards. 1. Just to be sure, even I have 2 cards, I can manage all 16 drives in raid as I want (for example can I make a raid 5 on 9 physical drives, it's just an example). 2. I saw in some cards, they comes with a battery to prevent cache data to be lost). The 9341 we are using in tutor, doesn't. So I want to ask: is it really necessary to have such batteries? 3. Thank you a lot :)
@@TheCoribo I'm concerned there might be a language barrier and something in lost in translation here. But, just to be clear, my videos and various discussions are usually about IT mode SAS controllers, which are also known as HBA. These do NOT have RAID functionality. They are meant to be used with software RAID technologies, often like ZFS, unraid, storage spaces, etc. In such a card, you do not have cache on the HBA card, and therefor do not need a battery. On a true hardware RAID card, you do have cache that is volatile, and therefor, you need a battery or some other mechanism to protect that data if power is suddenly loss or the system resets (kernel panic, blue screen, etc.)
@@TheCoribo you canmake a raid 5, just do not configure the raid in the controller, you will have to make a raid 5 with software like MDADM or RAIDZ1 (raid5 zfs) or RAIDZ2 (raid6 ZFS)
I have a r720 8LFF; it comes with two SAS-2 front disks already. With your upgrade (SA3 controller+cables), can I populate the remaining drive bays with SAS-3 disks ? Ie, the SAS3 controller controlling a mix of SAS2 and SAS3 front disks .. rgds.
hI - I have a R720 question that I'm hoping you will solve for me - I want to run freenas or similar as a VM on a 720 with a 710 perc - how do I pass the use of the spare disks to the VM - I'm new to servers and trying to learn as I go. Any help will be hugely appreciated. Keep up the excellent work on the channel
@@ArtofServer I created 4 virtual disks through the PERC 710 when I bought the server, I then installed ESXI 7.0. I Then created a data store on one of the virtual disks and installed open media vault, allocating it 128gb drive space. OMV can’t see the remaining 3 disks that ESXI can see, I need to understand how to allocate one or more of them to OMV Hope this makes sense Thanks
@@meandthemrs896 Your OMV VM doesn't have direct access to your storage controller, so it will not see any other VD in the RAID controller. if you want the VM to see that storage, you need to present that storage from the host to the VM in some way.
@@TheCoribo can't really answer that. Functionally as a SAS controller, yes it is likely to work as that, although I haven't confirmed how difficult it maybe to convert that card to HBA mode. The biggest unknown is really the mechanicals, how does it fit? Does it allow enough room to run the cabling? Will it require certain type of connectors, such as right angle connectors? Some of which maybe difficult to find. All of those factors are unknown to me.
Hi, I'm waiting for my R820 .. it will be delivred tomorow. In the meantime, I want to ask you if passing to SAS3 will change the max storage of 16Tb? Thank you.
@@ArtofServer Hi, If I understand, it will have also limitation of 16Tb. But I read at ITCreation web site this: "This server supports up to 16TB of storage with sixteen front accessible, hot-swap 2.5-inch SAS, SATA, nearline SAS or SSD hard drives. Although, the release of 2TB SSDs has doubled the storage capacity to 32 TB" What do you think?
@@TheCoribo yeah, other places tell you the max they can sell you, basically marketing. I try to share what is technically possible, not what I can sell.
I tried this (sorta) using the 12xlff r720 and a pcie dell h730p, more looking for 4kn support. I feel my error is more in the h730, but it shows a backplane unknown error and doesnt seem to allow me to create any new vds. But it imported my foreign config fine, any ideas guys?
There's no point in upgrading to SAS-3 controller on the 12LFF backplane as that is a SAS-2 expander backplane so it will force the controller to negotiate to SAS-2 speeds anyway.
@@ArtofServer i did it to support 4kn drives actually, im just curious if theres a way to fix this unknown error. I got the controller to work and the vdisks all work following what you did in the video. My next thought is can i swap the 730xd backplane into my r720
I have the rx720xd with 24 bay, has anyone try to upgrade the backplane to support sas3? I was look around and think about try it because the parts look similar online but it hard to tell it if will fit.
the 720XD has a SAS-2 expander backplane, it will never be able to support SAS-3. as mentioned in these videos, you must have a direct attached backplane for this SAS-3 "hack" to work.
@@ArtofServer I did see that in the video, I was wonder if I could swap out the backplane for another. It look like the 730 may fit, I look at it quickly this morning before work. I was just look to see if anyone try this before I do.
@@ArtofServer I got the r730xd backplane in and was able to install. I had to remove some little tabs on the ends, they had no circuits in them. all the connectors are the same but the power. it seems dell change up the power connector a bit. it looks like they may have combined 2 in to one. i have to look in to the pinout and see how i can make it work.
If you constantly admit that dd is not a great benchmark. Why then using it in almost all videos. And if you are running into the cache you can scratch everything anyway. Sorry, your tests are often not very realistic and therefore reliable. Clickbait? Maybe not. Maybe yes.
![Forbidden Arts of ZFS | committing the greatest sin & getting away with it [Hardware RAID with ZFS]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/S_YN1vluLws/mqdefault.jpg)
As always a great source of information. Just on the PERC H330/ signaling you discuss at about 10:45 - I ordered the H330 plus the cables from your ebay store as I was originally going to also try and source the extra bay + backplane for my R720 ( and didn't really care about the warning lights etc.) . It turned out to be a lot harder to find the backplane for an R720 where I am than the one for an R730 so I got that, a compatible cable, and some used SAS-3 SSD for my upgrade. So for anyone else thinking about this and in the same boat the 8 bay R730 backplane with the flashed H330 the Art of Server sells works great with no warnings. Just be aware the R730 backplane also uses SFF-8643 so you need an SFF 8643 to SFF-8643 cable. Couldn't be happier with the upgrade - thanks for the inspiration.
That's really great information! Thanks for sharing this! And thank you for supporting my store!
This was GREAT! I just bought an r820 and this video helped a lot to figure out how to get the faster SAS3 storage to work. I'm going to run a four-port -16i and split the front SAS into 8 + 8. I only have a single 8 now. :)
Great to hear!
In regards to the crash you experienced: rather than the CPU being faulty since it work working before, more likely the culprit would be the thing that supplies the power to all the components: the PSU. If the PSU isn't powerful enough or if it has lost efficiency over time, it may not be able to power all the components and the upgrade as well.
that's very possible. i haven't had enough time to work on this machine since these videos... but when I do, I'll look at that possibility. thanks for sharing!
@Art of Server - congrats for yet another top notch video. Obviously if one thinks this thru, especially this upgrade is worth the effort anyway, given the huge speed differentials from SAS3 over SAS2 drives. I recently did some benchmarking on a different platform (Supermicro SC745) where I modded the backplane (743A instead of 743TQ) and upgraded the controller to a LSI based SAS3 model (think it was a Lenovo). According to my results, the more recent chips - e.g. SAS3408 give extra speed, easily 10-15%, even to SAS2 drives over the older designs e.g. SAS2308 etc. Also big thanks for the astute warning on the improper H330 HBA card (I guess your warning pertains to all these Hx30 cards, HBA or RAID) due to issues with SIDEBAND signalling. I recently did something like this with a Supermicro backplane and it was certainly worth the effort and cost.
Thanks for the kind words. Yes, I do think this is a worthy upgrade if using SAS-3 SSDs.
This is exactly what I did with my Dell R720 after watching this video. Thank you for sharing it. The only thing I would suggest is to use a proper benchmarking software such as phoronix test suite. They are more accurate at performance testing.
Thanks for your thoughts. Phoronix is great, but a bit more complex to run. And in reality, it just a "benchmark manager" that runs other benchmarks. I wanted to show something that was quick and easy for someone else to follow. For I/O benchmarks, I like iozone and bonnie++.
I would love to see you showing different ZFS layouts and optimising, maybe StripedMirror - just seeing how you get the best performance out of ZFS
Performance objectives are different for different use cases. Some use cases focus on IOPS, some on throughput, so it really depends on what your needs are and what applications will run on top of that storage.
Although not focused on "performance", I do have series of videos covering some out of the ordinary use cases for ZFS in this playlist:
ua-cam.com/play/PL28eVGz5vFQ8UuSvDykut1Ro8cKvhroNt.html
Oh boy, look at all that ram and cpu power..... yummy! Another great video! Thanks a bunch once again!
Thanks for watching!
Coffee in hand :)
I need some good coffee today too... thanks for watching!
Thanks! Another great video for server nerds (like me)
Thanks for watching!
Great video. I'm currently setting up HPE DL385G10+ machines with SAS3 SSDs where the bottleneck for the throughput was the HBA controller PCI3 bus. I'm looking forward for your NVME benchmarks.
Thanks for watching! :-)
What HBA controller are you using? Which SAS3 SSDs? Is there a SAS expander in your setup?
@@ArtofServer To overcome the bottleneck of the HPE provided PCI Gen 3 controller, I bought the Broadcom 9560-16i (PCI Gen4, 8 lanes). I know it's Raid controller but according to the documentation it can be easily switched between HBA/Raid with a CLI command. My drives are Toshiba SAS3 SSDs 1.6TB (PX04SVQ160) which according to the specs are able to saturate the SAS3 bandwidth (1.2GB/s) with 1.5GB/s sequential reads. I have 8 of these in Raid10 now on the old controller, but I'll be switching it to some form of RAIDz. Maybe mirrored vdevs of RAIDz2. This projects takes very long as the biggest problem was to get a cable to connect SFF-8654 8i (host) to SFF-8087 4i (backplane). They had to be custom made as nobody offers such cables yet on the market.
Thanks for your time and effort.
someone's been busy on my channel! :-) thanks for taking the time to watch my videos!
@@ArtofServer I like to binge some and you have much better programming than most TV stations! :-) Thanks for taking the time to make them vids. Have a gr day.
Very great video! As alwys. I also like that you let the upsi with the 1.5TB RAM in it. What I would have found VERY interessting to se a compare linux raid5 and raid6 against the zfs. Maybe a followup video ;)
Thanks! Good point, I will consider mdraid RAID 5/6 next time.
Thank you! Great content.
Thanks for watching!
That result has my interest in the systems architecture. There is a limit. Of I think 5.6g on old CPU "paths" which seems to be a limit.
If the build is "per CPU" then you could be limited to the single speed/ lanes available
I get around 8.6 but my limit is higher. 4.5gb is normal.
But should we not include a cached system as this is generally how they should be configured. Obviously not when testing drives.
Tbh not impressive speeds, I can push and pull 375mbs on SATA 300. (Raptors) seagate spinners have a single rate of 180mb (very model dependent) in a tri array would. 540mbs (520 real)
You could put sas 3 drives into sas 2 bay and you should get performance just from a drive change.
I am starting my own home lab. Dell R710 seem a low cost used server. Or would you recommend R720? My goal is to improve my education and experience so I could work remotely. Three years ago my lower spine was injured. My most recent surgery has helped but limited to working from home.
Great video thank you for sharing your experience and expertise.
If you are not able to lift the server much due to the injury, and might need to move it around during your self-education, you might consider a lighter server. Like one of the 1U offerings. It might depend on what you need...
710 is quieter
Great video, with one small drawback. Please film with your camera on a tripod, the fpv shaking of your camera as you talk was literally making me seasick.
Thanks for your feedback. I've changed camera systems since I made this video and yeah, all my recent content is on tripod now.
@Art of Server - Thank you for this informative video. I have a Dell R720 with a 3.5 inch (x8) SAS/SATA backplane. Backplane DP/N: 0Y4HYG. Is this an eligible Direct Attach Backplane to use with an LSI 9341-8i or 9300-8i for 12G SAS3 speeds? If not, is there a such drop-in replacement backplane that performs the direct attach function?
yes, that's a direct attached backplane, so it can support whatever protocol the SAS controller and storage drive will support.
@@ArtofServer Thank you very kindly for your response. You truly perform a great service to this community!
I made network speed of 428gb/s but only local. Used virtualization and bridging
Hi,
Thank you for your 3 vidéos..
I'm about viewing, and about 8.30 you said that is not possible to apply the upgrade if the 16SFF if they are not directely attached (I have 16 SFFs model).
Is there any way to know how SSFs are done. In fact, I'm buying a used R820 and what I have is the tag service number and some photos. I want to be sure that it well work.
Have you some ideas to check?
Thanks.
I wouldn't rely just on the svc tag, because that just tells you factory condition, not what the system currently has. Get the part numbers for the backplane. I can them check on that part number to see if it has expander or not. Or, if you can look at the backplane, if it has a heatsink, that's usually the SAS expander chip under it, so that would not work for this type of upgrade. No heatsink usually means no SAS expander so it is directly attached backplane.
@@ArtofServer Hi,
Thank you for your reply. I sent you a pic I have of the server on your facebook account. Can you have a look on? Thank you in advance.
32:52 Have you checked all the rams in case any of them to be different voltage than the others . Had countless out of voltage range messages and by change noticed one dim to be ddr3L (1.35v) whilt all the others were dd3 (1.5v).By changing that dimm all errors went away.
Else the ladder goes psu or mobo and then cpu
Yeah, all DIMMs are 1.5v. I need to research the error message some more...
Hey, I have a dell r820 that I need 3.5" drives in. Can I swap all of the components from the r820 to an r720 8 bay 3.5" chassis including the motherboard and ram riser?
I don't know. Might be possible. If you do it, make a video and share! :-)
I am wondering if those cables could fit the distance with the second hdd cage and not the first one you are using.
What length do they have in mm or cm? (Nah found the answer at least to my second question on you ebay store : connectors that is 0.8-meter, or 31-inches long.)
No, they don't have enough length to fit the 2nd HDD cage from what I can tell.
@@ArtofServer Thank you that s what I thought too. So it needs instead of 80cm, >90cm. I think the next available is 100cm
Hi I have Dell R730xd with 24 front bay 2.5” drive and two rear 2.5” drives. Can existing SAS be upgraded to SAS3? I need high speed storage like 7000MBps or more speed.
The R730XD is already SAS-3 based if you're using the integrated "mini" controller. However, SAS-3 won't get you the 7000MB/s speeds.. that requires NVMe. I don't know if it is available for the "XD" version, but there is a NVMe upgrade kit for the R730 that you might want to look into. The other alternative is to get NVMe drives plugged directly into the PCIe slots. R730XD should support PCIe bifurcation so you could even use those x16 quad M.2 adapter boards and get some PM981A NVMe drives.
Could the performance difference of the single SSD tests actually be related to using different SSDs? Most of the test results would't saturate a 6Gbps SAS2 link. A SAS2 link would only bottleneck the sequential 4k read. Maybe re-run the tests with the SAS3 SSDs connected to a SAS2 HBA?
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. That said, I think a 6Gbps/SAS-2 link can bottleneck the 1MB record read more than 4k. The 4k test is more likely to hit a IOPS limit before it hits the bandwidth limit.
@@ArtofServer 6Gbps is 768MB/s and only the IOZone 1M reads exceeded that. If you assume that 768MB/s is 'theoretical' and that the real number is a little lower due to overhead, then the rest of the tests that were in the ~650MB/s range could have been somewhere in the range of a SAS2 links 'real' limit. But SAS3 12Gbps works out to 1.536GB/s. Usually, especially these days, and ESPECIALLY with spinning disks (not quite as much with SSDs), the IOPS and read/write speeds are limited by the drive, not the link. Perhaps another test to see if it's the IOPs limit of the drive would be to transfer a HUGE file from on eSSD to another. Say 100GB, and see what kind of throughput you get. One big file straight copied from one SSD to another should saturate a SAS2 link somewhere between 650MB/s and 768MB/s, and a SAS3 link at something close to 1.5GB/s, provided both the read and write speeds of the SSDs can keep up. I have saturated 10Gb Ethernet links transferring large files from one large array to another more than once so the same kind of transfer should saturate the SAS link if the SSDs can keep up.
can the R620 also take in such a card to upgrade to sas 12g? or HP DL380 Gen8 for that matter, was looking into servers recently and very confusing.
if the backplane you have is direct attached, meaning there's no SAS expander chip and you have number of SAS lanes matching number of drive bays exactly, then very likely yes you can do the same SAS-3 "upgrade" hack I showed in this video. I've done it on Supermicro and Dell servers, but not HP, so YMMV.
@@ArtofServer thanks for answering, if you don't mind me dig a bit more info from you. there are bunch of R270 and R280 that have mix configuration of CPU. some are gen 1 or v1 (no v1) and some are gen2 or v2 CPU. can we simply swap out CPUs from say 2630 to 2630v2, does the bios/firmware support them?
Usually, systems that support E5-2600(v1) series CPUs also support E5-2600(v2) CPUs, but require a BIOS update before the upgrade. However, some early motherboards don't have sufficient hardware to support the v2 CPUs, so YMMV. See my video about the X9DRi-LN4F+ motherboard as an example.
Hello, is this card HBA IT as well? I know you mentioned another card on the first video 9207-8i, equivalent to H220.
Yes, the card used in this video is also in IT mode. It is a SAS-3 generation HBA card with LSI IT mode firmware on it. If you're interested in it, link is in the description.
@@ArtofServer Thank you for the quick answer! Question, is the original H710 a SAS-2 version then? Would you recommend the card (Dell WFN6R 9341-8i with SAS-3 IT) in this video for JBODs then? I have a GPU on a PCI line already in my r820, can two of these cards(Dell WFN6R 9341-8i with SAS-3 IT) run on the same PCI lane? Thank you!
Does any one know if the r620 is a direct attached backplane?
There are different configurations with different backplanes. The 4-bay and 8-bay models are usually direct attached backplanes. The 10-bay model I think is a SAS expander backplane.
Hi,
In the case of a R820 with 2 x8-bay (so direct attached, no expander), witch card to use? I don't think there is 9341-16i card. What can be the solution?
Thank you in advance.
For the 8-bay in the middle of the chassis, I would recommend the setup shown in this video. For the 2nd 8-bay backplane on the right (facing the front of the server), I would recommend the same controller in one of the right side PCIe slots on the riser. I don't know what length cable you would need, as I have not done that type of setup first hand, but you can measure and figure it out.
You could consider a -16i SAS controller card, but most of them are still PCIe 3.0 x8, and with fast 12Gbps/SAS-3 SSDs, I think you will bottleneck at the PCIe bus, so I think the better approach, if you want to extract the most performance, is to use 2x -8i controllers to give each backplane it's own PCIe bandwidth.
Good question. Thanks for watching!
@@ArtofServer Hi,
Thank you. So I will put 2 cards.
1. Just to be sure, even I have 2 cards, I can manage all 16 drives in raid as I want (for example can I make a raid 5 on 9 physical drives, it's just an example).
2. I saw in some cards, they comes with a battery to prevent cache data to be lost). The 9341 we are using in tutor, doesn't. So I want to ask: is it really necessary to have such batteries?
3. Thank you a lot :)
@@TheCoribo I'm concerned there might be a language barrier and something in lost in translation here. But, just to be clear, my videos and various discussions are usually about IT mode SAS controllers, which are also known as HBA. These do NOT have RAID functionality. They are meant to be used with software RAID technologies, often like ZFS, unraid, storage spaces, etc. In such a card, you do not have cache on the HBA card, and therefor do not need a battery.
On a true hardware RAID card, you do have cache that is volatile, and therefor, you need a battery or some other mechanism to protect that data if power is suddenly loss or the system resets (kernel panic, blue screen, etc.)
@@TheCoribo you canmake a raid 5, just do not configure the raid in the controller, you will have to make a raid 5 with software like MDADM or RAIDZ1 (raid5 zfs) or RAIDZ2 (raid6 ZFS)
makes me wonder if it works with vmware 7.0
I have a r720 8LFF; it comes with two SAS-2 front disks already. With your upgrade (SA3 controller+cables), can I populate the remaining drive bays with SAS-3 disks ? Ie, the SAS3 controller controlling a mix of SAS2 and SAS3 front disks .. rgds.
Yes.
hI - I have a R720 question that I'm hoping you will solve for me - I want to run freenas or similar as a VM on a 720 with a 710 perc - how do I pass the use of the spare disks to the VM - I'm new to servers and trying to learn as I go. Any help will be hugely appreciated. Keep up the excellent work on the channel
What do you mean by "spare disks"?
@@ArtofServer I created 4 virtual disks through the PERC 710 when I bought the server, I then installed ESXI 7.0. I Then created a data store on one of the virtual disks and installed open media vault, allocating it 128gb drive space. OMV can’t see the remaining 3 disks that ESXI can see, I need to understand how to allocate one or more of them to OMV
Hope this makes sense
Thanks
@@meandthemrs896 You are running OMV as a VM inside ESXi?
@@ArtofServer Yes..... well hopefully if I can get it to work
@@meandthemrs896 Your OMV VM doesn't have direct access to your storage controller, so it will not see any other VD in the RAID controller. if you want the VM to see that storage, you need to present that storage from the host to the VM in some way.
Hi,
For 16 baies with expander, can you take a look at this controller 9361-16i.
Thank you a lot.
I don't have that card.
@@ArtofServer As you are a specialist, it may work?
@@TheCoribo can't really answer that. Functionally as a SAS controller, yes it is likely to work as that, although I haven't confirmed how difficult it maybe to convert that card to HBA mode. The biggest unknown is really the mechanicals, how does it fit? Does it allow enough room to run the cabling? Will it require certain type of connectors, such as right angle connectors? Some of which maybe difficult to find. All of those factors are unknown to me.
can I do this with a MD1220"?
If you mean upgrade to SAS-3, the answer is no. The SAS expander in the MD1220 or MD1200 are SAS-2 only.
@@ArtofServer thank you
Have you any experience upgrading an eight bay R720 to a sixteen bay backplane (with sas expander and cage)?
no.
The upgrade from 8 to 16 bays of sas disks worked. Thanks to your video I had the knowledge to take the plunge. Thanks so much!
Hi,
I'm waiting for my R820 .. it will be delivred tomorow.
In the meantime, I want to ask you if passing to SAS3 will change the max storage of 16Tb?
Thank you.
SAS-2 and SAS-3 have the same storage size limitations. You might want to watch this video: ua-cam.com/video/u55vIGMzzKw/v-deo.html
@@ArtofServer Hi,
If I understand, it will have also limitation of 16Tb. But I read at ITCreation web site this: "This server supports up to 16TB of storage with sixteen front accessible, hot-swap 2.5-inch SAS, SATA, nearline SAS or SSD hard drives. Although, the release of 2TB SSDs has doubled the storage capacity to 32 TB"
What do you think?
@@TheCoribo yeah, other places tell you the max they can sell you, basically marketing. I try to share what is technically possible, not what I can sell.
Would this kind of upgrade work on the r710 with the 8x 2.5 drive bay?
It should be possible, but pointless. The R710 is PCIe 2.0, and your SAS-3 drives would be bottlenecked by the PCIe bus speed.
Where's the link to part one?
If you missed last week's video: ua-cam.com/video/q88gv_PN2hI/v-deo.html
Or, subscribe and turn on the notifications bell! :-)
I tried this (sorta) using the 12xlff r720 and a pcie dell h730p, more looking for 4kn support. I feel my error is more in the h730, but it shows a backplane unknown error and doesnt seem to allow me to create any new vds. But it imported my foreign config fine, any ideas guys?
There's no point in upgrading to SAS-3 controller on the 12LFF backplane as that is a SAS-2 expander backplane so it will force the controller to negotiate to SAS-2 speeds anyway.
@@ArtofServer i did it to support 4kn drives actually, im just curious if theres a way to fix this unknown error. I got the controller to work and the vdisks all work following what you did in the video. My next thought is can i swap the 730xd backplane into my r720
I have the rx720xd with 24 bay, has anyone try to upgrade the backplane to support sas3? I was look around and think about try it because the parts look similar online but it hard to tell it if will fit.
the 720XD has a SAS-2 expander backplane, it will never be able to support SAS-3. as mentioned in these videos, you must have a direct attached backplane for this SAS-3 "hack" to work.
@@ArtofServer I did see that in the video, I was wonder if I could swap out the backplane for another. It look like the 730 may fit, I look at it quickly this morning before work.
I was just look to see if anyone try this before I do.
Cool. Let us know if you try it and how it turns out.
@@ArtofServer will do.
@@ArtofServer I got the r730xd backplane in and was able to install. I had to remove some little tabs on the ends, they had no circuits in them. all the connectors are the same but the power. it seems dell change up the power connector a bit. it looks like they may have combined 2 in to one. i have to look in to the pinout and see how i can make it work.
If I'm successful I'll let you know. Thanks.
If you constantly admit that dd is not a great benchmark. Why then using it in almost all videos. And if you are running into the cache you can scratch everything anyway. Sorry, your tests are often not very realistic and therefore reliable. Clickbait? Maybe not. Maybe yes.