is it a crazy idea ?

[viph]

Hi there,

I'm very new to freenas and just set a first machine.
considering my small amount of sata port, I was wondering about "bitcoin" dedicated mothercards!
bunch of PCIEx1 for small/cheap SATA 2 or 4 ports cards...

for 100$
ASRock H110 Pro BTC+
you can plug in a 10GB ethernet card into the PCIEx16 and plenty (12) of sata controler cards

 

[Arwen]

Yes, it's a bit crazy.

You want to verify that the "PCIEx1 for small/cheap SATA 2 or 4 ports cards" are supported by FreeNAS. Some aren't, and others that are, produce less than optimal results. (Either lower speed, or reliability problems.)

The board is also designed in such a way, that you may be limited to half the PCIe cards. That's because they are 1/2 the normal distance between them. The assumption for that system board is that you use riser cables for the video cards, requiring a different case.

Last, in some of these specialty boards, the intent is for lots of slots, but not all the throughput. So if you intended to fill each and every 1x slot with a disk card, you may want to look at what PCIe breakout configuration is. (Meaning does an 8 lane, PCIe 3.0 drive the 12 x 1 lane PCIe 2.0 slots? Or is it worse?)

 

[Chris Moore]

bunch of PCIEx1 for small/cheap SATA 2 or 4 ports cards...

There is no reason to use a bunch of individual SATA cards when you can use a SAS controller to run SATA drives and a SAS controller can run eight directly attached SATA drives or you can expand that with SAS expanders to run as many as 256 SATA drives from the average SAS controller.

This is a terrible board for FreeNAS. Look at our hardware guides:


Updated Forum Rules 12/5/18
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-12-5-18.45124/

The 'Hidden' Cost of Using ZFS for Your Home NAS
https://louwrentius.com/the-hidden-cost-of-using-zfs-for-your-home-nas.html

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Why not to use RAID-5 or RAIDz1
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev. 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

Hardware Recommendations by @cyberjock - from 26 Aug 2014 - and still valid
https://forums.freenas.org/threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

 

[Stevie_1der]

You don't need 12 SATA controller cards.
Instead, you just need 1 SAS HBA controller card with a SAS2008, SAS2308 or SAS3008 chip.
It has 8 SAS ports, which can be used for SATA as well.
If those 8 ports are not sufficient, then you can use SAS expanders (they work kind of like a network switch for drives), and these can even be cascaded.

The reason for using SAS HBAs instead of el-cheapo-SATA addon cards is just reliability.
SAS HBAs are made to work in professional servers, and this for years and without problems.
El-cheapo SATA cards are just cheap and mostly have only limited driver support for anything except Windows.

So you would just need a mainboard that has 2x PCIe x8 (electrical) for a 10GBe and HBA.

 

[viph]

Thanks a lot for these replies.
Certainly I forget to say such crazy idea is -stricly- targetting "home" usage... nothing serious
Yes, I considere reliability at the level of the price... 20-30$ for 4 sata ports... and to use them on ZFS approach : if one fail, the impact should not be greater than a disk failing

 

[Chris Moore]

-stricly- targetting "home" usage... nothing serious

Doesn't matter, bad hardware is still bad hardware.

I considere reliability at the level of the price... 20-30$ for 4 sata ports...

You can get a used SAS HBA from eBay for about the same price and it is enterprise server grade gear that will be problem free for a decade.
Look at our hardware suggestions and get proper hardware. There is no excuse.

 

[viph]

Thanks Chris,
I realised that such cards are not easy to find here in France, it costs almost the price of HW raid cards (+400€).
Would you have a shop to recommend on eBay?

 

[KrisBee]

Thanks Chris,
I realised that such cards are not easy to find here in France, it costs almost the price of HW raid cards (+400€).
Would you have a shop to recommend on eBay?

What did you actually search for? Plug in some specific card numbers from this extensive list and you'll find cards on ebay available in France, but they will not be as cheap as US sales. https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...and-hba-complete-listing-plus-oem-models.599/

Remember a SAS controller must be capable of running in so-called IT-Mode, i.e as a HBA, for use in FreeNAS.

 

[Chris Moore]

Would you have a shop to recommend on eBay?

This vendor on eBay, I have purchased from them, and they provide cards that are tested by them and flashed with the correct version of firmware such that they will work with FreeNAS:
https://www.ebay.com/str/the-art-of-server?_trksid=p2047675.l2563