Finally Installing a Proper SAS HBA in My File Server

[@alexiekola]

Yay great to see you got it and its up and running

[@athrunzala5337]

Kewl Chick . . . gives expensive gifts . . . understands man

[@rabbitcreative]

I come to the hardware from the perspective of a database-developer; how do I break 100k TPS? How do I break 10GB/sec? These questions lead me back to the hardware, and videos like this have helped cement the notion I'm on the right track. Cheers and thank-you.

[@kbhasi]

(18:04) There's a newer version of the utility (released after the video was uploaded) that would run in the EFI shell. I tried to explain, but KZbin kept flagging my comment as spam, probably because its AI thought the file names were Web domains.

[@petabrain]

If your vdevs are mirrored, you can spread the disks across the two HBAs to gain some redundancy that way also.

[@GitGoodGaming]

Underrated channel is underrated, you deserve way more subs mate!

[@Julianna.Domina]

It's like LTT but without fucking everything up!

[@cosmickatamari]

and no tunnel bear ads

[@deepspaceninefreak]

and no over the top voice, stupid faces and shitty explainations.

[@SianaGearz]

Sooooo... it's just a tech channel that has nothing at all otherwise in common with LTT.

[@Humza]

The Dell Perc h200 is also a good cheap raid card which can be flashed as a HBA

[@vewo234]

I have several of the Dell PERC H310 cards running in HBA (IT) mode. These are the same as the popular IBM M1015 but have the SAS connectors at the short side opposite of the slot bracket. So they can be used in height restricting cases easier and would not have caused the cable length issue shown in the video. 😉 With some luck you get the card with both the full and half height bracket included on ebay.

[@klingmcnabe813]

Flashing these cards is easy, you can flash back too, I run 8 SAS drives on mine, they run both SAS and SATA with the correct cables....brilliant cards in my opinion. I install them into NAS boxes, they are visible in synology, VMware, freenas amd xpenology.

[@mattgeo5039]

i bought a cheaper version of a SAS card and it runs HOTT. I got myself a 40mm noctua fan to try and reduce the heat. And i have some expensive thermal pads for the onboard memory chips ect. Does any of you have any issues with heat and how have you mitigated it? Thanks

[@alexbright7735]

Checked out Lexi channel in 2024 and still only 3 videos.

[@dracoflame3921]

With the right expansion cards and daisy chaining. Technically that card can handle 256 HDDs

[@xKhronusx]

Aren't those the kind of drive cages that you can pull out and turn so the ports face the back of the machine?

[@cmj20002]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to put a fan on the heat sink on the SAS control card. I have an HP server that has support for both SATA 3 and SAS type drives, but I use the SATA drives. I also use Toshiba NAS HDD's they are very cheaply priced for the quality. Even cheaper than Segate and I have had some problems with Segate drives so I use WD Gold, Red or the Raptor type HDD's if I go mechanical rather than SSD.

[@cypher526]

Any problems with those SATA connectors staying snug? I noticed that cable doesn't seem to have metal clips on the SATA connectors. I hastily bid on and won a similar cable on ebay (3ft, longer than I need) and just noticed it doesn't have the clips either. Hopefully it's works ok.

[@InvertLogic]

learned a lot new things about this card. thank you!

[@andre-le-bone-aparte]

@17:16 - My guy... putting the motherboard on carpet. No fear of static electricity. None.😂

[@wayneosman8971]

I have been searching for a SATA SAS and found some older cards PCI-e 8X made for 1st & 2nd generation PCI-e slots 12 years old. Is there anything newer with built in memory cache and battery backup for the SAS cards only so I don't loose a RAID or acidentally drop a drive from power surges or losses. I will most likely use Windows 10 or 11. and or Ubuntu 20.4 P.S Loved your video looking for more so I "Subscribed ", clicked the "Bell" and chose "ALL" hoping to see more videos from you. Thank You, I'll be hoping for more

[@WizardNumberNext]

Most (if not ALL) SAS RAID HBAs are using PowerPC processors This DOES use PowerPC processor as it is LSI

[@dritzzka6177]

It's 2021 and MSI still needs to get there shit together.

[@NelsonBigGunP200Fan]

Those cards are expensive, but they are server grade, and hardly EVER fail. Theyre's a reason why they are expensive. Server grade cards need to be able to operate 24/7 and not fail when moving around lots of data on RAID arrays, like the LSI i have in my fileserver. That was very nice of her to give u that. It should last you quite a LONG time.

[@SianaGearz]

I've had a Dell-branded LSI fail under very benign load in a Dell-built server in 2010. Of course courier brought a new one a few hours later, but fail is fail.

[@BanjoGate]

Bookmarking this... is this information still valid for a windows install?

[@elpresso1983]

You didn't leave the link you promised at roughly 1:00 in the description :(

[@TheRangeControl]

Tho only reason we are searching for for these videos is to follow along the flashing process. It is LITERALLY the single piece if added value which the video could have provided.

[@WizardNumberNext]

basically same hw as mine 9220-8i. I just installed LSI MR SAS 9260-8i (yes MR stands for MegaRAID) with full feature set (RAID5, RAID6 and SSD caching enabled). I would be using it for RAID6 as RAID6 over BTRFS is unsafe, but BTRFS over RAID6 is double safe (double parity on RAID6 plus checksums on BTRFS)

[@shubitoxX]

I would not trust Btrfs (especially RAID 5 or 6), yet. I am running my desktop on Btrfs, but my main storage is on a RAIDZ3.

[@111212jsasj]

I bought an IBM M1015 that I want to cross-flash to IT mode for use with FreeNAS, which runs on ZFS. Question 1: What firmware version should I use with FreeNAS? Question 2: Is the Serve The Home Guide compatible with using the M1015 with FreeNAS? Any additional resources? I'm a crossflashing newb, so it can't be explained too slowly! :D Thanks for any pointers!

[@Ricardo-vm3jl]

Great video, thanks! I'll try and get one of those boards myself. I really liked your case, which one is it? And how did you get all those drive cages in there?

[@Lordosvk]

please more detail videos about this sas drives.. i have many sas drives at home. i plan to use them. Like this. Thank you so much.

[@nexoduszerox2650]

Mark if you had the money would you upgrade to SAS drives on a business stand point?

[@bakon333]

Finally...someone who actually knows their stuff.

[@lloydieization]

I haven't played about with ZFS for well over 8 years as RAID10 via my (AMD/Promise) motherboard's SATA controller was giving me much better sequential performance than ZFS, the ZFS gurus with high performing systems seem to require a sperate PC/Server with 64GB+ of RAM to get this level of performance, at the time 64GB+ RAM was a pipe dream for me let alone the expense of running a separate system. I'm a Windows Server guy (know a bit about Linux too) I run a single Windows Hypev-V Server as my Storage and Virtualisation (home lab) platform and to this day second hand RAID controllers (Mainly Adaptec in my case) have been the way to go. Lastly I work with SANs Netapp, 3PAR etc.. personally I don't believe that "Server" disks (Excluding SSDs) are significantly better life time wise than Desktop Disks, certainly not the 15K SAS versions. Its the better (loud) cooling and PSUs in Server/SAN kit that might give the impression higher reliability. Lastly I'd bet the SATA card would last at least as long LSI HBA, as one prolonged fan failure and the HBA might be toast, RAID and HBA cards/controllers require active cooling the SATA card doesn't... basically I wouldn't believe a lot of the marketing hype when it comes to enterprise reliability.

[@NavidGowani]

Hey Mark, a little ot, but I was wondering if an IBM 10 gig fiber card would work within windows, specifically this model: 00E0839

[@FinnsLab]

any experience with the asmedia 106x controller ? the sas controller.. also under the name stlab a-590 . mine does a 3 time loop under boot. kinda annoying..

[@ManvirSinghP4L]

What kind of speeds do you get when copying files from your file server?

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

It depends on whether the files are in cache or not. The best sequential reads from the disks are about 800MB/s. If the files are in cache, its limited by the network (about 12GB/s).

[@ManvirSinghP4L]

Nicely done.

[@patrickproctor3462]

So when an HBA like the following "supports up to 240 devices as a HBA in IT mode", how exactly do you attach 240 devices? From what I've found you can only use a forward-breakout cable in one layer. So for 4 "ports" I can only get 16 devices. Surely there is a way to at least double this... www.supermicro.com/en/products/accessories/addon/AOC-S3216L-L16iT.php

[@ChristopherJones16]

You hook up expansion cards to those 4 ports.

[@rukasu01]

About to do this very thing. Were you afraid of losing your data when reinstalling your drives onto the HBA? Did Freenas throw a fit?

[@dubstep_lover5335]

Shouldn't have issues with Freenas. Make sure you copy your Freenas config and your encryption key along with drive keys. No data should be lost

[@fabslyrics]

Great Video Sir, Question for you . How better is that SAS HBA vs the cheap chinese ASM1061 ? for a PC used et home as a VMWare server ( old HP z800 workstation). what would you recommend ? or maybe would you just continue using the motherboard ports that are just SATA II ?

[@johnmadsen37]

Moon spells sas. Expand driver with expander card. Still everything goes through 2x12gbs so as long as they are not ssd, you may be ok. 6gbs is around 1ssd.. hmmm, bandwidth get severely limited severely fast.

[@williamwatkins6669]

Aren't you having temperature issues?

[@idan1242]

can be used with 4 ssd's in raid 0 ?

[@psycl0ptic]

motherboard directly on probably the greatest static electric generating source in a house, the carpet? WTF!

[@horeageorgian7766]

You can get those cables cheap on Aliexpress.

[@slybunda]

how hot does the card get?

[@ricardonps1]

Are these cards recognised by xpenology?

[@dylankempker]

What is max physical Drive size I'm looking for something for 12TB

[@shubitoxX]

I am not aware of any limits. I have successfully connected WD Red 10TB to an IBM M1015 which has the latest IT firmware.

[@Information_Frequency]

Thanks a lot for an informative video about SAS and RAID. One question how did you record this video?

[@cosmickatamari]

hey how did you map with it showing the serial number? i'd love that feature.

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

Use /dev/disk/by-id when creating the pool. You might be able to force a switchover by importing the pool with the -d flag giving that directory.

[@Phydoux2112]

Cool to see that you were using Linux. :)

[@Eric-the-wise]

running mobo on carpet...a genius...

[@77chrisray]

what motherboard is that?

[@ahmedmedhat2316]

what is the case model?

[@mcduvall2000]

Looks like a Corsair 750D

[@DanielTekmyster]

thanks Lexi, I didn't have any laying around or I would have sent him one...

[@berserk7407]

Hi, I recently found your channel and I am enjoying the content. I was wondering if you have a video explaining your zfs setup? Anyways keep up the good work.

[@rufus4779]

What is the maximum sata drive size this controller can address?

[@TheUbuntuGuy]

It can see drives over 2TB. Max I've used is 4TB.

[@ВладимирПутин-е7м]

Upvote and sub for the Linux usage. Excellent.

[@SimonThomasen]

Wow,sas :) Yes CMedia is not server grade stuff

[@tizschnitz1869]

pfsense? we need ya brah

[@ManvirSinghP4L]

I LOVE your videos there amazing. Keep up the great work.

[@nathanmendenhall7062]

Dat intro, DAMN

[@BenState]

Running it on carpet ... eek

[@Triple88a]

The case is grounded.. carpet is irrelevant.

[@BenState]

@@Triple88a bonding and grounding are different.

[@aeorcr]

well explained and very useful video

[@Douglaskhumes]

Allan Orozco true

[@bitrage.]

He said ballz......🤣

[@Локомотивный_Белый]

Thank U. :)

[@GizmoFromPizmo]

I'm not a fan of LSI controllers. Had very bad experiences with a few of them. I can't trust them. I've had bad experiences with other controllers but none of them beat my hard drives to death like the LSI brand tends to.

[@ChristopherJones16]

Which do you prefer?

[@shrine010]

Seagate xD Reliable xD

[@tkorkunckaya]

Oh no, please stop touching, fingering the screen! Thanks, even it was a very old video, I've got some ideas and helpful info.

[@FennecTECH]

paving is NEVER fun

[@abborne1]

This is unacceptable LCD abuse. It's physically painful to watch someone gouge and poke at an LCD panel like that.

[@antoniofranco6230]

Seagate more reliable than Western Digital ? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@dlarge6502]

However they are more trustworthy considering they don't lie to you about whether you are getting a SMR drive or not.

[@rlmtech]

17 mins of useless rambling geeze... please summarize