On 9/17/23 03:26, gene heskett wrote:
On 9/16/23 19:46, David Christensen wrote:
On 9/15/23 19:37, gene heskett wrote:
On 9/15/23 20:12, David Christensen wrote:
On 9/15/23 15:04, gene heskett wrote:
On 9/15/23 17:35, David Christensen wrote:
On 9/15/23 12:28, gene heskett wrote:
I've just ordered some stuff to rebuild or expand my Raid setup.
This 16 port sata-III pci-e card:
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L184W57?smid=A2H818KAC5I4D1&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp&th=1>
along with a bigger drive cage, cables and such and some
gigastone 2T drives to make a raid big enough to run amanda. And
maybe put a new card in front of my 2T /home raid10.
Searching the mailing list archive, it appears that you have an Asus
PRIME Z370-A II motherboard (?):
https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-z370-a-ii/
And, an Intel Core i5 processor (?). Which model?
cpuinfo can't copy/paste, 6 core, i5-9600K CPU @ 3.70GHz ...
Okay. I do not overclock, but the "K" suffix processor is usually the
fastest OOTB in a given series.
How many GB of OS and apps do you have? Home directory? Bulk data?
Amanda backups? VM's? Other?
Knowing how much and what kind of live, backup, and whatever data you
have would help us make better suggestions for storage. Similarly, your
drives, HBA's, chassis, and chassis mods (notably drive bays).
While researching this thread, I came across an HBA that may interest
both of us:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L3GLCL9
4x the bandwidth (3.94 GB/s), 8 more SATA ports (24 total), and $42.31
higher price ($117.30). I would prefer this card for the bandwidth
alone, and I never know when I might need those extra ports to
temporarily connect a bunch of disks from other machines.
There is an Amazon review that states the IO CREST is PCIe 3.0 x2
electrically. If correct, the bandwidth is 1.97 GB/s, which should be
sufficient to saturate about a dozen HDD's.
The Amazon page for the IO CREST provides a part number:
SI-PEX40169
STFW for the part number leads to a Syba HBA:
https://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1095
Uses 5 JMB575 ( 8 SATA Ports Per Slim SAS) connected to a JMB582 via
Port Multiplier Mode
STFW for the chips:
* JMB582
https://www.jmicron.com/products/list/15
PCIe Gen3 x1 to Dual SATA 6Gb/s
* JMB575
https://www.jmicron.com/products/list/16
1 to 5 ports SATA 6Gb/s
Port Multiplier / Port Selector
STFW it is hard to find good technical information, infer the
architecture, or reason about the performance of the HBA.
I have some Syba PCIe 1.0 x1 to 2 @ SATA II HBA's on the shelf. They
have worked with Windows, Debian, and/or FreeBSD for many years.
Thats nice but only an x4 for $117, how about an x16, which I have an
empty slot for a full length X16 at $160: >
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09K5GLJ8D
The Amazon page for the BEYIMEI HBA states:
Use chipset 6 * ASM1064 + ASM1812 * 1 main control chip
STFW for those chips:
* ASM1064:
https://www.asmedia.com.tw/product/A58yQC9Sp5qg6TrF/58dYQ8bxZ4UR9wG5
ASM1064, a SATA host controller(AHCI) with upstream PCIe Gen3 x1 and
downstream four SATA Gen3 ports. It’s a low latency, low cost and
low power AHCI controller. With four SATA ports and cascaded port
multipliers, ASM1064 can enable users to build up various high speed
IO systems, including server, high capacity system storage or
surveillance platforms.
* ASM1812:
https://www.asmedia.com.tw/product/1e2yQ48sx5HT2pUF/b7FyQBCxz2URbzg0
ASMedia PCIe product ASM1812, a low latency, low cost and low power
12 lane , maximum 6 downstream ports packet switch. With upstream
PCIe Gen2x4 bandwidth, ASM1812 can enable users to build up various
high speed IO systems, including server, system storage or
communication platforms.
Again, it is hard to find technical information, infer the architecture,
or reason about performance of the HBA.
Or is the jmicron x4 better supported?
I do not know. One option is to STFW for release notes, bug reports,
reviews, etc.. After that, I expect it boils down to "buy it, try it;
return if not satisfied".
Regardless of what you do with HBA's, I would connect the six SSD's
to the six motherboard SATA III ports.
Which would tie them up. Is that the faster solution, moving the
opticals to a different card?
My optical drives are SATA I (1.5 Gbps). I connect them to the slowest
SATA ports in my computers. I use the motherboard SATA III ports for my
fastest SATA drives under the heaviest workloads -- SSD system drives
and cache/ ZIL/ dedup vdev's.
The question then is can the bios see them to boot from them?
That depends upon the SATA port and the drive. If you must, you can
make a temporary connection while booting and running an optical disc.
I did grab what I think is a newer bios yesterday but haven't tried to
install it yet.
mt86plus_6.20_64.grub.iso.zip
Motherboard firmware upgrades come with the risk of bricking your
computer. I tend to run my motherboards with whatever firmware they
came with, unless I am suffering under some bug that is identified and
fixed by a firmware upgrade.
A fresh install of Debian stable or old-stable should solve the
storage I/O stuttering problems you are experiencing. (That
motherboard has dual M.2 ports. Installing Debian onto an M.2 PCIE
3.0 x4 SSD would be very nice.)
I know zip about the new m2 stuff. Link to good info appreciated.
Wikipedia is a good start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD provides a noticeable performance improvement over one
SATA SSD -- up to ~6.5x.
Can you find a link showing where the m2 memory is plugged in?
My 32G is in the dimm sockets.
Looking at "PRIME Z370-A II User’s Manual", English, Version E14608:
https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-z370-a-ii/helpdesk_manual/?model2Name=PRIME-Z370-A-II
* See Section 1.1.2 "Motherboard Layout", page 1-2, items #18.
* See section 2.1.9 "M.2 installation", page 2-12.
* See Section 3.6.8 "Onboard Devices Configuration", page 3-19.
It looks like the motherboard shares some PCIe and/or SATA lanes between
SATA ports and M.2 ports, so you must be careful with your choices. I
suggest installing an M.2 PCIe x4 SSD into slot M.2_1 and configuring it
for "PCIE mode", so that it works and all 6 SATA ports work. You will
want to use EUFI mode and GPT when installing Debian.