Hi,
Would it be fair to say that MCIO is on a par with a SAS3 HBA in terms of features and performance?
I am going to create a pool of four 20TB disks. I just want to make sure I’m not making a bad purchase with the ASRock Rack EPYC4000D4U MCIO. I decided to go with this motherboard because it saves me having to buy an HBA.
Greetings
Why would you have to buy a HBA for four disks? Edit: because that board has only two SATA ports. Seems like a very poor choice for a NAS; boards with 6 or more SATA ports in uATX are quite common.
To your actual question, I admit I don’t know anything about MCIO–but nothing on that board’s product page (https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPYC4000D4U) indicates they’re used for storage.
I did some research on the Internet. I was able to deduce that this is the usual approach for the storage connection.
It seems you would have been better off looking in the TrueNAS docs and resources.
A HBA is the standard approach to connect storage if you need more drives than your motherboard natively supports. If you don’t, there’s no reason for one. You’re looking at a board with only 2 SATA ports–why? Boards with four or more SATA ports are readily available in that form factor.
I have the ASUS Prime B450M-K II. I am currently running a SATA3 SSD (M.2 port), a SATA3 SSD and a SATA3 HDD on the mainboard. Now I want to add three more SATA3 HDDs. I was considering either buying an additional controller card (https://geizhals.de/digitus-2x-sata-2x-esata-ds-30105-a3221258.html) for the SATA3 SSD or a new mainboard. Unfortunately, I only have two PCIe 2.0 1x slots available.
I was also recommended ECC by ChatGPT. However, I have read that ECC will probably not run on my current board.
This looks like a better choice of mobo, then:
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U3
Especially if you can swap the other SSD to a m.2 unit.
I have an M.2 SATA SSD and a 2.5" SATA SSD. I’m sorry if I’ve expressed myself somewhat misleadingly.
intel ssd 530 120gb ssdsckhw120a4
samsung ssd 860 evo 1tb mz-76e1t0b
Why is this mainboard a better choice?
You mention SAS HBA and 20TB disks, which implies those disks are SAS/SATA HDDs.
EPYC4000D4U’s MCIO ports only support PCIE, so they can’t support SAS/SATA disks without an HBA.
Yes. Toshiba Cloud-Scale Capacity MG10ACA 20TB
So it would be a break out cable for some NVMes? Thats a bummer. Then i go back to the drawing board.
Then I will serach for a board with six SATA-ports.
Does AM5 Ryzen cpus fully support ECC? Otherwise I chose an EPYC.
It doesn’t make any sense: MCIO is a connector, not a controller.
MCIO is primarily intended for PCIe 5.0 links. If that particular connector is wired to flexible lanes from a chipset, or the I/O die of a Ryzen CPU, it might be switched in BIOS to carry SATA links instead; in that case, yes, the controller you’re dealing with is regarded as acceptable for ZFS.
As pointed to by @dan, the specifications of the intended EPYC4000D4U board shows that this is not the case here: SATA connectivity comes only from an on-board ASM1061.
To use MCIO with NVME devices, you generally use MCIO->U.2 cable.
AM5 Ryzens, with the exception of non-Pro APUs, support ECC. Best to check AMD’s product page. Not every AM5 board will support ECC though.
What are the requirements for the NAS? Without detailed(!) information on that it is not possible to determine whether or not something is a good choice. Of course apart from the obvious fact that 2 SATA ports are less than ideal.
Of course, it is completely undersized. I was expecting to be able to connect my four 20TB 3,5" HDDs (SATA, RAIDZ1, media storage) and one 1TB 2,5" SSD (SATA, apps) via the MCIO port.
TrueNAS 25.04 is installed on the server, which is currently running Vaultwarden and Jellyfin. Nextcloud, Paperless-NGX and Mailcow are yet to be added.
I need ECC, as I don’t want silent data corruption.
Here is my new attempt:
https://geizhals.de/wishlists/4550746
edit: Is there a cheaper way for ECC supported hardware? I don’t know where to look for the right information concerning 100% ECC support. edit3: I wanted to get AMD because of cheaper cpus. But I dont find good sources. Everyone tells something else.
edit1: OTT: This edit feature doesn’t seem to be very reliable. It’s better to do it with edit, edit1 and so forth.
Reasonable list.
You can save by going for older generations: E3C246D4U2-2T on eBay (many Chinese sellers, likely liquidating old stock), Xeon E-2100/2200 (or Core i3-8100/9100) and DDR4.
Guaranteed ECC support comes with a genuine server motherboard, for which 200-300 € is a fair starting range.
On the AMD side, you’d look for AsRockRack X470D4U / X570D4U / B550D4U / B650D4U boards, or Gigabyte MC12-LE0 / MC13-LE0. But the excellent deal on the MC12-LE0 is over, and the newer generation is more expensive. (Strictly speaking, with AMD certified ECC support takes an EPYC4000 CPU and a suitable AM5 board; regular AM4 or AM5 Ryzen only has unofficial support.)
Should I go for it if I could get one? Is the performance OK?
This mainboard does ECC UDIMM well. Ryzen 1700X supports it too. No need for upgrade imho.
Maybe just do an BIOS update to latest version.
Just get a HBA with sufficient PCIe bandwith like:
https://geizhals.de/axagon-4x-sata-6gb-s-pces-sa4x4-a2907556.html
or other Controller with same spec:
https://geizhals.de/?cat=iosasraid&sort=p&xf=497_4~500_SATA~5678_ohne~5679_SATA+6Gb%2Fs~614_PCIe+3.0+x4
PCIe 3.0 x2 => 2 GB/s which is enough for 4x SATA 6GB/s
MCIO to SATA cables work when then lanes involved are Flex IO lanes. Essentially a PCIe lane is being used as a SATA lane.
This is thus the equivalent of chipset SATA support.
But it is not a SAS HBA, can not be used with SAS drives or SAS expanders.
