Hello team,
Seeking some advice / confirm or rubbish my idea. I’m not a complete novice - ex N40L with Xpenology and x6 SATA, current Windows 10 / LSI 9260-8i / 5GBe NIC / x8 SATA drives (6 in RAID5 and 2 in RAID1)
Want to move from Fractal Node 804 to Jonsbo N3 to fit into a smaller area, that drives me to ITX as well (what fun!).
Anyway, given the price of a board that offers ECC RAM support, what are the thoughts for transplanting the motherboard from an N36L (G7 HP Microserver that has ECC support) into the Jonsbo N3, move to a LSI 9211-8i in IT mode, add a PCI-E x1 5GBe too (as board is technically DTX) and then use ZFS RAID-Z1 (to match previous 6x 4TB in RAID5) and then a mirror for the other 2x 4TB (data drives)?
Old and underwhelming.
Gigabyte MJ11-EC1: 60€
Not much joy to expect here with respect to driver support.
Why not a 5-wide raidz2 for all?
Make sure it gets proper cooling. In a non-server chassis that mostly means a dedicated fan.
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…which is why my reference would go to a motherboard which provides enough SATA ports in the first place. At 8 ports in mini-ITX and with faster than Gigabit Ethernet however that lands us to an A2SDi-H-T(P4)F or an X570D4I-2T, none of which are cheap options.
An interesting board indeed, great video on YT where a guy does use one with the Jonsbo N3 case
Given I want more SATA I would need to go with an M.2 to SATA adapter as that SlimSAS x8 doesn’t split out so would be used for a x4 10GBe card
Yep, I have Noctua fan on my LSI as it was rather toasty beforehand
So the 6x 4TB in RAID5 currently is Linux ISO’s (of course) - so mainly large files. The 2x 4TB in RAID1 is personal files (photos, bills, software, etc.) and that’s why I use mirror for that. When I had just the Microserver beforehand then it was all data across the 6x 4TB in RAID5
These M.2 to SATA cards are frowned upon here due to poor cooling and the frequent use of port multipliers (an absolute no with ZFS).
The MJ11-EC1 provides 8 SATA “out of the box” (4 + 4 from SFF-8654 4i). For a small 8-drive NAS with Gigabit Ethernet, it’s just perfect. It’s possible to get more PCIe lanes out of the SFF-8654 8i port, but not in mini-ITX space—and if multiple adapters are wanted to work out the limitations of this board, it’s probably better to go for a more suitable board to begin with.
All documents then, large or small; no block storage.
A single 8-wide raidz2 would provide the same total space with better resiliency (double vs. single).
Ah OK, so I can have the 8x SATA drives for my data and use the M.2 for the boot drive leaving the SlimSAS for an adapted 10GBe? Following the video on YouTube this can be fitted into the space
8 SATA + M.2 boot is more like the idea with these mini-ITX boards.
If you can fit the adapterin the second slot (mini-DTX) it should work, but it’s going to be tight fit. Check about the right kind of adapter and cable.
Thank you very much, an interesting read indeed, along with your support (whole team thanks) my questions I feel are answered. I can honestly say I won’t be attempting the soldering of a 2nd connector! I have done water cooled HP Gen8 with a double slot GPU and 3D printed brackets but soldering isn’t my thing.
The plan then, buy Jonsbo N3 and that board, update the BMC first before flashing the BIOS for EC0. I shouldn’t need the Bi…thingy setting as I only plan to add a single x4 PCI-E (10GBe) card and I buy the adapter and cable as per your link. 8x SATA for my data (RAID type to TBC) and an M.2 for boot
You need not even cross-flash the EC0 BIOS.
I guess not, maybe at a later date so that I could add a 2nd x4 card with USB3.2 - but I haven’t seen a SlimSAS 8i to 2x x4 PCI-E yet.
Out of interest, would this SlimSAS support a RAID card that then has multiple HDD connected? I don’t have any plans just interested to know.
There are SFF-8654 8i to dual SFF-8639 cables, but as documented by hmartin on STH only one port will work on such cables (I concur) but you can route the lanes to a PCIe x8 slot and then use a bifurcating x4x4 riser in this slot.
There’s no reason why you couldn’t use a SAS HBA in a x8 slot. The SFF-8654 4i could be used for a NVMe drive, after cross-fhasing the EC0 BIOS. But if you’re also rerouting the 4 lanes lanes to a second PCIe slot, for say a NIC, then you’d rather should go for a Flex-ATX X10SDV board (e.g. X10SDV-4C-7TP4F) or a MC12-LE0, save the hassle and the extra cost of a pair of adapters and their cables.
The MJ11-EC1 is great… as long as its (many) quirks and limitations fit within your requirements.