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Building new server from scratch!


hansolo77

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Hey all!  I've been working on learning how to setup and install WSE 2012 R2 and I think I'm finally there.  However, I'm feeling very limited in my capacities as my case is overflowing with drives.  So I'm going to be building a new server from the ground up and would like some advice and suggestions as to what I should get.  I'm only a part-time worker and don't really make a lot of money.  So the purchasing time line is going to be really long.  So far, I know for certain that I'm going to but the Norco 4224 case.  I've read reviews and it has been recommended time and time again.  The only issue with this case appears to be the fans, and the potential for the backplanes to be DOA.  But at the price, it's a steal compared to other similar cases.  Plus, I'm going to get it through NewEgg, as they're the cheapest place around, and they offer really quick RMA's for exchanges if there's something wrong with.
 
Now I'm at the point of internals.  The first order of business is the motherboard.  Form factor isn't really an issue as the Norco case fully supports a whole range.  Individual features are where I'm struggling.  I know that I want to have room for expansion.  So I'm kinda staying away from those Mini ITX boards, since they, for the most part, all seem to have only 1 expansion slot.  I already have 1 SAS controller, and plan on getting an expander.  So that would be 2 slots.  As for the processor, I'm not sure what I need.  My usage scenario is a simple home file server for client backups and media streaming.  So I suppose I don't need anything major.  The same goes for RAM. 
 
As it is right now, I'm thinking about getting one of these:

SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C202 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard
or
SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SAM-2550F-O uATX Server Motherboard FCBGA 1283 DDR3 1600/1333
 
The first board is nice, in that it has plenty of expansion slots, Support for Xeon processors, and is cheap.  However, it only supports ECC memory of max 32gb, SATA 3.0GB/s, and is cheap.  The second board is nice, in that it has just enough expansion slots for my needs (controller and expander), already comes with a processor, supports (but not require) ECC memory of max 64gb, and has 2xSATA 6.0Gb/s, but is a little more expensive.
 
So which board should I get?  Integrated CPU and more RAM, or more slots, less RAM, and mandatory ECC?  Or should I look at something else?  What are your suggestions?

EDIT ->  I just looked at and am now also adding this contender:
SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SAM-2550F-O uATX Server Motherboard FCBGA 1283 DDR3 1600/1333

 

It's got more everything.  More SATA 6.0Gb/s, TONS more RAM, support for faster CPU, and more expensive.  To put it in perspective, this new board would probably take a month to save up for.

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My specific setup is to use the SSD as the drive my downloads would go to, then as needed I'd like it to move the data into the pool to make room for new data. I've reset all the file placement rules and it looks like it's working correctly. I guess it's just the balancing stuff that's got me confused.

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My specific setup is to use the SSD as the drive my downloads would go to, then as needed I'd like it to move the data into the pool to make room for new data. I've reset all the file placement rules and it looks like it's working correctly. I guess it's just the balancing stuff that's got me confused.

 

Understandably.  The entire balancing system is rather complicated.

 

The manual has a good explaination of it, and it's settings, if you want to take a look. :)

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=About%20Balancing

 

http://stablebit.com/Support/DrivePool/2.X/Manual?Section=Balancing%20Settings

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Aaargh!

 

Been a long time since I visited.  Now the only reason I do is on a cry for help!  :(  So here I was, watching a tv show I have on my drive pool.  Then all of a sudden, it stopped.  I RD'd into my server to see what's up, like maybe it was rebooting or something.  Everything was completely frozen.  I waited a good 10 minutes for it to recover, but nothing.  So I forcibly (via the power button) power cycled.  Now when the system if finally loaded, Drivepool is showing ALL drives are missing.  WAAAH!!!  I checked the Windows Device Manager, and there is a system driver related to the HP SAS expander that failed to load.  I tried rebooting, and it still fails to load.  So I did what I normally do when a driver fails to load.. uninstall it and have Windows re-install it during next boot up.  Problem is, it DIDN'T.  I have no way to install this driver now.  According to HP's drivers pages, they say this card doesn't use drivers, and is invisible to the OS.  Ok fine, but when I go into the LSI config program for the controller card, it shows ALL the drives there.  So what gives?!?!

 

Little help?  I'm completely lost.

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I tried moving the expander card to the adjacent slot. Stll no good. It's the wierest thing, because the LSI configuration screens show the 2 SAS cables are connected to 1) Directly Connected Devices (and shows the 4 drives it's connected to) and 2) HP SAS Expander (and the 18 drives it's connected to). So all said, the BIOS and LSI card are all detecting the 22 drives I have installed just fine. It's only when I finally get into Windows (which strangely takes almost 20 minutes to happen) that the drives are not detected inside Device Manager. It's very upsetting, having it work perfectly in one area, and not in the other.

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It might.. I've gone back and moved out the "lsi" named drivers from from /windows/system32.  I went back through my thread and the PM's I've had with Chris and it was one of the troubleshooting steps I performed before.  I'm about to leave for work myself, so when I get home I'll tackle this some more.  Oh joy.  :(

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This is an LSI SAS2008 Falcon.. I installed the latest drivers I could find.  It took forever, and gave me an error about timing out, but the driver shows it's installed.  Windows is unable to detect anything newer online.  The drives still don't show up in Windows though.  I'm going to try a reboot (didn't do that after installing the drivers before leaving for work) and if that doesn't work, I'm going to take my backup drive out of it's bay and hook it up directly (SATA instead of through the SAS) to try and do a system restore from a day ago when it was working.

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Ok so I hooked up the backup drive directly, restored a backup from the day before it went down.  Still no good.  I had the device manager set in "show hidden devices" mode.  The strange non-working HP driver showed back up.  This time, rather than uninstall the driver, I did a "rollback".  After doing that, all of a sudden the drives appeared in the list, but all grayed out.  Their properties showed they weren't connected.  So I did a reboot again, and verified the LSI driver does in fact detect them all (which it does).  Another 30 minutes of boot up time, and Windows still doesn't show the drives in the device manager.  I then went through and deleted (uninstalled) all the grayed out drives, and did a refresh.. Still nothing.  :(  I don't know what to do!

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Do you use the built in server backup if so go back a few days or even a week if then everything returns to normal working conditions turn auto update off because that setting is pure evil and install each update one at a time over the course of a few days see which one breaks the server. If however rolling back the os does not fix the problem your going to have to start digging deeper and will need another machine to start testing components but I would advise removing your pooled drives for now and keep them safe and just use an older not critical drive for testing

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i have the same setup with a Lsi 9211-8i (drivers show as "Lsi Adapter, Sas2 Falcon" but have an older driver 14/5/2014 2.0.60.83 - actually thought they were the latest drivers!

 

This is with a HP Sas Expander and 24 drives

 

This is on windows server 2012r2 

 

What OS is your server?

Whats the make/type of sas card you are using?

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Sounds almost exactly like mine.  I'm not sure of the exact hardware of the controller though.  It's one that Chris sold to me.  All I know is that the Windows Server 2012 R2 driver it installs says "LSI Adapter, SAS2 2008 Falcon".  Version 2.0.60.83 (Dated 5/14/2014).  I'm also using the HP Expander.  So I dove a little deeper last night.  After restoring from a backup last night, and rolling back the driver on the HP device, the drives DO show up in a grayed out (disconnected) fashion.  I tried deleting them (mentioned in the previous post) with no luck.  However, this morning I checked, and it looked like I didn't have the HP card seated all the way into the slot after relocating it.  So I reboot with it fully inserted.  Still no luck as far as detecting them.  BUT!!!  I pulled one of the drives out of the bay and then reinserted it.  Like magic, they all appeared in the Disk Manager!  But they weren't "Online".  I didn't have time to mess with it, as I was running late for work.  But it looks like I'm really close to fixing it.  I came home from work just now, and it's all locked up again.  :(  Before leaving for work I pulled out all the drives "half way" so I could one by one reinstall them into the case.  I'm rebooting now, hopefully it just needed to be re-detected in Windows.

 

Does that sound like a typical scenario though?  That it would lose the drives until unplugging and reconnecting them?  I've been a Windows user for like forever, and don't recall ever having something like that happen before.  It might be something new with SAS type connections though.

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:(

 

I almost had it fixed, now I ruined it.  I think I just blew up my HP SAS Expander.  I was reconnecting drives one by one.  Got to the third row, and it stopped detecting the connections.  Like and idiot, I reached into the computer with it still running and giggled the data cable to make sure it was well seated.  The card (which I never screwed back down after swapping slots) came unplugged.  I then, like an even bigger idiot, automatically started to plug it back in.  When I did, there was a short orange spark along the PCIe slot.  Instantly the screen dropped all of the detected drives.  I then, smartly, tried to power cycle the computer.  Now the controller isn't detecting the expander at all.  I can go into the controller's config utility, and where before it used to show the controller and the expander, now it only shows the controller.  I tried swapping the expander back to it's old PCIe slot, but still nothing.  I even tried switching the SAS cable from the controller to the expander, in both directions,, and still nothing.  So I think I've busted the whole damn thing, and need a new card now.  UHG.  I'm more mad at myself now more than anything, because I pretty much had it figured out until I started messing with the cables.  Damn it.  F^CK.

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If it was my card, then it's an IBM ServeRAID M1015 cross-flashed to IR mode (IIRC, could be in IT mode). And on the P15 firmware. 

 

 

To clarify here, if the drive is directly connected to the card, it does appear to be working (but probably offline)?  But if it's connected to the HP SAS Expander, it doesn't show up at all? 

 

If that's the case, then it really sounds like the HP SAS Expander has bit the dust, given up the (blue) ghost, etc. 

 

 

So shorting out the card (ouch, I'm sorry to hear that).... may not have really made the situation worse.  It sounds like you'll be needing to replace the card anyways, so now .... you just don't have a choice in the matter.  :(

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Yeah I do recall seeing something about it being IR mode. And you are correct - the first row of drives in the case is connected directly to the controller card. All 4 drives are detected just fine. Originally, I could use the configuration utility (OpROM post BIOS / pre OS) to examine all the drives, and it indicated the HP Expander card as an "enclosure". Now that the card was "shorted out", it now doesn't show up at all. Strangely, the LEDs on the card still light up. I just hope I didn't damage the motherboard. If I did, it looks like I'll have to go back to square one and buy a whole new motherboard/cpu/ram/etc. Really really bummed about it. :(

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ouch!

 

hopefully its only the expander thats damaged - they only require power to work so you do not have to insert them into the m/b 

 

a pci-e ribbon cable will work fine and can be connected to a pci-e x1 slot - i believe have yet to test this mayself yet but have the cable :)

 

if it does work on the pci-e x1 slot it free's up a x16 slot for me

 

On the second hand market in europe the HP cards are approx £35 each + postage

 

Good luck

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I'm hoping it's just the expander.  This one was always kinda shady feeling, coming from China used, and one of the SAS clips didn't lock.  I already ordered a replacement through Amazon.  I wanted to go with a more recognized seller with optional return capabilities.  It's listed as new $85.  Not too bad considering I paid over $100 a year and a half ago for a USED one through eBay.  It just sucks because I'm really crippled financially right now.  I've got a savings account I've been putting back $50 a week automatically from my paycheck to try and save up for a car.  Then my chipped tooth recently started really screaming at me so I went to the dentist to get it looked at.  Gonna cost me almost $700 to get it rooted and then crowned, of which I had to pay 1/2 when I made the appointment, and the other half when I go this coming Thursday for the work.  Now there's this server issue.  I just can't catch a break.  I really need a car so I can finally move out.  I'm really hoping to do it this year.

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Yeah, the server hardware prices fluctuate a lot.  Supply and demand. Though, the price drop I think is because more and more of "that generation" (SAS2) hardware is getting decommissioned in favor of SAS3 hardware. (SAS3 is spec-ed for 12Gbps, or 1.5GB/s, so very SSD friendly)

 

As for the money situation, I feel you.  When it rains, it pours.... :( 

And ... well, I've had a lot of dental work done recently, so I totally understand. You don't want to know how much that ran me, or how many teeth needed working on (soft teeth, and sweet tooth, so ... yay genetics)

 

 

 

Hopefully, the new Expander works fine, and you have no more unexpected issues!

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I hope so too.  I was really impressed there because it had been stable for months without issue.  Sometimes there would be a software update and all of a sudden I had to take a moment to figure out what happened and try to fix it.  But never a hardware issue.  I think the root of the problem was probably the expander card was flaky.  In my attempts to solve Windows not detecting it, I came to the realization that the driver that was installed (not working) was dated something like October 2016.  So that driver had been working fine at least since then.  Then when I "rolled back" the driver, the drives still weren't really being detected right.  So I think the card might have been faulting and failing on it's own.  The LSI config utility was able to detect the card and the drives connected, but it probably didn't start to have any issues until data was actually moving around on the drives through the card.  Hopefully this replacement will work better.  It's labeled on Amazon as NEW, so .. I mean new is new right?  Fingers crossed.

 

It's a shame I don't know anybody around here that has a similar setup that could maybe loan me their card (not even HP necessarily) just to test the PCIe slot.  I suppose I could pull the controller card and move it, but I don't really want to risk damaging the controller card too if the PCIe slot was damaged. You know?  Guess I just have to wait and see.

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I think I do have another random PCIe card I can try. Too bad I didn't realize it till you said something. :) It's a video card, hopefully it's not AGP and I'm just remembering wrong. It'll have to wait though. It's too late to mess with it more tonight. And it't not a priority since it would just be for testing.

 

Does anybody know if Norco is still in business? I never ordered that replacement backplane, and all my email attempts to get information about it are not being answered. I'd really like to know that their replacement part from IPCDIRECT (http://www.ipcdirect.net/4224-rpc-4224-sas-or-sata-to-mini-sas-storage-enclosure-backplane-bp-001/) is what I need. Specifically, I was looking to get some information as to what the switches were on the circuit board, since my current version doesn't have that. I was also wanting to know if this is their latest version, because it looks to me from various website forums that their yellow cards are older than their green ones. I just wanted to know these things before pulling that BUY trigger, and they never even bothered to reply.

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