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Using HP 487738-001 24-Port SAS Expander & SM AOC-SASLP-MV8 in WHS2011 with DrivePool and Scanner.


GDog

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Sorry for the Length, I trimmed it best I could  ...

Hi everyone!
I’ve scoured the forums for some resolution to this Hardware issue, but I cannot find anything. My Server specs are in my Footnote and it is up to date.

I already own and am currently using one of the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 controllers:
https://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SASLP-MV8.cfm
This controller is working perfectly for me in my WHS2011 Server, handling Advance Format HDDs just fine up to 4TB (largest I have at present).

My Server Motherboard is the SM X7SBE. It has (besides 2 x 133Mhz PCI-X and 2 x 100MHZ PCI-X slots) 1 x 4x PCIe slot and 1 x 8x PCIe slot.

I am running 2 x SM AOC-SAT2-MV8 Controllers in the 133MHz PCI-X slots. These seem to be working fine with some caveats. In order to use AF HDD’s over 2TB, I am forced to use the Sonnet Driver v4.2.0.0 dated 5/11/2010.
1.    This driver does not report the correct Serial Number for the Drives:
Example, Serial Number:        WMC301385641
                          becomes:        MW3C10836514      
The Controller is DISLEXIC, reversing every 2 characters. Very strange.

2.    Also, it assigns the Serial Number for the drive connected to Port 0 on the card, to every drive connected to that same Controller Card.
While DrivePool seems to handle this “Problem” without creating any additional issues of its own, I do not handle it very well at all. The AOC-SASLP-MV8 Controller has none of these issues.

My goals are to solve these 2 issues ASAP and prepare for a Media Center move to PLEX in the near future, which will require more CPU power and a newer Server Mainboard. I need to do all of these things with as little cash investment as possible.

This brings me to my questions for the experts on this Forum:
1.    Does anyone know a way to solve these Serial Number issues without ditching the PCI-X controller cards? I may get rid of them anyway if answers to the following questions are workable.

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NOTES:   I have read on the HardForum that the AOC-SASLP-MV8 is compatible with the HP SAS Expander, which is currently available on eBay dirt cheap, like $15-$20, some including Cables! Here is the Forum Link:    https://hardforum.com/threads/hp-sas-expander-owners-thread.1484614/page-51#post-1039192861
This link will take you to page 51 in the thread, because one of the posts there deals with using this combination on a WHS2011/DrivePool machine specifically. It is not hard to navigate from there if you want to however.
Here are links for a couple of these cards listed on ebay.  Both from China sellers, but with very high Feedback scores (you can get a US seller for just a few dollars more however):
Brand New:  
https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-HP-SAS-Expender-Card-24-Port-SAS-PCI-E-Expander-Board-468405-001/191976718410?hash=item2cb2b4404a:g:N70AAOSwPCVX4pxE
With Cables:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-468406-B21-24-Bay-SAS-Expander-Card-2-x-SAS-Cables-70CM-487738-001-468405-002/272991770425?hash=item3f8f93d739:g:wHQAAOSwTQtaO8PH
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.  The compatibility of this HW combination with DrivePool and Scanner on the WHS2011 machine is not fully resolved in the HardForum thread, so I am trying to determine if this would be a workable solution for me to consider? In other words, can I put this Expander in my available PCIe-8x slot, and will it work with the AOC-SASLP-MV8  AND, besides giving me all the HDD connections I need for now, would it likely solve the Serial Number issues, since ALL my HDDs would now be controlled by the single AOC-SASLP-MV8?
3.    Does anyone know of any Firmware or Driver version issues that I might need to be aware of or that might cause other issues?
4.    Has anyone used this Expander before? What problems did you have? What do I need to watch out for? Is this change simpler than it looks? Am I missing something here? Is this a much more common thing to do than I am currently aware of?

I would sure like to hear some stories from some of you guys here that are using Covecube’s products. I do not wish to, nor am I willing to give up the benefits of using DrivePool and/or Scanner – NO WAY, not gonna happen! I am just concerned that I might be getting myself into something that will not work, or that I do not have the skills to make work, that’s really all this is.

Thanks so much for anyone who might be able to help me with this. MUCH appreciated!

Gary
GDogTech

 

Edited by GDogTech
grammer corrections & clarifications
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Are the drives connected to your controller card recognized in AHCI mode, or RAID mode?  I find AHCI to be much better at handling individual drives, as opposed to running them through raid firmware with additional ops.  Beware that if they have volumes on them and you switch from RAID<->AHCI, the data can get corrupted (or just not visible).  If they are running in RAID and you want to use them as stand-alone drives for a Pool (I assume you do), try removnig the volumes completely, switching them to AHCI, and then re-creating new volumes to see if they then serialize properly.

You might just be running into driver issues for WHS2011.  You've probably already done a crawl for drivers, but with a OS that's 7 years old you aren't likely to find anything new in that regard.  Again though - removing drivers for the controller and switching the drives to AHCI might be all WHS needs to install default working drivers for them and fix the serialization problem.  It all depends on what mode that controller has them on.

Edit:  Scratch my prior thoughts about AHCI vs RAID mode - I took a look and your controller only supports JBOD (and software RAID), so there's no mode switching to be done with it.  It is dated at this point, but there should be some WHS or Server 2012 drivers available.

Going to go do some digging on your problematic controller and see what drivers I can find...

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Thanks Jaga!

You were correct, system is JBOD only and it is already running in AHCI mode anyway. New drivers might just be a temporary fix anyway since my preference might be to just get rid of those PCI-X cards since they won't likely run in many of the newer Server boards (which I will need to run PLEX), and just convert to the PCIe card with the HP expander. This is my secondary reason for wanting to do that. I am just not sure I can make that combination work in my WHS2011 system with DP & Scanner.

Gary

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Don't know if you've tried updating the firmware on those two cards, but here's a link to the last revision Supermicro distributed:

 

I also nabbed a copy of the original installation CD in ISO format.  I upped it to a server, here's a link to it for you.  It should include original drivers for the card(s).  Officially SM stopped supporting their own driver sets for the card as of Windows Server 2003 (link).

 

Part of the problem might also be the AF drives - Advanced Format  wasn't officially supported until Windows Vista - which was after official support from SM on drivers for these cards stopped.  But given you can't even poll individual drives for things like SMART data, serials or temps..  that may be a load of hogwash.  Yes - I'm mentally regurgitating whatever pops into my head.  ;) 

If the drives you are trying to use are SAS instead of SATA, you'd need to use a reverse-breakout cable with each drive.  The controller only has SATA ports, and for those to talk to a SAS drive you need to use 2 SATA ports -> 1 SAS port on the drive.

Sidenote:  I read that the Sonnet driver handles 3TB drives, for some reason.  Most people seem to use them with 2TB en-mass however.

So at this point, if the firmware update + trying the drivers from the ISO doesn't help, and you've covered bases on the other stuff...  I think you'd be spinning your wheels wasting time trying to continue using those old controllers.  Especially when there are somewhat inexpensive alternatives.

It seems like the expander card may be your cheapest bet, though buying on Ebay means very little recourse if it turns out to be incompatible or DOA.  And - that AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller is also extremely old - are you sure you want to put more money into it as a solution on a server rebuild?  Theoretically it's well past end-of-life already, and could drop dead any time.

 

My nugget of wisdom after mushing all this information around:   I tend to try and ensure that my data is protected by hardware I know I can rely on, even if it costs a bit of money.  My WD Red 4TBs are around 4.5 years old now, and despite them having a low duty cycle I'm looking to retire them to parity drives soon and replace with 7-10 8TB drives for a new Pool, including a new controller and mSAS breakout cables.  Sometimes the old hardware just isn't something you can trust.  If you don't have the budget to replace key pieces though...  just start calling it an adventure!  :D 

 

 

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Hey Jaga!
Let me see if I can address all the NEW issues you have introduced:

19 hours ago, Jaga said:

Don't know if you've tried updating the firmware on those two cards, but here's a link to the last revision Supermicro distributed:

All I know for certain is both of the AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards are the latest ones produced by SM: Hardware Rev 3. I always assumed they had the latest firmware, but I never actually checked. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to figure out how to ascertain the FW versions without rebooting the Server. Do you know a way to do this?

I know sometimes it is possible to see the FW version as it scrolls by at boot time. The Server is tied up at the moment with HD Sentinel running some rather lengthy HDD diags - like several days to complete! It has already been running for over 24-hours and if I interrupt it, I have to start it all over again from the beginning.

I downloaded the FW files at the Link you provided and it matched what I already had, so I have to believe I most likely have the latest FW's already.

Quote

I also nabbed a copy of the original installation CD in ISO format.  I upped it to a server, here's a link to it for you.  It should include original drivers for the card(s).  Officially SM stopped supporting their own driver sets for the card as of Windows Server 2003 (link).

That's true, but the card will work fine in Server2008 R2 (WHS2011) up to 2TB drives with the latest driver from SM. However, I am using the 2-yrs newer Sonnet driver, which will support AF Drives up to ??TB (largest drives I am using are 4TB and those work fine). There are caveats however, if you want to RE-read my original post.

Quote

Part of the problem might also be the AF drives - Advanced Format  wasn't officially supported until Windows Vista - which was after official support from SM on drivers for these cards stopped.  But given you can't even poll individual drives for things like SMART data, serials or temps..  that may be a load of hogwash.  Yes - I'm mentally regurgitating whatever pops into my head.  ;) 

The Sonnet driver obviously takes care of this as well. 

Quote

If the drives you are trying to use are SAS instead of SATA, you'd need to use a reverse-breakout cable with each drive.  The controller only has SATA ports, and for those to talk to a SAS drive you need to use 2 SATA ports -> 1 SAS port on the drive.

This is interesting, and something I hadn't thought about. However, I am pretty sure all my drives are simple SATA, not SAS.

Quote

Sidenote:  I read that the Sonnet driver handles 3TB drives, for some reason.  Most people seem to use them with 2TB en-mass however.

Sonnet drive works with all of them. I am using it to drive 2TB, 3TB and 4TB Drives.

Quote

So at this point, if the firmware update + trying the drivers from the ISO doesn't help, and you've covered bases on the other stuff...  I think you'd be spinning your wheels wasting time trying to continue using those old controllers.  Especially when there are somewhat inexpensive alternatives.

I agree. THAT was pretty much the entire basis of my original post. :)

Quote

It seems like the expander card may be your cheapest bet, though buying on Ebay means very little recourse if it turns out to be incompatible or DOA.  And - that AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller is also extremely old - are you sure you want to put more money into it as a solution on a server rebuild?  Theoretically it's well past end-of-life already, and could drop dead any time.

That's exactly what I have been trying to ascertain here - will the HP Expander card work with the AOC-SASLP-MV8, and will the combo play nice with DrivePool and Scanner????
I strongly disagree with your assertion that the AOC-SASLP-MV8 is extremely old - old YES, extremely NO. I bought it brand new at Newegg less than 4-years ago. With my current MOBO, I can't use the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 anyway, because it needs a PCIe 8x slot. I only have ONE 4x slot and ONE 8x slot and the Expander needs the 8x slot, so I have to use a Controller card that runs in a 4x slot. The AOC-SASLP-MV8 is the best value choice presently. This card handles AF HDDs very nicely with the 4.2 Driver. Anyway, speed is not a major concern for me as my server is just a Media Server, not a Transactional or Gaming Server. The only major difference between the AOC-SASLP-MV8 and the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is the AOC-SASLP-MV8 is SATA II and the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 is SATA III, which NEEDS the PCIe 8x slot's higher bandwidth to deliver SATA III. I don't need it. After I find a new mainboard that I can run my already owned Intel Core i5 CPU that has the necessary slots, I can always ditch the AOC-SASLP-MV8 then. If you have any suggestions in this area, I would certainly like to hear them?

Quote

My nugget of wisdom after mushing all this information around:   I tend to try and ensure that my data is protected by hardware I know I can rely on, even if it costs a bit of money.  My WD Red 4TBs are around 4.5 years old now, and despite them having a low duty cycle I'm looking to retire them to parity drives soon and replace with 7-10 8TB drives for a new Pool, including a new controller and mSAS breakout cables.  Sometimes the old hardware just isn't something you can trust.  If you don't have the budget to replace key pieces though...  just start calling it an adventure!  :D 

Look at my Signature, Jaga. You will see that 95% of my Server parts are SuperMicro, not some cheap Chinese knockoffs. It's just that not everything is the latest rendition, that's all.  Most of my drives are NAS drives, WD Reds & some Seagates. Also a couple of HGST and Toshiba Enterprise drives I scored at a really good price. There are no really cheap, standard Desktop drives in my system except for a couple of leftover WD Greens that just won't die. Even still, after they become 5-years old or older, I first tell DrivePool to NOT put anything on those drives that is NOT duplicated on another drive. Then if they live another year or two, I pull them anyway and use them for archival , temporary diagnostic or cloning drives.

Regarding my "budget", unlike some here, it is not unlimited or even what I would call High! I need to be able to GROW my machines piece-by-piece. This is why backward compatibility issues are at least temporarily important to me. Eventually, I wind up with something pretty good. Sometimes, by then, the first pieces have gotten kind of dated, but that's just something I have to put up with at least for a while. You should have seen my FIRST Windows Home Server! You would REALLY laugh! I'm on my 3rd Revision now.

I really appreciate your help Jaga! However, I am still left with needing to know if I can successfully use the AOC-SASLP-MV8 / HP Expander combination in my WHS2011 / DrivePool / Scanner Server without major issue. 

GDogTech

 

Edited by GDogTech
Hit Ctrl-Enter by mistake! :)
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Oh well hell, I had no idea your SASLP controller was that young.  Based on the driver set for it and some rather light reading elsewhere, I assumed it was the generation just after the SAT2 controller (3.0 Gbps per port vs 1.5).  It probably is, but yours has light duty on it for ~48 months.  If it's only been 4 years since you purchased it, it couldn't have been on the shelf more than 4 years longer than that, and is probably still in great shape.  That's awesome to hear.  

Drivepool is absolutely the right software to 'grow' your storage, as you figured out.  Remove old drives as they either get too old, or die.  That's why I switched from a NAS to internal drives in a pool - it's just a much better solution, with far greater ability to protect the data and architecture flexibility.

========================================

Okay, so..  I did more digging on the expander card.  The first thing I wanted to know was what is the largest drive it was ever tested with and certified for (i.e. addressable space).  The "HP 4TB 3G SATA 7.2k rpm LFF (3.5-inch) Midline (694374-B21) drive is 4TB and certified to work with the Expander (link).  So it should work fine with your 4TB drives.  The only consideration there is the Advanced Format your drives were manufactured with.  The reason is because "Beginning in late 2009, accelerating in 2010 and hitting mainstream in 2011, hard drive companies are migrating away from the legacy sector size of 512 bytes to a larger, more efficient sector size of 4096 bytes, generally referred to as 4K sectors, and now referred to as the Advanced Format by IDEMA (The International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association)." (link)   That's probably after the manufacture of your SASLP controller, so it's a total guess if it will talk to them properly.  However, I suspect that the AF standard is backwards-compatible (much like SATA/2/3 standards are), so my assumption is that it will work fine with AF drives.  See this link for a bit more confirmation in that regard.

The second thing is inter-operability between the SASLP controller you're using, and the Expander.  This post seems to confirm my suspicions that they will work together just fine.  More confirmations found at these links:

Honestly, I think you're good to go with the Expander card and your SASLP controller.  :D  Given the prices and the seller ratings for the two you dug up, the one with cables looks to be a great choice.

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I apologize if I've skipped/missed stuff:
 

On 5/25/2018 at 3:54 PM, GDogTech said:

1.    This driver does not report the correct Serial Number for the Drives:
Example, Serial Number:        WMC301385641
                          becomes:        MW3C10836514      
 The Controller is DISLEXIC, reversing every 2 characters. Very strange.

That's very odd. Does this happen only in StableBit Scanner, or does it show up elsewhere?

On 5/25/2018 at 3:54 PM, GDogTech said:

 2.    Also, it assigns the Serial Number for the drive connected to Port 0 on the card, to every drive connected to that same Controller Card.
 While DrivePool seems to handle this “Problem” without creating any additional issues of its own, I do not handle it very well at all. The AOC-SASLP-MV8 Controller has none of these issues.

That's a known issue on a number of cards.  If this shows up in different apps, then it's not something that we can correct (easily, if at all). 

On 5/25/2018 at 3:54 PM, GDogTech said:

2.  The compatibility of this HW combination with DrivePool and Scanner on the WHS2011 machine is not fully resolved in the HardForum thread, so I am trying to determine if this would be a workable solution for me to consider? In other words, can I put this Expander in my available PCIe-8x slot, and will it work with the AOC-SASLP-MV8  AND, besides giving me all the HDD connections I need for now, would it likely solve the Serial Number issues, since ALL my HDDs would now be controlled by the single AOC-SASLP-MV8?

The Expander is basically a network switch for SAS.  It doesn't work on it's own.  It needs a controller card.  Either the one you're using, or a different one.  But it WILL NOT work alone/by itself. 

On 5/25/2018 at 3:54 PM, GDogTech said:

 4.    Has anyone used this Expander before? What problems did you have? What do I need to watch out for? Is this change simpler than it looks? Am I missing something here? Is this a much more common thing to do than I am currently aware of?

I've seen a few users using this, and it works well. 

22 hours ago, GDogTech said:

This is interesting, and something I hadn't thought about. However, I am pretty sure all my drives are simple SATA, not SAS.

Not sure it will matter. SAS supports SATA, just fine actually.  But SATA doesn't support SAS.

22 hours ago, GDogTech said:

That's exactly what I have been trying to ascertain here - will the HP Expander card work with the AOC-SASLP-MV8, and will the combo play nice with DrivePool and Scanner????

If the AOC-SASLP-MV8 card works with StableBit Scanner, then the expander shouldn't have any issues.  It's basically a network switch for hardware. 
If it makes you feel any better, I'm using the built in SAS2 expander for my case's backplane and all of the drives show up, no problem. 

22 hours ago, GDogTech said:

strongly disagree with your assertion that the AOC-SASLP-MV8 is extremely old - old YES, extremely NO. I

The card may be relatively new, but the tech is OLD.  But it still works well, for what it does.  But it's definitely being/been phased out for PCI-e. 

22 hours ago, GDogTech said:

Regarding my "budget", unlike some here, it is not unlimited or even what I would call High! I need to be able to GROW my machines piece-by-piece. This is why backward compatibility issues are at least temporarily important to me. Eventually, I wind up with something pretty good. Sometimes, by then, the first pieces have gotten kind of dated, but that's just something I have to put up with at least for a while. You should have seen my FIRST Windows Home Server! You would REALLY laugh! I'm on my 3rd Revision now.

If you have the slot for it, the LSI SAS 9207-8i would be best.  It's about $100, and it's well supported.  And that's new.  You can probably find it for half that price, used. 

But you'd still need an expander at some point or another.  The HP one works, but you'd need a second PCI-e port to power it. So, you'd need 2x PCI-e slots. 1 for the controller, and 1 for the expander. 

 

19 hours ago, Jaga said:

However, I suspect that the AF standard is backwards-compatible (much like SATA/2/3 standards are), so my assumption is that it will work fine with AF drives.  See this link for a bit more confirmation in that regard.

IIRC, most modern firmware will emulate 512b sectors, if needed.  But that's not a guarantee. 

The 9211/9207 LSI cards DO support 4k sectors natively, though. 

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