Splash: Any tricks for SCA/SCSI Supermicro 5 drive box?

Santilli · Jun 24, 2004

Hi
The box arrived yesterday. I noticed I need a power splitter, since it requires two power connectors. Other then that, from reading the manual, everything comes preset, and you just plug the drives in and go?

Seems too easy. Am I missing something?

s

Pradeep · Jun 24, 2004

I have the four drive version of that, and I used two seperate connectors (each from a seperate run from the PSU). However you may be able to use it with just one if you only have one or two drives. Plug and go. Hardest part for me was tunneling two psu connector wires and the 68 pin cable thru the tiny friggin gap they give you, before screwing the fan/back into place.

Platform · Jun 25, 2004

Santilli said:
The box arrived yesterday. I noticed I need a power splitter, since it requires two power connectors. Other then that, from reading the manual, everything comes preset, and you just plug the drives in and go? Seems too easy. Am I missing something?

Yes, one TYPICALLY does nothing other than plug it in and go. It does have jumpers to select a SCSI target ID range. Default are low numbers, change the jumper ad you can have high number IDs.

One thing that you need to do is to install the device driver for the hot-swap processor. If you look at the ControlPanel / System / Hardware / Device Manager, you will see some "???" for something called GEM...xxx whatever the number is. That's the microcontroller for the hot-swap functionality. Just go to the tab for that GEM...xxx device and perform an "Update Device Driver" action for it. The current device drivers are at:

ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SCSI_Backplanes/Qlogic/

Santilli · Jun 25, 2004

Thanks again, for all your help.
Just got the power splitter yesterday.

s

Santilli · Jul 1, 2004

NASA. WE HAVE GEM 318 IN PLACE :wink: :mrgrn:

S

Santilli · Jul 1, 2004

This box is seriously making me rethink boxes, and computers.

It appears you could raid, and boot from the SCA boxes. If this is the case, you could have two, 5 drive boxes, booting on two channels, on Scsi 320 channels. I suspect the Adaptec 21010S wouldn't be able to handle this. Am I correct?

I have a feeling this card just can't handle over 100 mb/sec, due to no chipset to handle the speed.

This box has me seriously rethinking everything I ever thought about configuring computers. In a cheap box, you could have a scsi card, SCA box, and five drives, booting off whatever you want to boot off. Can you swap in and out boot drives? Raid 4 drives, ok, it's on a single channel, but boot off them, and store data on another drive?

Does SCA have a preformance penalty?

I could take the three optical drives above the SCA box, pull em, remove my other drives from the back of the box, and have 10 SCA drives, on two channels, and move all my other stuff to Firewire enclosures. or, other machines...

I could cut a hole in the back of the case, put another SCA box in, where the current 7 drives are stored, and use SCA for storage in the back, rather then the front?

WOW!!! the possibilities are really exciting...
s

Pradeep · Jul 2, 2004

Santilli said:
I have a feeling this card just can't handle over 100 mb/sec, due to no chipset to handle the speed.

This box has me seriously rethinking everything I ever thought about configuring computers. In a cheap box, you could have a scsi card, SCA box, and five drives, booting off whatever you want to boot off. Can you swap in and out boot drives? Raid 4 drives, ok, it's on a single channel, but boot off them, and store data on another drive?
s

You could certainly swap out boot drives, however you would want to make sure that boot.ini is looking in the right place, i.e. put the other boot drive in the same location you pulled out from.

Pradeep · Jul 2, 2004

Santilli said:
I could take the three optical drives above the SCA box, pull em, remove my other drives from the back of the box, and have 10 SCA drives, on two channels, and move all my other stuff to Firewire enclosures. or, other machines...

I could cut a hole in the back of the case, put another SCA box in, where the current 7 drives are stored, and use SCA for storage in the back, rather then the front?

WOW!!! the possibilities are really exciting...
s

Indeed, Supermicro has a case with two of the SCA enclosures, givign you 10 total hot swap bays. You would prob want to look at your PSU capability when running 10+ drives.

Santilli · Jul 2, 2004

550 Watts?

s

Pradeep · Jul 2, 2004

Should be fine. Another option would be to get an external enclosure box, with it's own power supply. Then you can hide it in a closet, or somewhere else if noise is an issue. Provided you get your cables from somewhere other than granitedigital it shouldn't be too costly. An 8 drive 5 1/4" enclosure would easily take 2 of the SCA enclosures. Tho it would have to use drive rails, anything with those little metal supports for 5 1/4" drives would require major surgery to accept the SCA enclosures.

.Nut · Jul 8, 2004

Santilli said:
This box is seriously making me rethink boxes, and computers. It appears you could raid, and boot from the SCA boxes.

Ummm...... of course! Been doing this for at least 10 years (booting from RAID -- 0, 1, 5, and 10).

If this is the case, you could have two, 5 drive boxes, booting on two channels, on Scsi 320 channels. I suspect the Adaptec 21010S wouldn't be able to handle this. Am I correct?

The Adaptec 2101S is not a 2-channel RAID adapter. You need a 2-channel RAID adapter to connect to the 2 SCA racks because those SCA racks don't allow daisy-chaining. Otherwise, if you could daisy-chain the 2 SCA racks together, it would work if all drives in the 10-drive array had a different target ID. I've assembled a number of servers using the 10-bay Supermicro SC942 chassis...

...and have always used either the single processor / 2-channel LSI Logic 320-2X RAID host bus adapter (PCI-X, Ultra 320)...

...or the dual-processor / 4-channel LSI Logic 320-4X RAID host bus adapter (PCI-X, Ultra 320)...

...with 6 ~ 10 internal drives. The LSI Logic 320-4X RAID host bus adapter will allow 2 internal channels and/or 4 external channels per HBA.

This box has me seriously rethinking everything I ever thought about configuring computers. In a cheap box, you could have a scsi card, SCA box, and five drives, booting off whatever you want to boot off. Can you swap in and out boot drives? Raid 4 drives, ok, it's on a single channel, but boot off them, and store data on another drive?

I've done configurations that used multiple arrays using multiple RAID levels on a single RAID host bus adapter. An example would be a server with a small RAID-1 boot volume, a huge RAID-5 data volume, and a medium size RAID-0 volume for temporary files. Or, the above configuration with a couple of extra RAID-5 data volumes.

Does SCA have a preformance penalty?

Absolutely no performance penalty compared to SCSI using a D68 connector. SCA is simply power , ID, and data on a single plug-able connector -- that's all. SCA was invented by Sun Microsystems (with help by Seagate) in the early 90s.

...I could take the three optical drives above the SCA box, pull em, remove my other drives from the back of the box, and have 10 SCA drives, on two channels, and move all my other stuff to Firewire enclosures. or, other machines... I could cut a hole in the back of the case, put another SCA box in, where the current 7 drives are stored, and use SCA for storage in the back, rather then the front?

I thought that you bought some big ol' honkin' "R2D2" pedestal chassis? At least this is what I recall you telling me in that huge subject "Splash: What Are You Using At Work These Days" (one of SF's longest; a Top 10, I believe). Many of these will allow a dozen or more half-height drives (3.5" / 5.25).

Santilli · Jul 8, 2004

The box is very compact. It has front mounted, room for two SCA racks, but only a floppy, and zip disk above it. If you put boxes in the back storage area, they would be very difficult to assess, due to limited room, I think.

Right now, the only Raid adapter in my future might be the dual channel LVD ATTO Ul3D I have, and the adaptec raid card. I'm confused about the adaptec card not being dual channel, since it certainly appears both cables have two drives attached, on each seperate connector.

Thanks for the information. I'll file it away for future use.

One thing the box does need is new fans, and heat sinks, and quieter fans.

S

Santilli · Jul 8, 2004

http://yycase.com/

R2D2 is not that big.

In fact, she fits comfortably under my desk, no problems.

s

Santilli · Jul 8, 2004

Cube Server Case - YY-0221 Mini Server Case for AT/ATX motherboard

s

Pradeep · Jul 8, 2004

Santilli said:
It appears you could raid, and boot from the SCA boxes. If this is the case, you could have two, 5 drive boxes, booting on two channels, on Scsi 320 channels. I suspect the Adaptec 21010S wouldn't be able to handle this. Am I correct?

Do you mean 2010S (the zero channel RAID card?)

http://www.baber.com/baber/products/adaptec_2010s_specs.htm

That will turn both of your on-board channels into RAID capable.

Corvair · Jul 8, 2004

Pradeep said:
...Do you mean 2010S (the zero channel RAID card?)

http://www.baber.com/baber/products/adaptec_2010s_specs.htm

That will turn both of your on-board channels into RAID capable.

Yes, that's it. I think I've made that mistake before saying that the Adaptec 2010S is a 1-channel RAID processor; it is capable of utilising the both of the Ultra320 channels of the Super X5DA8 mobo.

Santilli said:
...Cube Server Case - YY-0221 Mini Server Case for AT/ATX motherboard

http://yycase.com/products/yy0221.htm

I wish you had said in those earlier threads that it was a Yeong Yang chassis. It would have resolved the mystery of what case it was and what you meant by "R2D2," which is mentioned as being on the Intel® Server Board SDS2 Reference Chassis List of approved chassis for that particular Intel server mobo.

I've seen these Yeong Yang cases on occasion at local clone joints before. They are pretty neat overall, but too large for me personally (at home). The one you SHOULD have went for was the YY0400 -- specifically one without the power supply (read: expensive, loud power supply) and then you add your own non-redundant (read: non-expensive, non-loud) power supply. The YY0400 has exposed backside drive bays as well as exposed drive bays on the front. There are other cases very similar to the YY0400 which can be had "barebones" (no PS, fans, etc) for cheap.

Santilli · Jul 8, 2004

Well, the box was 170 bucks, with no power supply. Perhaps I have the wrong link. I just looked at the features and they are pretty close.

I'll look at the other but it's the cube, and I don't see the objection to size, it's wide, but short.

s

Santilli · Jul 8, 2004

Weird: The YY0400 has only ten drive bays, 12 including floppies.

Mine, with two SCA boxes, would actually have 18...

s

Splash · Jul 9, 2004

Santilli said:
Weird: The YY0400 has only ten drive bays, 12 including floppies.

Mine, with two SCA boxes, would actually have 18...

The YY-0400 has 15 exposed drive bays. Your YY-0221 has all the front drive bays exposed and the "rear" drive bays as internal drive bays -- meaning you have to open the chassis up to get to them.

The YY-0400's rear drive bays are fully exposed to the outside like the front ones. Obviously, those reear drive bays aren't as accessible, unless you have the server out in the middle of the room away from any walls.

I'll look at the other but it's the cube, and I don't see the objection to size, it's wide, but short.

I've seen the YY-0221 up close before. It's definitely one of the -- if not THE -- best looking case of its kind around. It's definitely not high, but it's more than just average in depth, and definitely WAY wider than average.

Santilli · Jul 9, 2004

Thanks:
(Greg remembers all those shows of Flipper, with underwater torches cutting bars and stuff... Lights up torch, and cuts out the back of the case, so he can put an SCA box in the back, or two...;-)

Looks like I bought the wrong case. Still, for the price, I can either butcher mine, or buy a new one...

thanks again,

gs

Santilli · Jul 9, 2004

OH, by the way, until my current investment in 68 pin Cheetahs wear out, I'm not to angry about picking the wrong case.

Besides, the guy gave it to me for cheaper then 170, since it had been around for a long time, and sans power supply.

s

Santilli · Sep 4, 2005

Well, I tried to update this setup, by adding the 320-1 Lsi raid card.

I've reformatted two drives, and I've booted from them, in raid ) configured on the LSI card. However, I can't seem to get the other drives to be readable, and I don't want to reformat.

????

HELP..

GS

Pradeep · Sep 4, 2005

You may need to add them to a RAID array, just as single drives or something like that.

Let me know how it goes, I'm considering the LSI 320-2E controller.

Santilli · Sep 6, 2005

Got it up and running, and, you were right. I had to configure the first array, then designate single drives as raid0's, and logical drives, then, they are scene, and booted into in dos/windows.

I increased the stripe size to 128 on the boot array, and, the Writes start at 85 mb/sec, and go up to 101995. Reads 92,399 up to 120729.

HD Tach starts at 110 mb/sec, and goes up and down, to 120 mb, or so.

It appears the Card senses the SCA box on boot, and goes from there. It appears you loose the hotswap feature, since each drive has to be assigned as a logical drive, but, I could be wrong.

Anyway, it's WAY faster then the POS adaptec 21010S that plugged into the motherboard, and, it's pretty obvious the problem is that card, and nothing else.

I was getting an average 40 mb/sec on tests with the adaptec card.

GS

Santilli · Sep 6, 2005

PS:
Most bios for scsi raid cards are counterintuitive. This one was SO bad, I actually had to read the instructions...

gs

LiamC · Sep 6, 2005

Santilli said:
PS:
Most bios for scsi raid cards are counterintuitive. This one was SO bad, I actually had to read the instructions...

gs

Bah! You think that's bad. The Tekram U160 from Buck arrived and I ripped it open and thought great--now for some SCSI luvin'. Identified the connector on the card I wanted (U160) and then went fark! Which frikkin' cable!!!

There were three in the box, a 50 pin Wide (??) which sort of looks like an old 40 connector ATA--guessed right on that one and put it aside.

Then there was a cable with 3 68 pin connectors with finer wires so I thought that might be what I wanted, as it had fewer connectors than the twisted basket weave thingy with seven or eight--so I thought that was what I needed--thinking that faster connections would be less tolerant of multiple drops on the bus. Wrong! After much reading, I think this is the Ultra 2 cable.

The basket weavers opium nightmare cable appears to be the U160 cable. Learn something new everyday. BTW, correct me if I'm wrong please.

I really do feel like a n00b.

Santilli · Sep 6, 2005

LiamC said:
Santilli said:

PS:
Most bios for scsi raid cards are counterintuitive. This one was SO bad, I actually had to read the instructions...

gs

Click to expand...

Bah! You think that's bad. The Tekram U160 from Buck arrived and I ripped it open and thought great--now for some SCSI luvin'. Identified the connector on the card I wanted (U160) and then went fark! Which frikkin' cable!!!

There were three in the box, a 50 pin Wide (??) which sort of looks like an old 40 connector ATA--guessed right on that one and put it aside.

Then there was a cable with 3 68 pin connectors with finer wires so I thought that might be what I wanted, as it had fewer connectors than the twisted basket weave thingy with seven or eight--so I thought that was what I needed--thinking that faster connections would be less tolerant of multiple drops on the bus. Wrong! After much reading, I think this is the Ultra 2 cable.

The basket weavers opium nightmare cable appears to be the U160 cable. Learn something new everyday. BTW, correct me if I'm wrong please.

I really do feel like a n00b.

That's one problem with scsi. You don't have to screw with it very often, so when you do, you feel like a moron, because you can't remember what to do, and, you forgot to write it down...

GS

i · Sep 6, 2005

Just wait until you wind up with an older model SCSI drive ... one that's missing all its jumpers, and those jumpers turn out to be an impossibly tiny size for which you have no replacements.

Not that I'm dealing with that kind of problem right now or anything. Noooo, sir. That would never happen to me. Nope.

Curse you, Seagate! You and your stupid, non-standard microscopic jumpers!

LiamC · Sep 6, 2005

Hah, I might have a couple of those I pulled off of an old 850MB Decathlon ATA somewhere if you really need them. I'll have to check.

Santilli · Sep 6, 2005

i said:
Just wait until you wind up with an older model SCSI drive ... one that's missing all its jumpers, and those jumpers turn out to be an impossibly tiny size for which you have no replacements.

Not that I'm dealing with that kind of problem right now or anything. Noooo, sir. That would never happen to me. Nope.

Curse you, Seagate! You and your stupid, non-standard microscopic jumpers!

What are you using them for, Gary?

GS

Pradeep · Sep 6, 2005

LiamC said:
[The basket weavers opium nightmare cable appears to be the U160 cable. Learn something new everyday. BTW, correct me if I'm wrong please.

You are correct, the interleaved blue/white cable is the U160 one. That's one the best parts of the Tekram retail kit, don't have to bugger around looking for cables.

GS: I don't think i is related to Gary?

Pradeep · Sep 6, 2005

Hmm, I notice that the newer 5-bay U320 Supermicro enclosure (the MS-35s) has only one 68 pin input. My older 4 drive version has an output as well for daisychaining.

Question? Can I still daisy chain the new enclosures, just using one connector in a cable run for each enclosure?

Thanks.

Santilli · Sep 7, 2005

Pradeep said:
LiamC said:

[The basket weavers opium nightmare cable appears to be the U160 cable. Learn something new everyday. BTW, correct me if I'm wrong please.

Click to expand...

You are correct, the interleaved blue/white cable is the U160 one. That's one the best parts of the Tekram retail kit, don't have to bugger around looking for cables.

GS: I don't think i is related to Gary?

I want a score card to keep the schtzos straight... :wink:

S

i · Sep 7, 2005

LiamC said:
Hah, I might have a couple of those I pulled off of an old 850MB Decathlon ATA somewhere if you really need them. I'll have to check.

Thanks Liam. I think I've found the right ones at DigiKey. I'll order a bunch and not have to worry about them ever again (hopefully).

And no, Santilli, I'm not related to Gary.

Santilli · Sep 7, 2005

Sorry I.

Didn't
Gary have something similar???

s

Onomatopoeic · Sep 15, 2005

Santilli said:
PS: Most bios for scsi raid cards are counterintuitive. This one was SO bad, ...

No, not at all. The MegaRAID BIOS (firmware) is actually still one of the best I've seen -- quite well laid out from a logical standpoint of what you need the work with as you configure or maintain arrays and RAID host adapters. Their layout design has changed a bit over time; this is from over 10 years of experience from AMI and LSI working with RAID -- simple to complicated. If you want to see complicated (actually, only a little more complicated), then you should take a look at the configuration firmware for just about any SAN fabric switch or SAN array (Hitachi, HP, EMC, etc).

Do you realise that the MegaRAID 320-1 has enough firepower to simultaneously run several arrays of any RAID level (providing that you don't run out of SCSI target IDs)?

Santilli said:
Sorry I.

Didn't
Gary have something similar???

Who??? What???

Not sure what you're talking about, but, there's only ever been 10 of me (which is 9 too damn many... <chuckle>).

There was 9 of me for a while, but that's only because I *thought* there were 10 of me! Once this glitch was discovered, I fixed the problem by giving virtual birth to a Computer Generated Baby -- which is supposed to be the saviour for all virtualkind.

http://garyhendershot.com/sf/

Santilli · Sep 16, 2005

Do you realise that the MegaRAID 320-1 has enough firepower to simultaneously run several arrays of any RAID level (providing that you don't run out of SCSI target IDs)?

Suspected as much, but wasn't sure. It's certainly WAY faster then the pos adaptec 2010S...

GS