Seeking advice on best way to config SATA controllers

Hi everyone.

Need some advice on how best to get 15 SATA ports into my rig. Have a couple of options seeking some insights. Thank you in advance.

My rig is currently running:

Mother board: ASUS A8N32-SLI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131568

Which has 5 SATA ports and 4 PATA ports

I am NOT using any PATA drives anymore.

The Parity (3Tb) drive is running on the onboard SATA

I also have 2x

Promise Controller PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102062

I can support 13 drives including parity with this setup.

Current:

4x SATA 500Gb Drives

7x SATA 2Tb Drives

1x SATA 3Tb Drive - Parity

2x - 3Tb drives are on order (one will replace one of the 500s)

Storage = 21.5Tb (+3tb parity) 13 drives

I have 3x AMS Backplane Modules which hold 15 SATA drives in total. So 2 drives have no SATA connectivity today.

I used the Cooler Master 590 Case

The motherboard has:

Expansion Slots

UNUSED

2 x PCI Express x16

1 x PCI Express x4

USED

3 x PCI Slots

- Video card

- 2x Promise SATA cards

I noticed that a lot of folks are using this card:

Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCIExpress x4

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358

It's kinda pricey at ~$100 (as compared to my Promise cards costing ~$20 each.

My use case is - maybe 2 1080p video streams max.

I have gigabit Ethernet in the house - if that matters.

Possible solutions:

1. Get a video card that will use the PCI 16 Express slot freeing the PCI slot for a 3rd Promise controller

2. Get a PCI4 Express card that will support 2 SATA drives

3. Rethink how I am using the bandwidth on my motherboard - get the super micro which will support 8 drives - looks like I need special cables as well.

4. Other options?

Your advice is appreciated. 

If you're happy with your current parity check speed I'd get a 2 port pcie sata controller, definitely would not get another pci card, you already have 8 disks on the pci bus.

If you want to improve it get a SASLP or better.

Thanks Johnnie - I was thinking does it make sense to get a 8 port PCIE card?

And then have just one PCI Promise controller? Putting 8 drives on the PCIE bus has got to be better than putting them on the PCI bus right?

What would be optimal config?

Proposed:

On Motherboard

Silicon 3132 Controller Silicon 3132 Controller = Parity Drive

nVIDIA® nForce™ 4 SLI Southbridge Serial ATA  = 4 Data Drives

Add a PCI-e 8 port card = 7 Data Drives + SSD Cache Drive

Keep one of the PCI Promise controllers = 3 Data Drives 

Which would then give me 14 data drives + parity in an externally accessible manner + an internal mount SSD cache drive

Or do I just save my money and pick up a PCI-e 4 drive card which seem much more available and reasonably priced?

If I did this - I'd put the cache drive + 3 data drives on this PCI-e card.

putting 8 drives on the PCI-e bus is better than putting 8 drives on the PCI bus right?

How does one do the math on this? to figure out what makes the most sense? any links?

Thanks for the help.

A few thoughts ...

First, you absolutely do NOT want to add any additional PCI cards => if anything you should work to eliminating these from the system.    These cards are limited to 133MB/s on the PCI bus (possibly 266MB/s if your PCI bus is a 66MHz bus -- your system's manual isn't clear).    So you're sharing this bandwidth among 4 drives on the card.    A PCIe card will have FAR better bandwidth -- even the original PCIe bus (which is apparently what your system has) has 250MB/s bandwidth PER LANE ... so an x4 card in the x4 slot will have 1GB/s of bandwidth; or an x8 in the x16 slot would have 2GB/s.

If you want to do this as economically as possible, pick up some used Adapter 1430SA's.  These PCIe x4 cards support 4 SATA ports each, and work very well with UnRAID.    With your 2 x16 slots and x4 slot you could support up to 3 of these in your system.  They're readily available on e-bay for $15-25.  These are FAR better cards than your Promise units.

If you want to keep one of the old Promise cards, use it for your 500GB drives.    These are likely old, low-areal-density drives (post the exact make/model # and I can tell you for sure) ... so are much less likely to be severely bottlenecked by the TX4's => but virtually all of your other drives will be (ESPECIALLY during parity checks or drive rebuilds).

The Adaptec 1430SA is a very good suggestion, they can be bought pretty cheap and work great with Unraid, also you can use your standard sata cables.

If you buy more than one each card will have 1000MB/s max bandwidth, about 800MB/s real world, compared to the 133MB/s or 266Mb/s shared by all PCI devices.

Just make sure they are on the latest bios 2507, needed to support >2TB disks.

Thank you all - much appreciate the information and advice.

I managed to score a SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI-Express x4 on ebay for $28 the cables cost me another $15.

I may purchase the adaptec card as well and move off the PCI bus.

What thoughts on the use of a SSD for the cache drive? Is it overkill?

What thoughts on the use of a SSD for the cache drive? Is it overkill?

Depends on what you're going to use it for.    If it's purely as a cache for your writes, there's no real advantage to an SSD over a modern high density spinner, as the bottleneck on your write speeds to the cache is likely going to be your network.    If it's as an application drive, where local apps are using it as their data store, then the higher speed of the SSD may be userful.

good point garycase

No need for a SSD in my application. Shall use one of my 500gig drives.

Thanks guys!

Installed the Super micro (8 drives) + Adaptec (2 drives) + Motherboard (4 drives) + Motherboard Sis Controller (Parity Drive) = 15 drives all in hotswap cages.

Works like a charm.

Total size:                 3            TB

Current position: 136.62 GB (5%)

Estimated speed: 59.91 MB/sec

Estimated finish: 797 minutes

The relatively slow speed of your parity check will improve a LOT once it gets past the 500GB point (and those old 500GB drives are no longer involved).

Wow no kidding!

I was wondering what just happened! Also even with the 500Gb drives on it was WAY faster than it used to be - used to take 2500+ mins to complete.

Total size:                 3 TB

Current position: 719.82 GB (24%)

Estimated speed: 90.28 MB/sec

Estimated finish: 421 minutes

Nice upgrade! I would recommend plugging 4 drives into the 1430SA and 6 into the SASLP for more balanced bandwidth. Also make sure your smallest drives are plugged into the SASLP so they drop off the controller earlier.