raid controller requirements for temperature monitor and spin control

Hi everybody

I had an unraid plus server for years now with 6 drives connected on the motherboard's sata. I recently upgraded to pro and since the motherboard had only 6 sata I had to install a extra controller. I had allready an Areca arc_1120 PCI-X controller and since my motherboard is a supermicro X7SBE I used it. The controller is set to JBOD mode no raid function. Now when I go in the unRaid webgui there is no temperature reading on the drives connected on the Areca controller and it seems that unRaid can't spin them down.

So I guess there must be some requirements for the raid controller to be able to cooperate with unRaid.

Thanks in advance

I love the Areca cards, but only the ones with the ethernet ports on the back for web management.  Through that interface you would see the drive temperatures and set the spindown policy.  I used the ARC-1170 on my old box and now the ARC-1260ML on my current box.

Yes but what about monitoring temperature and spin control from the unRaid webGui?

Would it be better if I stick with simple chip pci sata controllers and avoid expensive sata raid cards?

I know for sure (see my signature) that Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 (PCI-X) cards work perfectly with unRAID on the same X7SBE motherboard.

... The controller is set to JBOD mode no raid function. Now when I go in the unRaid webgui there is no temperature reading on the drives connected on the Areca controller and it seems that unRaid can't spin them down.

...

Just noticed this... JBOD mode would represent all HDDs, connected via controller, to unRAID as one gigantic drive. This might be the reason why unRAID couldn't read individual drives temperature. The spindown... it does work for my RAID-0 pool cache drive via Addonics AD4SA6GPX2 card, but... YMMV.

By the way, are you able to assign individual drives to unRAID positions, having Areca in JBOD mode?

Dig here.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38487.msg357726#msg357726

Dig here.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38487.msg357726#msg357726

Thanks for correction, I was wrong, JBOD is "Just a Bunch Of Disks", not "Just a Big Ol' Drive" as I was somehow thinking. So it is not necessary spanned and should allow access to individual disks.

Yes but what about monitoring temperature and spin control from the unRaid webGui?

Would it be better if I stick with simple chip pci sata controllers and avoid expensive sata raid cards?

See here. (this is the post I intended to post originally)

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38291.msg358036#msg358036

May work for your card as well.

In general, JBOD is not the best option to go with.

Plain passthrough (HBA, IT-mode) is best. Some controllers offer that via the "JBOD option", others like ARECA,

have some layer in between and cause the effects you see.

And others even require each drive to be set up individually so they are passed through - definitely not

desired (with regard to drive failure etc.)