Thank you so much for the tips! I’ll get in touch with the Chinese manufacturers, and Areca. I’m in the UK, so shipping and tax will be a burden, but it’s good to know that the cables themselves are suitable.
Replacing a 9361-8i with 9560-16i and need to swap cables for backplane
- Thread starter smokey7722
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TechData's team has been effectively useless in tracking down cables or getting Supermicro to respond. I took a different approach with them and am waiting on a response again but not hopeful. May try to reach out to Ingram while I wait.
Most random vendors on websites that I reached out to gave a response of "i don't know if it'll work but you can buy them and try - and if they don't work return them". Of course I'll do that. I'll just take a production machine offline, tear it apart, find it doesn't work, then put it back together... Sure, yea I'll do that. Still searching for options though it seems like going with the older 9400 series is likely the easiest option at this point given these new cables seem unavailable from anywhere.
Most random vendors on websites that I reached out to gave a response of "i don't know if it'll work but you can buy them and try - and if they don't work return them". Of course I'll do that. I'll just take a production machine offline, tear it apart, find it doesn't work, then put it back together... Sure, yea I'll do that. Still searching for options though it seems like going with the older 9400 series is likely the easiest option at this point given these new cables seem unavailable from anywhere.
I share your frustration, and ended up just buying a 9400-8i instead as it, along with appropriate cables, was in-stock for next-day delivery.
Yea I am leaning in that direction. One 9460-16i (05-50011-00) and one 05-50061-00 cable to connect the two drives to it. Now the question is where to source them too. Where'd you get yours?
@dbTH - just confirming that the 9460 + 05-50061-00 (to connect two U.2's via the backplane) + existing pair of CBL-SAST-0532 (to connect the backplanes expander for the remaining 6 sas drives already connected seems accurate? Or should I look at replacing the CBL-SAST-0532 cables with different ones? I'd assume the existing sas connection would be ok, but wasn't sure on this trimode card. Figured it was worth asking as you seem to be pretty familiar with it.
Well checking inventory for the 9460 and 05-50061-00 I reached out to pc-pitstop.com since no distributor I have access to seems to have inventory or access any longer. They don't have either in stock at the moment though offered a third party option for the cable, but can't get me a 16i controller. They do however claim they may have inventory of the 9560-16i, 05-60002-00 and 05-60003-00 so I have them generating me a quote and confirming they do in fact have stock. If so, it'll be a bit more $ than I had planned as its retail but at least I can get them. Will update shortly.
Confirmed they did have inventory so picked up the 9560-16i plus the two cables (05-60002-00 and 05-60003-00). Now to get the two P5510's on order from Ingram and I should be good for this finally.
I have CSE-826 12 slots backplane, 3 Mini SAS HD connectors (JMS1,JMS2,JMS3) and 4 NVMe connectors (JMS4,JMS5,JMS6,JMS7) . In my test, with 94xx-16i, you can't connect to both Mini SAS HD and NVMe connectors at the same time for the hybrid ports. You must leave one of them disconnected.
And in your case you have 2 Mini SAS HD (JMS1,JMS2) + 2 NVMe connectors (JMS3 and JMS4). When you are connecting to NVME connectors (JMS3 and JMS4) with 05-50061-00 cable, you probably need to leave the other Mini SAS HD connector JMS2 disconnected since it is also connecting to 2 hybrid ports . For hybrid ports you can have either SAS or NVMe and not both at the same time. This means that you will have just need one 05-60003-00 MINI SAS HD cable for 4 SAS/SATA drives, likely losing 2 SAS ports
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All your adapter and SSD upgrades are PCIe Gen 4.0 , good for future proof and must be costly. But the caveat is that your X10DSV system is PCIe Gen 3.0 and your U.2 backplane is also Gen 3.0
In reality once I get this setup we should have two SAS mirrored for OS and the two NVMe so that's ok if that's truly the case. From my understanding though the 6 SAS ports are not hybrid though so not 100% sure that will be the experience. The documentation didn't seem to indicate that when I looked through it but either way, if that does happen it's not the end of the world.
Yea, that was the plan, I would rather get the newer equipment to future proof should I upgrade the system at some point. There is no upgraded backplane though from what I can see and no updated 1U short depth chassis so we'll likely be stuck on Gen 3 for a while. Should be fine though as it's going to be a substantial performance upgrade from the RAID10'ed SAS drives either way. All in all price wasn't that unreasonable for the upgrade either to be honest. Cables were annoying at their prices but it is what it is.
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Took quite a while but the 05-50077-00 (9560-16i), 05-60002-00 for NVMe and 05-60003-00 for SAS arrives. The new D7-5510 NVMe also showed up. One expensive upgrade to add 2 NVMe drives!
Already prepped the server with patching FreeBSD to current and such so hopefully this works ok (Broadcom drivers have been a nightmare in recent years with FreeBSD). Ironically one of the old SAS drives failed yesterday so timing wise I am glad I have the equipment here and just hoping that everything goes smooth with the upgrade/rebuild.
Already prepped the server with patching FreeBSD to current and such so hopefully this works ok (Broadcom drivers have been a nightmare in recent years with FreeBSD). Ironically one of the old SAS drives failed yesterday so timing wise I am glad I have the equipment here and just hoping that everything goes smooth with the upgrade/rebuild.
How's your upgrade/rebuild with the new hardware? Are all 6 SAS + 2 NVMe ports available or it's just 4 SAS + 2 NVMe ?
So it should be 6 + 2 but I haven't done it yet. I reached out to the Broadcom folk who maintain the drivers for FreeBSD as I was having issues finding details on support for the SAS3916 chip used in the 9560-16i. They claim FreeBSD 13 supports it natively but in my experience the embedded drivers never worked right and I always had to swap with downloaded clean versions from Broadcom but they don't seem to have them available for FreeBSD anymore. Waiting for a response before I tear the system down.
I do have the card, both NVMe and cables here ready to go though once I can get the driver details confirmed and ready.
For any latest or greatest Broadcom/LSI MegaRAID or HBA SAS controller , usually you will have better luck with Redhat/Oracle/CentOS/SuSE Linux distro and Windows OSes for the driver support from Broadcom, or you will have to go back to the previous generation SAS38xx chip for FreeBSD
Will find out shortly. Would prefer to not have to rebuild the OS or swap hardware I already purchased to use. Broadcom's folk state it works but also state that I can download the drivers from their site, yet they aren't available. So they are looking into it for me and hopefully I will have something quickly as I really need to get this project completed.
So Broadcom claims support is there and confirmed a) FreeBSD 13 includes a driver that supports it and b) I was provided with a direct link to download the Broadcom version of the driver that's not been modified to be included in the FreeBSD release.
Well regarding a) - the versions included for the past 10 years for me with EVERY FreeBSD release has always been garbage causing massive issues and in some extreme cases, kernel panics and data corruption. The version included in FreeBSD is 7.09, the same as the manual download (though altered for FreeBSD inclusion) As of this afternoon, three vm's I was migrating and testing with are now trash and I am restoring them from Veeam backups to the ESX node.
Regarding b) The version provided to download was 7.09 while all other OS's are 7.19. This isn't just for the 9560 but for any Broadcom controller. I'm attempting to build a custom kernel to remove the FreeBSD driver but I'm still concerned about the age of this driver. I've already relayed this to the Broadcom folk as well. The Broadcom version resolved numerous issues in the past compared to the FreeBSD versions but its still quite old in comparison to any other OS at this point. I tried compiling the source that Broadcom supplied me and it won't even compile so its certainly not updated for FreeBSD 13.0 so I have no idea now. I sent a lengthy email to the Broadcom contacts but I'm guessing I'll not get any traction and I am going to have to consider a complete rebuild with a different OS to not lose the money spent.
Otherwise right now I only have a pair of HDD and the pair of NVMe loaded in the chassis and all show up. Once I get this stable I will play around and add in a few more drives to see if I am limited to 4 or can use all 6 SAS drives on the backplane in addition to the 2 NVMe.
Well regarding a) - the versions included for the past 10 years for me with EVERY FreeBSD release has always been garbage causing massive issues and in some extreme cases, kernel panics and data corruption. The version included in FreeBSD is 7.09, the same as the manual download (though altered for FreeBSD inclusion) As of this afternoon, three vm's I was migrating and testing with are now trash and I am restoring them from Veeam backups to the ESX node.
Regarding b) The version provided to download was 7.09 while all other OS's are 7.19. This isn't just for the 9560 but for any Broadcom controller. I'm attempting to build a custom kernel to remove the FreeBSD driver but I'm still concerned about the age of this driver. I've already relayed this to the Broadcom folk as well. The Broadcom version resolved numerous issues in the past compared to the FreeBSD versions but its still quite old in comparison to any other OS at this point. I tried compiling the source that Broadcom supplied me and it won't even compile so its certainly not updated for FreeBSD 13.0 so I have no idea now. I sent a lengthy email to the Broadcom contacts but I'm guessing I'll not get any traction and I am going to have to consider a complete rebuild with a different OS to not lose the money spent.
Otherwise right now I only have a pair of HDD and the pair of NVMe loaded in the chassis and all show up. Once I get this stable I will play around and add in a few more drives to see if I am limited to 4 or can use all 6 SAS drives on the backplane in addition to the 2 NVMe.
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