supermicro X10SL7-F vs X10SLH-F

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nas4n00b

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Jul 12, 2013
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I am currently putting together specs for building a nas server based on centos and ZFSonLinux.
I have narrowed my motherboard choices down to these two Supermicro motherboards.
X10SL7-F
Two SATA3, Four SATA2 ports Intel chipset
Six SAS ports through LSI2308 chipset.

X10SLH-F
Six SATA3 ports through Intel chipset

This article makes it seems like the LSI2308 is something really good.
http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-intel-xeon-e31200-v3-haswell-server-motherboard-lineup/

I wont be utilizing the chipset's raid abilities so i just need the chipset to present the drives to the OS for ZFS to handle.
I am leaning towards the X10SL7-F using six 2TB SAS drives. Will be more costly but in the long run it will be better right?
 

Patrick

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Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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This article makes it seems like the LSI2308 is something really good.
http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-intel-xeon-e31200-v3-haswell-server-motherboard-lineup/

I wont be utilizing the chipset's raid abilities so i just need the chipset to present the drives to the OS for ZFS to handle.
I am leaning towards the X10SL7-F using six 2TB SAS drives. Will be more costly but in the long run it will be better right?
Get the 7 if you expect to use many drives. It is less expensive than buying a LSI 9207-8i. Very much like the one I have here.
 

BlueLineSwinger

Active Member
Mar 11, 2013
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The X10SL7-F has 8 SAS ports.

It appears either board should fit your needs today. You may want to think about where you'll be tomorrow.

Nice advantage to the X10SL7-F is plenty of room for easy future HD expansion, though you could do the same with the X10SLH-F with an inexpensive PCIe HBA (at maybe a bit higher combined cost). The latter also has an additional PCIe slot and additional USB3 on the back panel (useful if you think you might need to throw an external HD or two on for some reason).

Potential gotcha to the X10SL7-F is that (I believe) its LSI2308 comes with IR firmware. Flashing it to the preferred-for-ZFS IT firmware should theoretically be possible. Lots of other HBAs ans MBs use this chip and come with or are flashable to IT mode.
 

nas4n00b

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Jul 12, 2013
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Yes! i am found out about the IR firmware. I emailed supermicro about how or if i can change it to IT mode.
Been googling to see if it is possible to flash an onboard LSI chipset. Most of what i see is flashing dedicated lsi cards.
 

solaris12

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Jul 3, 2013
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I am currently putting together specs for building a nas server based on centos and ZFSonLinux.
I have narrowed my motherboard choices down to these two Supermicro motherboards.
X10SL7-F
Two SATA3, Four SATA2 ports Intel chipset
Six SAS ports through LSI2308 chipset.

X10SLH-F
Six SATA3 ports through Intel chipset

This article makes it seems like the LSI2308 is something really good.
http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-intel-xeon-e31200-v3-haswell-server-motherboard-lineup/

I wont be utilizing the chipset's raid abilities so i just need the chipset to present the drives to the OS for ZFS to handle.
I am leaning towards the X10SL7-F using six 2TB SAS drives. Will be more costly but in the long run it will be better right?
My X10SLH-F is on its way


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
 

Kells

New Member
Jul 19, 2013
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I just found this forum, and a perfect question I have had is hopefully to be answered by you when you get that board. Very interested if it's flash-able to IT mode.
 

nas4n00b

New Member
Jul 12, 2013
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I just found this forum, and a perfect question I have had is hopefully to be answered by you when you get that board. Very interested if it's flash-able to IT mode.
I am also hoping someone can confirm because i make the purchase =/
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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My X10SLH-F is on its way


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2
Great! I am really liking Haswell platforms in general. I do not have a X10SLH-F yet but the 7 version with the LSI controller is one that has been running non-stop since I set it up a few weeks ago. Have not had time to flash but would say there is probably a good chance. One edit to nas4n00b's post is that there should be 8 SAS/SATA ports through the SAS 2308.

Also welcome Kells!
 

Kells

New Member
Jul 19, 2013
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Thanks much. I'm probably going to be building a linux server with ZFSonLinux, so that board is very interesting for the on-board 2308.
 

nas4n00b

New Member
Jul 12, 2013
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@Patrick
Thanks for correcting me.

@Kells,
What made you choose ZFS on Linux over something like Freenas?
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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Sata to Sata

Sas to Sas

You will get maximum reliability with a SAS SSD (or standard dual ported sas drives) for sure! But I don't think the 2308 is meant to be used with hard drives since it doesn't have a BBWC/FBWC right?

In that case i'd do SATA for SATA SSD, and SAS for SAS SSD (with PI!)

HP does the same thing - Intel Sata, optional LSI2308 IT with virtual-smart-array , and finally the $249 P420/1gb FBWC
 

Kells

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Jul 19, 2013
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I don't want to derail, but I'm going ZFSoL as I'm going to be running a bunch of other things. It was either that or EXSi and solaris for zfs, but I'm being told VM'n your datastore is a bad idea.
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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I don't want to derail, but I'm going ZFSoL as I'm going to be running a bunch of other things. It was either that or EXSi and solaris for zfs, but I'm being told VM'n your datastore is a bad idea.
If you are not looking at the absolute high end and if you have enough CPU and RAM for all VMs (storage and others),
virtualizing all of them is a good idea and done by me and a lot of others.

But you should only virtualize a storage OS like OI or OmniOS, you should not try to virtualize your storage itself (datastores).
This mean that you need to passthrough your storage adapter and your disks to your storage OS to have quite the same performance that you have on a dedicated hardware install with the same RAM. Stability of VMs on ESXi is not a matter with any VM and very good.

Especially the X10SL7-F is a pefect candidate to build a affordable all-in-one. You can use Sata to boot ESXi and for a local datastore (where you place your storage VM) and you can pass-through the SAS adapter to your NAS/SAN. I would use the max RAM of 32 GB to give the storage VM at least 8GB for a good SAN performance and share a NFS datastore back to ESXi.

X10SL7-F (1GbE and max 32 GB RAM) and X9SRH-7TF (10Gbe and max 256GB RAM), both with a included highend LSI SAS HBA are my current top serverboard candidates in the SuperMicro line regarding price. If the i210 nic on the X10 is not yet supported you may need to add a cheap Intel nic.

You should flash the 2308 from IR mode to IT mode, should be the same on both models
http://www.napp-it.org/doc/manuals/flash_x9srh-7tf_it.pdf
 
Last edited:

solaris12

Member
Jul 3, 2013
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X10SLH-F is more suitable?

If you are not looking at the absolute high end and if you have enough CPU and RAM for all VMs (storage and others),
virtualizing all of them is a good idea and done by me and a lot of others.

But you should only virtualize a storage OS like OI or OmniOS, you should not try to virtualize your storage itself (datastores).
This mean that you need to passthrough your storage adapter and your disks to your storage OS to have quite the same performance that you have on a dedicated hardware install with the same RAM. Stability of VMs on ESXi is not a matter with any VM and very good.

Especially the X10SL7-F is a pefect candidate to build a affordable all-in-one. You can use Sata to boot ESXi and for a local datastore (where you place your storage VM) and you can pass-through the SAS adapter to your NAS/SAN. I would use the max RAM of 32 GB to give the storage VM at least 8GB for a good SAN performance and share a NFS datastore back to ESXi.

X10SL7-F (1GbE and max 32 GB RAM) and X9SRH-7TF (10Gbe and max 256GB RAM), both with a included highend LSI SAS HBA are my current top serverboard candidates in the SuperMicro line regarding price. If the i210 nic on the X10 is not yet supported you may need to add a cheap Intel nic.

You should flash the 2308 from IR mode to IT mode, should be the same on both models
http://www.napp-it.org/doc/manuals/flash_x9srh-7tf_it.pdf
cause I will have X10SLH-F installed into Norco RPC-2442 OEMed case, I thought X10SLH-F is more suitable , because just SF-8087 to 8087 cables can connect all drivers. So I chose X10SLH-F, does that make sense?
 

gea

Well-Known Member
Dec 31, 2010
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cause I will have X10SLH-F installed into Norco RPC-2442 OEMed case, I thought X10SLH-F is more suitable , because just SF-8087 to 8087 cables can connect all drivers. So I chose X10SLH-F, does that make sense?
Its a matter of price. The extra 9207 on the X10SLH is quite expensive wheras for the X10-SL7, you only need a reverse breakout cable to connect the miniSAS backplane from onboard Sata connectors,