Supermicro X10SLQ and mini PCIe to 2 port SATA card problem

[jcizzo]

Hi all, my first post. I'm very much a noob with the diy server build so go easy on me.
I've acquired the above supermicro motherboard and it has a mini pci-e w/msata support connector on board.
I purchased a mini pcie to 2-port SATA card to plug into the motherboard's mini pcie port.

I want to configure it all as follows:
- 2 identical crucial SSD's connected to the two SATA ports on the mini pcie card. These would have truenas core installed as raidz1.
- 5 HDD's connected to the onboard SATA3 ports. These would be for my data pool, etc...

it's all a very simple setup for a first timer and should be easy to do..

My problem is, i'm attempting to perform a fresh install of truenas core but can't install it to the 2 ssd's because the bios doesn't seem to recognize the mini pcie-to-2 port sata card.

i've flashed the motherboard with the latest supermicro bios for that board. I've got pretty much everything set to defaults (other than lengthening the POST time).

there shouldn't be any drivers necessary for this mini pcie card, as advertised on amazon. Other's have had great success with it.

thanks in advance!

 

[oneplane]

More information required. What card is it, what chipset does it have?

Drivers are usually referring to the OS, not to the firmware or boot loader; it is possible that the device doesn't support standard pre-boot drivers which would mean it can't be used to boot from. In the legacy BIOS days they would add an Option ROM which then added the disks to the BIOS boot list, but in UEFI it's got to be a standard HBA or it won't do anything until the OS starts loading.

Small chance: if you have a combo port with PCIe and mSATA, it probably has pins on it for SATA; if you got a weird card it might be trying to pass through a SATA port that is duplicated as a SATA3 port. But we need to know what card it is.

 

[BlueFox]

You could just connect the SSDs to the motherboard's SATA ports and use the add-in card for 2 hard drives?

 

[jcizzo]

More information required. What card is it, what chipset does it have?

Drivers are usually referring to the OS, not to the firmware or boot loader; it is possible that the device doesn't support standard pre-boot drivers which would mean it can't be used to boot from. In the legacy BIOS days they would add an Option ROM which then added the disks to the BIOS boot list, but in UEFI it's got to be a standard HBA or it won't do anything until the OS starts loading.

Small chance: if you have a combo port with PCIe and mSATA, it probably has pins on it for SATA; if you got a weird card it might be trying to pass through a SATA port that is duplicated as a SATA3 port. But we need to know what card it is.

Thanks for getting back to me!
it's an IO Crest SI-MPE40150, which has the Jmicro JMB582 chipset. I attached the pic to this response, it has all the specs.

it's interesting that you mention Option ROM.. in the bios of the motherboard, there are switches for legacy, UEFI, and oprom everywhere, i just don't know which ones to change.. i can set the bios to either old-school bios or UEFI. if i set the bios to default/optimized settings, all switches to legacy. this is my foray into supermicro motherboards, so..

the way i thought this was supposed to work was the chip was basically a simple translator. it's a non-raid chip, i was very specific in hunting down a card that was non-raid because zfs would be handling that. I believe eventhough it'll have ssd's attached to it, it'll be very slow, but for my purposes that's fine. those drives will do little more than support the host os. the spinners will be attached directly to the MB running sata3.

 

[jcizzo]

You could just connect the SSDs to the motherboard's SATA ports and use the add-in card for 2 hard drives?

for 1, i don't like the organization of that. i want to keep the boot/OS drives on the one controller and my storage HDD's on the native MB sata ports because they (OS) will be mirrored and will most likely be the slowest channel, as i believe this port the card is attached to is 1x, whereas the on-board satas are sata3 and i need them to run in concert for the raidz1.

 

[techtoys]

I am not sure how big the SSD is just for a mirrored boot.
If its a reasonable size then use the SSD for a pool.

You can use a small SSD even externally via USB for boot.

I have a Truenas Scale system booting from external USB using a SATA SSD.
I used to do this on Truenas Core using 2 SATA SSD mirrored for boot and connected via USB.
You can get a cheap 2.5" USB to SATA enclosure.

 

[jcizzo]

the ssd's are crucia 240GB drives, fairly new. I'm trying to learn this whole thing and I'd prefer to set it up as defaults and not perform 'work-arounds', because eventually this will be making it's way to my family's vacation home, loaded with movies, etc.. so, i just wanted to get it squared away, install dlna on it, and have it run effortlessly, with a couple of spare drives next to it incase one should die, someone could go and replace it without much thought.

 

[oneplane]

Looks like the JMB582 default configuration only allows UEFI booting, and only if the block devices are visible in the UEFI shell. If you are using CSM booting, it will not work.

IOCrest is a bit skanky, especially on the documentation front. JMicron isn't faring any better... but you can do some checks yourself:

1. Prepare a method of accessing a UEFI shell, most modern SuperMicro boards have a built-in UEFI shell
2. Make sure there is at least 1 disk attached to the JMicron and with at least 1 GPT partition with FAT32 or something EFI-boot compatible
3. Boot into the UEFI shell and list all block devices, and all fs devices; if you put some directory or file on the disk with a unique name you should be able to easily identify if the disk could be read.

If the disks do not show up at all, the controller cannot be used from UEFI and hence not for booting. If they do show up but you can't access them, it might be a partitioning or filesystem issue and you have to fix that first.

Once you have verified you can read filesystems off of disks attached to the controller you're already good to go; the boot entries in the UEFI Boot Manager merely point to fsX:/ type paths on attached devices, so it becomes a matter of setting the correct entries for your boot loader of choice.

As for what disks are attached where: for SATA it hardly matters and for SuperMicro boards I would use up all on-board ports before even thinking about an extra HBA. But that is up to you and technically doesn't factor in to the question of JMB582 bootability ;-)

 

[techtoys]

240G is overkill and you can get small drives for under $20 on ebay.
But 240 is fine if you want to use it.

Go with USB as its simpler to change if one fails.
That being said ... you are more likely to have a failure if someone yanks out the usb cable.

It is possible to do it via USB internally but anything internal is harder to change.

 

[techtoys]

I assume you will run raidZ2 on the 5 drives. If one fails its not that simple for a person to replace the drive. An internal drive is beyond most normal people but if you have a tray with drives that are easy to swap a regular person may be able to do it.

Here is the hard part. You have 5 drives. Which drive to they replace when 1 drive fails?
You better make sure you track the serial/id of each drive against its slot and instruct them on which drive to replace.

I have done drive replacements before on both Truenas ZFS and old school RAID. It require a few steps. It's not hard but for a remote location you may need to work in tandem with someone and guide them through step while you are logged in remotely.

 

[jcizzo]

240G is overkill and you can get small drives for under $20 on ebay.
But 240 is fine if you want to use it.

Go with USB as its simpler to change if one fails.
That being said ... you are more likely to have a failure if someone yanks out the usb cable.

It is possible to do it via USB internally but anything internal is harder to change.

well, considering the drives were only ~$20 from amazon.. i know they're overkill, but i already had one laying around, so.. plus, i wanted to do a raid1 on the os drives incase one fails, easier to replace, and definitely easier to walk someone completely inept through pulling out the old and popping in the new..

PLUS, this is my foray into truenas and i absolutely LOVE IT! i know nothing about it, but i'm hooked on all things BSD, so.. i want to build this little box out just as the creators intended before i muck around with it using odd-ball configs, if that makes sense.. there's such a learning curve to this, i need to follow a build scenario that i can follow by documentation.

 

[jcizzo]

I assume you will run raidZ2 on the 5 drives. If one fails its not that simple for a person to replace the drive. An internal drive is beyond most normal people but if you have a tray with drives that are easy to swap a regular person may be able to do it.

Here is the hard part. You have 5 drives. Which drive to they replace when 1 drive fails?
You better make sure you track the serial/id of each drive against its slot and instruct them on which drive to replace.

I have done drive replacements before on both Truenas ZFS and old school RAID. It require a few steps. It's not hard but for a remote location you may need to work in tandem with someone and guide them through step while you are logged in remotely.

re: the drive cage, that's the path i'm going.. there are a couple of drive cages out (icydock for example) that'll take 2x2.5 sata drives in a 3.5" form factor and they have eject buttons, so... they just pop out.. and several companies produce cages for 3.5 drives that'll squeeze 5x3.5" hdd's into 3x5.25 drive bays, and those just pop out as well.. they all come with a sata back plane so swapping is very simple.

 

[techtoys]

I have done drive cage for tower. There are some cases with front loading drives and backplanes. These tend to be a bit more expensive. I got lucky and got the supermicro 4 bay mini-tower for $80 new. There are others which are sold for DIY NAS. I also have a Silverstone DS380 and I added a cage for 2.5" SATA. 4 drives in 5.25 bay.

I have also bought SAS and SATA external DAS cases and used those with existing computers. The older ones I got from Sans Digital have major issues with their power supplies which keep dying.

For a vacation home I'm guessing you can't go with cheaper rack mount but there are some small racks. Patrick reviewed a good one here.

 

[jcizzo]

I am not sure how big the SSD is just for a mirrored boot.
If its a reasonable size then use the SSD for a pool.

You can use a small SSD even externally via USB for boot.

I have a Truenas Scale system booting from external USB using a SATA SSD.
I used to do this on Truenas Core using 2 SATA SSD mirrored for boot and connected via USB.
You can get a cheap 2.5" USB to SATA enclosure.

Would you mind explaining this further? are you saying that you have 2 SSD's that hold the OS, but use a usb drive to initiate the boot, then transferring control over to the os on the ssd's?

 

[techtoys]

I use an external USB drive(s) as the boot drive. These are SATA SSDs which are external using a 2.5" case with a SATA to USB converter. I used to use 2 of these mirrored but you can use one and just back up your config in case of failure. By using an external drive for the OS and boot I save the internal SATA for NAS storage. You don't need much for Truenas.