Hardware Architecture Update
So this NAS is the SuperMicro 36x Bay chassis, and it came with all 36x sleds for all slots, but they are 3.5" based.
- 24 Front Facing Slots (4U)
- 12 Rear Facing Slots (2U) (which means the server portion only consumes 2U as well - go Low Profile or home 7x PCI 2.0 x8 -in x16 slots)
My goal originally was to save all 36x bays for 4TB Hitachi drives, and just literally velcro a stack of (5) SSDs on the inside of the chassis (as to not block air as possible) and cheat with 5x "internal" SSD slots. Using a 4-1 QSFP to SATA3 breakout cable and borrowing 12v and splitting it a bunch for SATA internal power
With the "new plan" adding 4x more SSDs, there just isn't enough room to keep jamming more floating SSDs. And realistically I don't see myself growing beyond the front 24x slots for the next 5 yrs+ so i'll be fine.
Now to move all of my SSDs to the back 12x rear facing slots.
Step 1) Order 8x
2.5" SSD SAS to 3.5" SATA Hard Disk Drive HDD Adapter CADDY TRAY Hot Swap Plug | eBay
Step 2) Rewire the LSI 9211-8i's QSFP cables to the backplane for SSDs
Step 3) Split up the SSDs across 2x LSI Adapters for bandwidth >= redundancy
LSI9211-8i #1
Controller 1 - Port 0 - Intel S3700 200GB --> Pool 0 - Mirror Slog
[maybe swap with ZATOC]
Controller 1 - Port 1 - ZATOC 250GB --> Pool 0 - L2ARC
Controller 2 - Port 0 - Samsung Evo 850 240GB --> Pool 1 - Mirror 1
Controller 2- Port 1 - Samsung Evo 850 240GB --> Pool 1 - Mirror 1
LSI9211-8i #2
Controller 1 - Port 0 - Intel S3700 200GB --> Pool 0 - Mirror Slog
[maybe swap with ZATOC]
Controller 1 - Port 1 - ZATOC 250GB --> Pool 0 - L2ARC
Controller 2 - Port 0 - Samsung Evo 850 240GB --> Pool 1 - Mirror 2
Controller 2 - Port 1 - Samsung Evo 850 240GB --> Pool 1 - Mirror 2
LSI9211-8i #3
5x Hitachi 4TB NAS 7.2k --> Pool 0 - RAIDz (4+1)
LSI9211-8i #4
5x Hitachi 4TB NAS 7.2k --> Pool 0 - RAIDz (4+1)
My Assumptions are:
- Split the Intel S3700s up on separate adapters in Raid1 for additional hardware redundancy
- Split the ZATOCs as well, non mirrored, but for additional bandwidth
- Split each individual RAIDz (4+1) on to it's own LSI adapter
---- This is only an assumption that the background scheduler prefers each RAID component to be on the same controller when possible for less overhead.
---- I still lose the entire pool if I lose either LSI of course, but in my case I dont have 5x LSI's to split 1 drive per controller for HDDs alone, so i'll never really achieve LSI redundancy.
That should leave me (4) more Rear slots for SSDs to grow (either to speed up Pool 0 with more PLP SSDs or grow Pool 1 with two more mirror components) --- Otherwise i'm back to internal velcro action
i.e. Rust in the front, party in the back.