The LSI SAS 9300 HBAs are specifically designed for high performance in high-end servers that connect to large scale storage enclosures as well as for internal drive connectivity in 1U/2U servers and workstations. At the heart of the SAS 9300 HBA line is the LSI SAS 3008 IO controller, which takes advantage of the latest advances in SAS and PCI Express technology while reaching over 1 million IOPs from a single IOC. Additionally, each HBA from the 9300 line supports 8 or 4 individual SAS ports, which operate at 12Gb/s and are backward compatible with previous PCIe and SAS generations using automatic negotiation.

For a file server-only oriented board look no further than X10SDV-2C-7TP4F. I wish I’d bought it instead of the version I have now.

Very low power, 22 SATA ports (of which 2 are SATADOM), etc. You’re really unlikely to outgrow it as a file server.

My system
Modified Lian Li A76 case with SuperMicro X10SDV-7TP4F with 128GB of ECC RAM and a Z3 pool consisting of eight HGST 10TB HE10 drives, three 1.6TB S3610 Intel SSDs for the sVDEV, mirrored 64GB SuperMicro SATADOM boot drives, a 1TB Samsung 860-series mSATA L2ARC, and a Intel P4801x Optane SLOG, onboard SFP+ with MM fiber, riding the TrueNAS CORE 13.x stable train @ 106 W/hr.

With the introduction of SAS 12Gbps, seems like "it's time" to do a braindump on SAS.

Work in progress, as usual.

History

By the late '90's, SCSI and PATA were the dominant technologies to attach disks. Both were parallel bus multiple drop topologies and this kind of sucked. SATA and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) evolved from those, using a serial bus and hub-and-spoke design.

Early SATA/150 and SATA/300 were a bit rough and had some issues, as did SAS 3Gbps. You probably want to avoid older controllers, cabling, expanders, etc. that doesn't support 6Gbps because some of it has "gotchas" in it. In particular a lot of it has 2TB size limitations. Most 3Gbps hard drives are fine though.

Similarities, Differences, Interoperability

SAS and SATA operate at the same link speeds and use similar cabling. SAS normally operates at a higher voltage than SATA and can run over longer cabling.

SAS and SATA use different connectors on the drive. The SATA drive connector has a gap between the signal and power sections, which allows separate power and data cables to be easily connected. The SAS drive connector does not have a gap, and instead has a second set of pins on top. This second set of pins is the second (redundant) SAS port. There are pictures of the top and the bottom of the drive connector.

SATA drives can be attached to a SAS port. Electrically, the SAS port is designed to allow attachment of a SATA drive, and will automatically run at SATA-appropriate voltages. Physically, the SAS backplane connector has an area that will allow either the gapless SAS or the gapped SATA connector to fit. See picture of SAS backplane socket.

SAS drives are incompatible with SATA ports, however, and a SATA connector will not attach to an SAS drive. Don't try. The gap is there to block a SAS drive from being connected to typical SATA cabling, or to a SATA backplane socket.

When a SATA drive is attached to a SAS port, it is operated in a special mode using the Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol (STP).

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter.

This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort, and even in "JBOD" or "HBA mode" generally hide the physical device. If you cannot see the type of device (such as "ST6000DX000-1H217Z" in "camcontrol devlist", you DO NOT HAVE A TRUE HBA. If you cannot get the output of "smartctl" for a device, you DO NOT HAVE A TRUE HBA. A true HBA passes communications through itself directly to a drive without further processing. No amount of marketing department wishful thinking can change that technical reality.

2) FreeBSD has incredibly robust support for the LSI HBA's.

FreeBSD's LSI HBA (mps/mpr) drivers are authored by LSI and carefully designed to work with their HBA firmware. The FreeNAS userbase has installed many thousands of these cards which have, in aggregate, BILLIONS of problem-free run-hours. Not only are they known to work very well during normal operations, but they're also known to work correctly during ABNORMAL operations, such as when a disk times out or throws an error. SMART is properly supported. Forum members are incredibly familiar with all the variations on these and can provide useful assistance. Cards such as the LSI 9240-8i, IBM ServeRAID M1015, Dell PERC H200 and H310, and others are readily available on the used market and can be converted to LSI 9211-8i equivalents.

3) You must crossflash to IT/IR firmware

If you don't crossflash, then a lot of the remainder of this ALSO applies to LSI non-IT-20.00.07.00 HBA's!! The IR firmware is also fine but is a few percent slower. It is not clear there is any value to doing this as you would never want to use an IR virtual device with FreeNAS. We used to do this in the old days for boot devices, but with ZFS boot this is probably no longer relevant.

The LSI 9240 (etc) default MFI firmware is apparently being sold on eBay as "IR" by clueless sellers. The MFI firmware is unsuitable for FreeNAS and may cause your pool to get eaten.

The LSI 9211-8i (PCIe 2.0 based on LSI 6Gbps SAS2008) and LSI 9207-8i (PCIe 3.0 based on LSI 6Gbps SAS2308) both require firmware 20.00.07.00.

TrueNAS is not as simple as videos make it look, though it is fairly easy to get a system running if you read the documentation and don't color outside the lines.

If you want to save yourself lots of money and loads of time, the top of the page has Documentation and Resources tabs which contain extremely helpful information like the TrueNAS manuals. There's also a Search tool at the upper-right that works extremely well. If you understand the system and requirements before jumping in you'll save money, time, and frustration.

As general advice, if you run TrueNAS as a NAS and don't add things to it it tends to run fine and without issue, though I suggest using an Uninterruptible Power Supply and NUT.

Secret #1: Five different things affect file permissions
No one just comes out and says it. I had to really delve into how things are set up to figure this out.

Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with files that get permissions that you swear you didn’t set. It will drive you insane. Once I started to see how all the parts worked together, it made more sense.

The five things controlling file permissions are:

1. Unix file and folder permissions
2. Samba share permissions
3. ZFS dataset permissions
4. ZFS ACL
5. umask

That’s right, five things! Crazy. Each of those things can affect the permissions of files and folders created in your Samba shares in Xigmanas. Before this weekend, I only knew about #1, #2, and #3, but #4 and #5 were little sneaky surprises.

Secret #2: You need to restart Samba after every change
When you change settings on your Samba shares in Xigmanas and then apply them, you’d expect the changes to take effect. After all, that’s how Xigmanas works for everything else. But, not here.

You must restart Samba after making changes, especially around permissions and inheritance, in order for them to take effect.

To do this, just go to Services > CIFS/SMB, then click the Save & Restart button at the bottom of the page.

USB 20x4 LCD PC modding - black cover (black characters yellow backlight)

My server uses a internal lcd screen i had ordered some time ago from here: http://www.lcdmodkit.com/lcd.html ~ $40USD //

Here is what i have used on the page Services > LCDproc
LCDproc
Driver: hd44780
Port: 13666
Wait Time: 12
Title Speed: 5
Driver Parameter:
#USB connected HD44780 based LCD
ConnectionType=lcd2usb
Contrast=900
Brightness=5
OffBrightness=5
Keypad=yes
Backlight=yes
Size=20x4
#KeyDirect_1=Enter
#KeyDirect_2=Down
#KeyDirect_3=Escape
KeepAliveDisplay=1
ReportLevel = 5

Lcdmod Kit is a HongKong based on-line retailer of PC cases, HTPC cases, PC modding parts, USB LCD, LCD modules, electronics components, SMT chip components, kit, module and accessories. We provide economic prices and low shipping charges to the world. ///

USB LCD display works with XigmaNAS

The online backup works best for providing a long-term replacement for your domain. It can be used as a temporary replacement, but you cannot easily troubleshoot the failed domain DCs at the same time. Investigating the reason behind the failure of a Samba domain could be time-consuming and technically complex work. If, in the event of a catastrophic domain failure, you don't intend to investigate the problem and just want to revert back to a older copy of a working domain, then this is the best option for you. //

Online DC backup

To create an online backup, use:

sudo samba-tool domain backup online --targetdir=<output-dir> --server=<DC-server> -UAdministrator

This command can be run locally on the DC or remotely on another machine. If running the command remotely, you may want to specify a --configfile option so that the correct smb.conf settings get included in the backup (i.e. the local smb.conf file may not exist, or its settings may be different to your domain DCs).

In this tutorial, you will secure your website served by Nginx with an Origin CA certificate from Cloudflare and then configure Nginx to use authenticated pull requests. The advantages of using this setup are that you benefit from Cloudflare’s CDN and fast DNS resolution while ensuring that all connections pass through Cloudflare. This prevents any malicious requests from reaching your server.