ROCKPro64 with 16 ports SATA controller
#11
(08-01-2019, 08:32 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: @stuartiannaylor: Just to answer a few of your talking points.

I was thinking of using a regular ATX power supply for several reasons, the main one is that it's cheaper to get 12V and 5V at pretty high amperage.
For instance I can find an brand new  EVGA 600W with a single 12V49A rail and a 5V20A rail for less than 50€. More than enough to power safely the ROCKPro64 and 10 to 12 hard-drives.
Plus it's rated 80+, meaning less electricity wasted. And usually brand names power supply don't destroy all your hardware when they fail (which all power supply end up doing eventually, even brand names one as I have already experienced it after 7 years 24/7 powered on).
It has 6 SATA power connector, that can be doubled using adapters like these.
Power supply, for machines running 24/7, is really not something you can really spare expenses on.

I looked over for a USB3.0 solution, using a PCI-E like the one you linked. UASP adapter with 12V input for 3.5" harddrives are not that cheap either, I have found models like this one for instance. Plus I'd need a few USB3.0 hub to connect 2 to 3 UASP adapters per USB ports on the controller, with maybe 5V external connection to not overpower the PCI-E controller with that much disks.
In the end it won't be cheaper than the IOCrest SI-PEX40097 SATA controller, and it's a less clean solution, but it's a fallback solution for sure.

For the casing, I'd still go the individual hot-swap from the front route as it's way more practical IRL, even if it cost more. The Orico one can be found for 8.75€ a pop when bought by 10 or more.

Software wise, I'd need to do some more research into it, and some testing before going toward a different solution than what I already use. But on first glance Snapraid seem to have many advantages indeed.


EDIT: the USB solution could be cheaper using something like these:
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32897789991.html
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32829472708.html

Ugreen are good but like most things they are often just enclosures and branding surrounding the same.
These are really common 12v barrel input JMS578 chipset
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UASP-USB-3-0-...4223704252
Loads of em about and if they have that distinctive enclosure they are the same.

If it is a relatively static large media store then with Snapraid the only drive powered up and pulling any sort of wattage will be the one in use.
Also set your drive power management via OMV as again with media stores the operating principle is a totally different fit to other forms.
A relatively clunky old drive might take up to 10watt so 600watt might be a tad overkill as if you are only pulling 10-20% of your PSU rating efficiency will plummet.
The unionFS should be set to write to most free space and your drives will multiplex in use by those only with transfers.

Cost wise
4 Port Dual Bus (PCIe) USB 3.0 £66.85
10x UASP USB 3.0 SATA Adapter (£3.89) £38.90
2x 1M Metre USB3.0 Extension (parity drives) (£2.64) £5.28 
Hubs cheap as Sata adapter powered and prefer not to be switches you forget Smile
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-Port-USB-3-...2768651959
4x 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub (£3.18) £12.72


Its why I like those simple 5 bay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hard-drive-Ca...4116108483
As the top bay holds the hub as only have x4 drives but also if 5 the hub can just go on top, as that is the case for me slightly open air and a 12v fan on the back.
I just have the fan grill facing forward and did get one of these but like a numpty got a 3 pin fan rather than 4.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-12V-PWM-PC...1883875255

2x Hard drive Cage Tray Caddy (£14.77) £29.54

Still £153! total but still cheaper than you can get your card for, up to you obviously Smile 
Prob have to get clever with udev/automount  so they don't all spin up on boot but prob much, much less than 600watt needed.
Might be power management and efficiency that swings it for you, but just a suggestion and what I use.
Mine is disassembled at the moment and for the life in me can not remember how the drives spin up whilst creating parity.
  Reply
#12
(08-01-2019, 08:32 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: @stuartiannaylor: Just to answer a few of your talking points.

I was thinking of using a regular ATX power supply for several reasons, the main one is that it's cheaper to get 12V and 5V at pretty high amperage.
For instance I can find an brand new  EVGA 600W with a single 12V49A rail and a 5V20A rail for less than 50€. More than enough to power safely the ROCKPro64 and 10 to 12 hard-drives.
Plus it's rated 80+, meaning less electricity wasted. And usually brand names power supply don't destroy all your hardware when they fail (which all power supply end up doing eventually, even brand names one as I have already experienced it after 7 years 24/7 powered on).
It has 6 SATA power connector, that can be doubled using adapters like these.
Power supply, for machines running 24/7, is really not something you can really spare expenses on.

I looked over for a USB3.0 solution, using a PCI-E like the one you linked. UASP adapter with 12V input for 3.5" harddrives are not that cheap either, I have found models like this one for instance. Plus I'd need a few USB3.0 hub to connect 2 to 3 UASP adapters per USB ports on the controller, with maybe 5V external connection to not overpower the PCI-E controller with that much disks.
In the end it won't be cheaper than the IOCrest SI-PEX40097 SATA controller, and it's a less clean solution, but it's a fallback solution for sure.

For the casing, I'd still go the individual hot-swap from the front route as it's way more practical IRL, even if it cost more. The Orico one can be found for 8.75€ a pop when bought by 10 or more.

Software wise, I'd need to do some more research into it, and some testing before going toward a different solution than what I already use. But on first glance Snapraid seem to have many advantages indeed.


EDIT: the USB solution could be cheaper using something like these:
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32897789991.html
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32829472708.html

If you do decide to go for https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32546377052.html it will be interesting what benchmarks you get.
Highest I have seen have been a single Samsung NVME 970 SSD

Code:
Command line used: iozone -e -I -a -s 100M -r 4k -r 16k -r 512k -r 1024k -r 16384k -i 0 -i 1 -i 2
Output is in kBytes/sec
Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
Processor cache size set to 1024 kBytes.
Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
File stride size set to 17 * record size.
                                                             random    random     bkwd    record    stride                                    
             kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
         102400       4    52099    77524   104207   105324    48114    78504                                                          
         102400      16   160544   231475   276300   278531   160180   233806                                                          
         102400     512   738881   809485   685261   707192   676594   811610                                                          
         102400    1024   795915   841642   708547   730494   693498   851120                                                          
         102400   16384  1111519  1167200  1098700  1139913  1110364  1193693                                                          

iozone test complete.

From a while back when I tested my Marvell 88SE9235 4 port with just a RAID0 test I got with a test of 4x budget Integral P5 120gb sata SSD

Code:
Command line used: iozone -e -I -a -s 100M -r 4k -r 16k -r 512k -r 1024k -r 16384k -i 0 -i 1 -i 2
       Output is in kBytes/sec
       Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
       Processor cache size set to 1024 kBytes.
       Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
       File stride size set to 17 * record size.
                                                             random    random     bkwd    record    stride
             kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
         102400       4    33519    47927    52701    51023    26700    46382
         102400      16   105763   132604   138080   155514    87026   135111
         102400     512   276220   320320   311343   294629   267624   335363
         102400    1024   493565   522038   463105   470833   398584   522560
         102400   16384   687516   701200   625733   623531   555318   681535
  Reply
#13
As an update, I found out that the ROCKPro64 seems to be working with LSI HBA controller cards: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6763

And such controllers with 16 ports can be found on eBay (with P20 firmware IT mode, meaning no RAID and no BIOS) for about 45€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/LSI-9201-16e-6Gb...3291384883 for example.
With 4x SF-8088 to SATA at 37€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/4pcs-Mini-SAS-26...2683726119

Total 82€ for the controller and SATA cables.

Only question I have is, how does it works when you only have x4 PCI-E and the card has x8 PCI-E?
  Reply
#14
(08-02-2019, 07:12 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: As an update, I found out that the ROCKPro64 seems to be working with LSI HBA controller cards: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6763

And such controllers with 16 ports can be found on eBay (with P20 firmware IT mode, meaning no RAID and no BIOS) for about 45€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/LSI-9201-16e-6Gb...3291384883 for example.
With 4x SF-8088 to SATA at 37€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/4pcs-Mini-SAS-26...2683726119

Total 82€ for the controller and SATA cables.

Only question I have is, how does it works when you only have x4 PCI-E and the card has x8 PCI-E?

You can do that with most cards as they just use the pcie lanes available as you see in miner setups where gpus run on single shared pciex1 lane.
If you need a x8 to x4 riser cable or because the pcie slot is open ended just let it overhang as can not say but if they say its works.
It will just be bottlenecked with half the bandwidth of the original.
Also some use x16 to x4 m.2 with external GPUs and only get about 10-20% less than FPS than the original x16 benchmarks.

The original is
PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates Half Duplex
x8, PCIe, 4000 MB/s

it will just become
PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates Half Duplex x4, PCIe, 2000 MB/s

Only question and I am interested is at what level does the rk3399 bottleneck?
We have seen just over 1000 MB/s with an EVO 970 and it will be interesting to see if that was the EVO using all x4 lanes.
  Reply
#15
Hi, I am also using an ATX power supply in my home NAS (4 HDDs, 2 fans and the RockPro64).

I can tell you, the 80+ marking (unless you think of an expensive 80+ Titanium model) on the PSU is of no use to you here. That is because that denotes the peak efficiency of the PSU under a specified load (between 20% and 100%. See the Wikipedia article describing the requirements for the certification.

Now, your (and mine) problem is that HDDs have their rotating disks that need enormous power on startup (my 4 HDDs draw ~80-90w on spinup), but once their disks are on speed, their power usage drops quite dramatically (4 HDDs and the RockPro use about 20-25w max. together after the disks are spun up).

That is why you would easily need the 600w PSU for the startup of your NAS, but after your disks are running, you can do with a lot less.

In my case, with an older 240w PSU, once the disks are spun up and the HDDs + RockPro64 only use about 20-25w (The PSU is below 10% load here!), the efficiency drops to about 50% and I measure 40w power use at the wall plug. Unless you have an 80+ Titanium PSU (Which do cost several 100€), the efficiency of your PSU is not even definen below 10% load. Newer PSUs should be able to stay above 75% efficiency, but do not expect to stay above 80% with only HDDs and a RockPro64 attached. Unless you buy an expensive 80+ Titanium rated PSU.

Currently, I have measured the 60w PSU that Pine64 sells with the RockPro64 already to be more efficient in my system than my older 240w ATX PSU. With today's switching power supplies, almost any PSU that you can operate at 75-80% of its rated power will be more efficient than the standard ATX PSU.

So, if you really want to hold your power usage down by using an efficient PSU, rather get a smaller one and connect a larger, more powerful PSU as a 'booster' on startup. Since you want to run 24/7, it is a manageable task as you would be doing it just once (you can reboot / powercycle the RockPro64 with its buttons without ever having to turn off the disks again).  Of course you need to be more careful with this procedure...

Greetings,
Matyas

(08-01-2019, 08:32 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: @stuartiannaylor: Just to answer a few of your talking points.

I was thinking of using a regular ATX power supply for several reasons, the main one is that it's cheaper to get 12V and 5V at pretty high amperage.
For instance I can find an brand new  EVGA 600W with a single 12V49A rail and a 5V20A rail for less than 50€. More than enough to power safely the ROCKPro64 and 10 to 12 hard-drives.
Plus it's rated 80+, meaning less electricity wasted. And usually brand names power supply don't destroy all your hardware when they fail (which all power supply end up doing eventually, even brand names one as I have already experienced it after 7 years 24/7 powered on).
It has 6 SATA power connector, that can be doubled using adapters like these.
Power supply, for machines running 24/7, is really not something you can really spare expenses on.

I looked over for a USB3.0 solution, using a PCI-E like the one you linked. UASP adapter with 12V input for 3.5" harddrives are not that cheap either, I have found models like this one for instance. Plus I'd need a few USB3.0 hub to connect 2 to 3 UASP adapters per USB ports on the controller, with maybe 5V external connection to not overpower the PCI-E controller with that much disks.
In the end it won't be cheaper than the IOCrest SI-PEX40097 SATA controller, and it's a less clean solution, but it's a fallback solution for sure.

For the casing, I'd still go the individual hot-swap from the front route as it's way more practical IRL, even if it cost more. The Orico one can be found for 8.75€ a pop when bought by 10 or more.

Software wise, I'd need to do some more research into it, and some testing before going toward a different solution than what I already use. But on first glance Snapraid seem to have many advantages indeed.


EDIT: the USB solution could be cheaper using something like these:
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32897789991.html
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32829472708.html
  Reply
#16
(08-06-2019, 03:34 AM)mmatyas Wrote: Hi, I am also using an ATX power supply in my home NAS (4 HDDs, 2 fans and the RockPro64).

I can tell you, the 80+ marking (unless you think of an expensive 80+ Titanium model) on the PSU is of no use to you here. That is because that denotes the peak efficiency of the PSU under a specified load (between 20% and 100%. See the Wikipedia article describing the requirements for the certification.

Now, your (and mine) problem is that HDDs have their rotating disks that need enormous power on startup (my 4 HDDs draw ~80-90w on spinup), but once their disks are on speed, their power usage drops quite dramatically (4 HDDs and the RockPro use about 20-25w max. together after the disks are spun up).

That is why you would easily need the 600w PSU for the startup of your NAS, but after your disks are running, you can do with a lot less.

In my case, with an older 240w PSU, once the disks are spun up and the HDDs + RockPro64 only use about 20-25w (The PSU is below 10% load here!), the efficiency drops to about 50% and I measure 40w power use at the wall plug. Unless you have an 80+ Titanium PSU (Which do cost several 100€), the efficiency of your PSU is not even definen below 10% load. Newer PSUs should be able to stay above 75% efficiency, but do not expect to stay above 80% with only HDDs and a RockPro64 attached. Unless you buy an expensive 80+ Titanium rated PSU.

Currently, I have measured the 60w PSU that Pine64 sells with the RockPro64 already to be more efficient in my system than my older 240w ATX PSU. With today's switching power supplies, almost any PSU that you can operate at 75-80% of its rated power will be more efficient than the standard ATX PSU.

So, if you really want to hold your power usage down by using an efficient PSU, rather get a smaller one and connect a larger, more powerful PSU as a 'booster' on startup. Since you want to run 24/7, it is a manageable task as you would be doing it just once (you can reboot / powercycle the RockPro64 with its buttons without ever having to turn off the disks again).  Of course you need to be more careful with this procedure...

Greetings,
Matyas

(08-01-2019, 08:32 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: @stuartiannaylor: Just to answer a few of your talking points.

I was thinking of using a regular ATX power supply for several reasons, the main one is that it's cheaper to get 12V and 5V at pretty high amperage.
For instance I can find an brand new  EVGA 600W with a single 12V49A rail and a 5V20A rail for less than 50€. More than enough to power safely the ROCKPro64 and 10 to 12 hard-drives.
Plus it's rated 80+, meaning less electricity wasted. And usually brand names power supply don't destroy all your hardware when they fail (which all power supply end up doing eventually, even brand names one as I have already experienced it after 7 years 24/7 powered on).
It has 6 SATA power connector, that can be doubled using adapters like these.
Power supply, for machines running 24/7, is really not something you can really spare expenses on.

I looked over for a USB3.0 solution, using a PCI-E like the one you linked. UASP adapter with 12V input for 3.5" harddrives are not that cheap either, I have found models like this one for instance. Plus I'd need a few USB3.0 hub to connect 2 to 3 UASP adapters per USB ports on the controller, with maybe 5V external connection to not overpower the PCI-E controller with that much disks.
In the end it won't be cheaper than the IOCrest SI-PEX40097 SATA controller, and it's a less clean solution, but it's a fallback solution for sure.

For the casing, I'd still go the individual hot-swap from the front route as it's way more practical IRL, even if it cost more. The Orico one can be found for 8.75€ a pop when bought by 10 or more.

Software wise, I'd need to do some more research into it, and some testing before going toward a different solution than what I already use. But on first glance Snapraid seem to have many advantages indeed.


EDIT: the USB solution could be cheaper using something like these:
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32897789991.html
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32829472708.html

You should be able to set staggered spin up which takes longer to initialize but is specifically to help mitigate the power surge of combined spinup.
hdparm from memory

You mentioned LSI so I am presuming there is a chance this will work
https://www.itinstock.com/lsi-logic-sas-...3901-p.asp

8 port and also will have the x4 lane overhang if it does function.

rock64@rockpro64:~$ lspci
00:00.0 PCI bridge: Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd RK3399 PCI Express Root Port
01:00.0 SCSI storage controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS1068E PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS (rev 08)

There is one but with those LSI adapters and presume the controller is 32bit as its 2gb max for drives.
  Reply
#17
(08-02-2019, 07:12 AM)ZeblodS Wrote: As an update, I found out that the ROCKPro64 seems to be working with LSI HBA controller cards: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6763

And such controllers with 16 ports can be found on eBay (with P20 firmware IT mode, meaning no RAID and no BIOS) for about 45€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/LSI-9201-16e-6Gb...3291384883 for example.
With 4x SF-8088 to SATA at 37€: https://www.ebay.fr/itm/4pcs-Mini-SAS-26...2683726119

Total 82€ for the controller and SATA cables.

Only question I have is, how does it works when you only have x4 PCI-E and the card has x8 PCI-E?
Any luck getting the raid up and going? I'm hoping to build a similar setup.

How do you like the SATA card you went with?

Depending on how it works out my plan is to build a few different NAS. One as a local file server at work and one at home. I was thinking of using SyncThing to have them paired to be able to work on the same files at both locations offline if need be. SyncThing would update any changes when reconnected to the internet. I'd also do snapshot backups in case there is any issue that a rise when syncing. I'd also like to have another non synced NAS that backs up the files at a third location for redundancy.

I was planning on a RAID 10 setup for the speed of striping and redundancy. It sounds like Zraid2 has been a rock solid system for you. I'm going look into that as well. Please let me know how you build worked out and if you have any suggestions for me.
  Reply
#18
BE AWARE if you buy from Pine shop:

it´s really ashame, 2/2 card bought directly from pine shop and never working. 1 arrived working only on 1 door. 2nd DOA or incompatible.
Really ashame to have an hardware with limited/ no support or totally not wokirng.
My last controller got 2 days ago (after a long shipping time) has not quality control stamp..... this brand sell garbage: I spend hundreds of $ to get the rockpro64 beause of his pci-exp 1x and the nas case. Sata was basically never be able to run stable. The same with the wifi.

No refund, no support....

the funny stuff is that because of this comment PIne refuse to support my issue...
This is the 2nd card broken or un-usable.
I never read while I pay that I will get no support and that driver etc need to have a pray to get them.
I´m not a unix/linux/openmediavault expert...bat I would feel Ashame for Pine64.


Can be really exist a Company like this?


I spent more than 200$ to build the NAS with their hardware. It will be sooner in the garbage!

I will make my emails with the Support of Pine public, not only on this forum if situation is not solved (they black-mailed me....I do the same)
  Reply
#19
Yes, you should go with a normal Power supply. I will not suggest you buy a very cheap power supply because it can destroy your motherboard. For the Controller, you can buy LSI Logic SAS9361-8I - https://www.allhdd.com/lsi-logic-sas9361-8i-raid-card/. I am also using it and it's working fine for me.
  Reply
#20
(09-17-2022, 09:20 PM)caroljames972022 Wrote: Yes, you should go with a normal Power supply. I will not suggest you buy a very cheap power supply because it can destroy your motherboard.  For the Controller, you can buy LSI Logic SAS9361-8I - https://www.allhdd.com/lsi-logic-sas9361-8i-raid-card/. I am also using it and it's working fine for me.

What are you using on the software side? Manjaro? Debian? Ayufan?
  Reply


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