From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 1 22:46:59 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7BF4106564A for ; Sun, 1 Apr 2012 22:46:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mike@sentex.net) Received: from smarthost1.sentex.ca (smarthost1-6.sentex.ca [IPv6:2607:f3e0:0:1::12]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 621988FC1D for ; Sun, 1 Apr 2012 22:46:59 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.43.26] (pyroxene.sentex.ca [199.212.134.18]) by smarthost1.sentex.ca (8.14.5/8.14.4) with ESMTP id q31MkvHR021638; Sun, 1 Apr 2012 18:46:57 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mike@sentex.net) Message-ID: <4F78DAE0.5040301@sentex.net> Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:46:56 -0400 From: Mike Tancsa Organization: Sentex Communications User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Daniel Feenberg References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 1.1.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.71 on 64.7.153.18 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Many SATA disks X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:46:59 -0000 On 3/31/2012 6:28 PM, Daniel Feenberg wrote: > > We would like to build a FreeBSD machine ourselves with many (~15) SATA > drives, but NOT use a RAID controller. We want to be able to remove any > drive and connect it to an ordinary motherboard SATA port and mount the > filesystem using only the OS provided drivers and tools. I have built > many FreeBSD systems, but never used port multipliers and don't know > which controllers advertised as RAID controllers will support a plain > pass-thru mode. Would anyone like to make a suggestion from actual > experience? > > The system will be used solely for archiving, so performance is not > critical, but portability of the partitions to other systems is necessary. We use this controller http://www.addonics.com/products/adsa3gpx8-4e.php connected to 3 external drive cages. It works via the siis driver # camcontrol devlist | egrep "ada|ulti" at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (ada0,pass0) at scbus0 target 1 lun 0 (ada1,pass1) at scbus0 target 2 lun 0 (ada2,pass2) at scbus0 target 3 lun 0 (ada3,pass3) at scbus0 target 15 lun 0 (pass4,pmp2) at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (ada4,pass5) at scbus2 target 1 lun 0 (ada5,pass6) at scbus2 target 2 lun 0 (ada6,pass7) at scbus2 target 3 lun 0 (ada7,pass8) at scbus2 target 4 lun 0 (ada8,pass9) at scbus2 target 15 lun 0 (pass10,pmp0) at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (ada9,pass11) at scbus3 target 1 lun 0 (ada10,pass12) at scbus3 target 2 lun 0 (ada11,pass13) at scbus3 target 3 lun 0 (ada12,pass14) at scbus3 target 15 lun 0 (pass15,pmp1) at scbus6 target 0 lun 0 (ada13,pass20) at scbus7 target 0 lun 0 (ada14,pass21) at scbus8 target 0 lun 0 (ada15,pass22) at scbus11 target 0 lun 0 (ada16,pass23) They are part of a zfs pool, but you could use them as individual drives. If they are not part of some raid system, you will have of course no redundancy should a disk fail, unless you have some other plan for that. For us, the pool is not usable if one of the drive cages fails, so its not the most reliable setup for high availability. But its a backup server, so temporary down time should a PM fail is acceptable. Individual disks of course can be swapped out as needed. Also, using ZFS allows us to easily add to the storage capacity for more backups or for longer snapshot retention. ---Mike -- ------------------- Mike Tancsa, tel +1 519 651 3400 Sentex Communications, mike@sentex.net Providing Internet services since 1994 www.sentex.net Cambridge, Ontario Canada http://www.tancsa.com/