[OmniOS-discuss] [smartos-discuss] SuperStorage Server 6047R-E1R36L SAS Question

[Joe Landman]

On 11/11/2013 09:05 AM, Tobias Oetiker wrote:
> We are looking at purchasing a new box. According to
> https://github.com/joyent/manufacturing/blob/master/parts-database.ods
> it seems that Joyent is using
>
> Supermicro SuperStorage Server 6047R-E1R36L with 7K3000 (and maybe
> soon 7K4000) disks.
> http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4u/6047/ssg-6047r-e1r36l.cfm
>
> We asked our system integrator for an offer on these boxes and he
> said, that he has several in the field and they wer cool, BUT he
> has seen problems with the on-board LSI 2308 and the backplane, and
> that he would recommend installing 5 extra LSI SAS controllers to
> directly connect each sas disk to a controller port ...
>
> Is this the reason that joyent lists all the firmware versions and
> one should make sure to use exactly these versions ?
>
> Any ideas ?

I'll freely admit we are biased in this regards.  We've heard of 
significant cooling issues on the rear mount drives, problems with 
backplane revisions and firmware.  In general, direct connected units 
are strongly recommended over expander connected units (but take this as 
our bias being front and center).

The later kernels do better with the LSI 2xxx HBA series.  The SAS2IRCU 
utility does work nicely under the kernel on SmartOS from a few months ago.

What we've found is that up to date firmware is usually a good thing 
(modulo bugs it introduces).  There are still a few issues with 
SES/SGPIO control in a number of cases, but we've traced some of these 
to expander chip/card firmware/drive firmware interactions.

-- 
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Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics, Inc.
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
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