Brand new owner of an HL8 Down Under. Was a Windows ninja, now gone to the dark side lol.
I eventually got my HL8 running. after much frustration. I have a 1Tb M.2 for the OS. I have 12 4Tb Dell COnstellation server grade SAS drives that I want to reuse in the HL8. I know they work cos I pulled them from an R720XD Dell server.
But nothing will make them run. I made sure the MOELX power is connected, both connectors, I made sure the SAS connectors Mobo to backplane are correctly seated. All I get is a few flashes of a green light on the backplane for that HDD and then nothing. No spinning, nothing. I tried the Craft computing using an M.2 SAS cable config, did not work. Then tried a PCIE SAS to SATA controller. still buegger all.
I am hoping one you smart ones could help an noob get his drives up n running. Many, thanks
I went for the basic build, I bought the PSU etc separately, its the Flex 500W they specify, just a bit cheaper. We pay around 40-60% more Down Under for the same goods in the US. I do not know what the controller is, how do I find out?
Sadly there are no detailed configuration manuals for the HL8. I would like to have seen some high res pics of the SAS controllers and the cable install options - in reality there are only a few permutations.
One silly question - on the Flex 500, there is a single Molex power cable, with two MOLEX power plugs. I assumed one goes to each backplane MOLEX plug, each powering 4 drives. At the end of that cable is a small fan plug, I wondered if it did not have some exotic plug on the backplane that i cannot see.
Thanks. So, heās not using SAS drives here heās using SATA drives. The m.2 card heās using has SFF-8087 connectors, which can be associated with hooking up SAS drives, but here they are just being used to carry the data for four SATA drives over one cable (x2) to not have a wiring nest. The hardware of the m.2 card just supports SATA.
SAS drives require specific hardware to communicate with the drives;
You can connect SATA drives to a SAS HBA, but you canāt connect SAS drives to SATA ports. Thereās a combination of hardware and software layers going on.
The backplane is just powered by the molex connectors. Technically the power for all 8 drives (or however many you have connected) comes equally through both the molex connectors. There isnāt any exotic connector. Your power wiring is fine; you need to brush up on the differences in SAS and SATA drives and how to connect themā¦
Takes furious notes from digitalgardenā¦vows to become champion of SAS/SATA drives!
Thanks mate, appreciate the patience as well. Ive built tons of systems, but never with SAS/HBA, its a whole new level of complex. Even this old donkey Dell R720XD I for for free is a beastly thing.
Ahhh I think the lights just went on for me. So that little M.2 adaptor, even though it had the SAS connector on the M.2 and on the other end, it is NOT a proper SAS controller for the mobo.
I need to buy a āproperā SAS controller/adaptor that takes the two cables from the backplane, to the mobo and allows the mobo to āreadā the 8 drives.
If that is a shaky yes, any suggestions on what to buy? I can also just go and order 8 SATA drivesā¦
Do you need a GPU like in his build? I assume not since you said you tried some other PCIe card to connect the drives. If you need the PCIe slot for something other than drive connectivity, then youāll need SATA drives. If the PCIe slot is free then get an LSI 92xx-8i or 93xx-8i card.
I think when you ordered you chose the cable set with SFF-8087 on the motherboard side? If so, then the 92xx series should work without you changing cables. It wonāt support 12 gbps SAS, but I donāt think your SAS drives do anyway;
The 93xx series is newer (not the newest, but you donāt need the newest for those drives), but you would have to get two new cables with SFF-8643 on both ends (assuming thatās not the set you chose originally);
Those are US links as examples, as Iām not sure what the best retailers for this stuff there are. Also check your equivalent of eBay.
Weād have to see the manifest, but your R720XD has some sort of SAS controller to work with the SAS drives, maybe a PERC H710 or something. Are you still using it or parting it out for other builds? Itās controller might be on the motherboard, have a custom form factor, or not be in IT mode, but if it has one in a PCIe slot you might be able to use it.
Beefier isnāt quite the right way to describe it. SAS is serial evolution of the Parallel SCSI protocol where as SATA is a serial evolution of the parallel ATA protocol. Besides moving to serialized communications, they are different protocols with commands sets adopted from older competing technologies.
Sometime along the way, people put the work in for SAS to add optional compatibility with SATA which nearly all HBAās include in their implementations. Iām certain this was to add more options to enterprise customers who may want to use SATA drives from time to time for capacity reasons and forgo the redundancy and reliability features of SAS. The consumer side never had enough of a need for these enterprise features so SATA never reciprocated.
What I meant was, I donāt know which of those āenterprise featuresā makes a SAS controller ASIC and support circuitry so much larger in footprint and require a larger heat sink vs a SATA controller that can fit on an m.2 along with six SATA ports and not require any heat sink.
I donāt think itās a technical limitation as much as if thereās demand. Other than a few us homelab-ers here there, I doubt thereās much want for a smaller and possibly stripped down SAS controller to adapt from M.2 port like this. Enterprise is going straight pcie lanes with U.2 drives.
