Benoire

So, more digging in to the config files of a RS PAT file. The synoconfig file for the RS series has the lines: sas_enclosure_max="14" supportsas="yes" The synoconfig file for the DS3615xs does not contain these items. I wonder whether enabling this will do anything? I'm particularly interested in trying to get the device to use sas(x) instead of sd(x) as this is what the RackStations use; although I'm not sure if that will just be for SAS drives or SATA in a SAS enclosure... Will try a SAS drive later.

Been thinking about this overnight, I wonder whether Synology have implemented a custom driver for the SAS HBAs in order to give the right outputs? Looking through the config files, a SAS enabled unit seems to discard the SD(x) drive setup and uses sas(x) instead. I wonder what would have to happen in the current config that would be required to make that change work? Kernel modification? Custom HBA driver? I know that the DS3615xs configs are looking for SoC chips for SATA devices which it fails at, will have to look in to the RS config files again. @Trantor (if you're reading this), I presume you compile the boot image against the DS3615XS kernel? How difficult would it be to compile against a rackstation kernel? I wonder if the security protection is the same across all the models and perhaps changes can be made to the boot image to support the RS series? Another thought, I wonder whether the drivers from the RS series for the HBA can be loaded into Xpenology? Might have a look later to see if I can find them.

Does anybody know where the synology logs are stored?

Hi In my quest to solve the SAS HBA drive ordering problem, e.g. they do not enumerate as SD(x) and can change order of drives on boot depending on per drive spin up time, has anyone ever compared the current configuration files of the DS3615xs against a fully SAS supported RackStation version such as the RS18016xs+ etc.? As far as I am aware, the SAS supporting RackStation's use a dual port SAS backplane with a single LSI branded SAS HBA and there is nothing extra in the hardware to support this. I asked a question of a RackStation owner and they confirmed that this was the case. So, given that the DS3615xs supports only SATA drives (official spec) and the difference between this and a RackStation is basically different CPU, memory configuration and the SAS support (https://www.synology.com/en-global/prod ... +/DS3615xs), the changes to support full drive numbering for SAS/SATA compatible RackStation's MUST be in the software. The assumption above that the differences in software is that asking Broadcom the question about SD(x) numbering of their LSI cards they stated that their cards enumerate by the WWAN ID and that any relationship to SD(x) is purely based on spin up time and this is consistent across all their cards based on the 6G compatible chipset (LSI2008). So with all this in mind, has anyone ever looked at the RackStation DSM PAT files and compared the SAS configuration files (and general configuration files) to the non-SAS units to see if there is a particular script that picks out the port numbers from the backplane (using the SGPIO / I2C) commands to order in the correct drive slots. As we know, Xpenology using LSI SAS HBAs do not enumerate drives correctly but going in to the depths of the rc.SAS & other SAS configuration files you can see that it does enumerate the SAS ports fine and appears to pick up the drives in the correct order. I guess the questions are: 1) can we unpack a PAT file? 2) has anyone looked at the RackStation's for their SAS support? 3) does anybody care If someone can at least answer question 1, I am happy to go digging as solving this would give all Xpenology users utilising LSI (and other brand) SAS HBAs the same drive ordering benefits of their SATA only counterparts. Chris

I've been looking at rolling out infiniband across my network as a cheap way to get to 10G for my vsphere servers. I recall reading that DSM appears to be hardcoded for certain things, such as drives starting with sdx which leads to cards that don't come up as that not showing drives.... Maybe this is the same sort of thing, DSM doesn't recognise any adapters/connections that do not start with eth as I think the infiniband adapters will start with ib? You should be able to roll the infiniband cards in to vsphere and run it on the hypervisor as you can then use the emulated 10g Ethernet VMX3 driver in Xpenology and get the full speed.

My Xpenology server is bare metal, so no vSphere involved, hence the question about IB. I guess I would need to compile and load them against the kernel? For VMWare, they still support IB and with the correct switch with a subnet manager then its all just plug and play... My intention was to have my servers in the rack using IB for fast low latency access, supported by 1GbE connections, all fed through IB from the storage system. IB is still quite current, for homelabs as they're dirt cheap now compared to 10GbE copper.

Hi I'm sure I read a post on how to do this but searching the forums comes up blank. Does anybody know if Xpenology supports IPoIB as infiniband is quite a cheap way of creating a 10G+ network. As I run my storage server in the rack with my virtual hosts and my gaming machines, having high speed, low latency access to the storage device for games etc. seems like a good thing ( as well as vSAN for the ESXi servers!) Chris

This was the thread! viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6608 And this thread shows how to mount the USB stick so you can get your settings off it before you update to the latest image using dd. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5605&p=49332#p49332 For those that want to try this, you simply follow the second thread to mount the device and then copy your custom syslinux.cfg if you've added serial and mac addresses; if you haven't hid the usb or done serial/mac, then you don't have to worry about this step. Next is to follow the first thread and use /dev/synoboot as the device to write to. It will overwrite with the latest image. This is good for those that run their devices remotely or have the USB stick in the case and in a rackmount that isn't on sliders (like me!). Hope this helps someone.

The machine is remote; under my house in a rack and while the front is easily accessible for swapping out drives, the USB is installed inside the case and this particular case doesn't have rails and is going to be replaced by the SuperMicro 16 bay chassis when all the parts arrive... I could wait till then, but I'm sure I read a way of using the command line to grab the new loader, and then install it to the USB... Perhaps wget and then dd would be the right tool?

Yeah, I found that much I was just wondering if it mattered, as it still has a drive id.. The main purpose of the post was to ask whether I could use the CLI to update the bootloader without removing it as the unit is located under my house and not so easy to get to in the cabinet there.

Hi I recall reading a way to update the bootloader to the latest image without having to remove the USB drive. The drive is current hidden from DSM, but I wonder if that matters if I'm doing the update from the CLI via Putty. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks, Chris

Hi Trantor Is it possible to get drivers for this Super I/O added: Winbond 83827HF chip This might cover some of the SuperMicro X8 motherboards that people might use. Cheers, Chris

Either use the pci-passthrough and pass the whole controller or go in to the advanced setting and set the options for RDM (RdmFilter.HbaIsShared) and set it to true, then any HDDs on the controller can be created as RDM and passthrough without losing the entire controller to the VM.

I'd be willing to pay quite a bit more than £200 for a full blown license that is supported on standard PC hardware, I'd even be happy to pay again (slightly reduced perhaps) to move between generations of DSM, i.e. 5 to 6; 6 to 7 etc. as long as we got the incrementals as part of the original purchase or renewal. For Synology to make this happen, it cannot canabilise their lower end hardware as said so you'd be looking at a decent fee, addon prices for enterprise stuff, no support unless paid for etc... Make the hardware all inclusive and then make the software only community supported unless paid... then it might work as I suspect there are not that many that do this on a normal pc.

LSI 9211-8is are fine, I have 2 of them in my machine.. I would suspect that anything based on the 2008 chipset will also be ok.

Yes, I have three '4in3' Rosewill sata cages right now connected to two LSI 9211-8i cards and the drive numbering is not correct. If you insert the drives in the drive cages from what you think is 1 to 12 and it will seem correct, but if you do 1-4 and then stick a drive in cage 12, it will show as 5 in DSM, this is something to do with the LSI firmware/drivers that use the WWAN to address without recognising the logical drive mapping.

You might want to see if you can find the right firmware for the card, perhaps boot a vanilla Linux and see what sas drivers / firmware it loads as Xpenology might not have the correct drivers to read the SMART data. You could also post in the drivers thread asking what trantor might need to get SMART working.

See reply in the other thread

Hi I'm interested in the H310 firmware now, interesting that it ordered correctly. The issue relates to the LSI implementation of the broadcom SAS chip, so not necessarily the hardware itself. with regards to SMART, this might be due to Xpenology not having the right firmware to activate that part of the card? What SAS firmware is loaded? I know that adaptec cards do the same i.e. they recognize the drive order correctly but do not do smart either. Question, the H310 is a raid controller did you flash it with Dell Initiator Target based firmware or did you try it standard? Another question, I've been looking at the C2100 chassis. Are they any good? How noisy are they, and how does the remote management work? Doesn't have iDRAC I know, but does it have a web based gui with remote control and iKVM?

Which one did you choose in the end? I'm looking at C2100s as they're cheaper to import in to New Zealand for some reason but I want to run mine as a bare metal Xpenology build; if you got one, did the boot image work fine?

Yup, IT = Initiator - Target and 4TB drives can be used as just single disks without any form of raid.

Yes, any LSI card based on the SAS2000 or SAS3000 chips will work; effectively any 6G/12G SAS card will, but it needs to be in 'Initiator - Target' firmware mode for it to function properly. LSI 9211-8Is should be cheap on ebay, I picked mine up for around $120 USD a few years back. Be aware, that LSI does not play nice with drive numbering in storage manager if you have try and use the port numbering on the cards; it basically reads the hard disks as being plugged in based on spin up and not physical position. Insert the drives one at a time and it will be ok but plug them all in and turn the machine on will cause them to not align to the connected cables or physical bays depending on your chassis.

Yup, all synology did, and it is in no doubt very clever, was to create gui and a automatic system that determined the 'best' partition sizes and then assemble it all using MDADM and LVM. To create a hybrid raid manually takes quite a bit of work to establish the best partition sizes for Raid 5 and Raid 1 and it becomes harder as you need to add more drives.

What's your budget? two LSI 9211-8is will give you 16 ports for less than an expander and card and more throughput capacity BUT any card that uses the LSI chipsets will not register the drives in the correct order their loaded; e.g. you could put drives in slot 1,5,9,15 and in DSM storage manager it would appear as if they're in slots 1,2,3,4. The reason why I ask about your budget is that the Adaptec 1000-16i HBA is a 12G SAS/SATA on an x8 PCIe gen 3.0 (backwards compatible to Gen 2.0 slots) with 16 internal slots on the single card and by all accounts it will order the drives correctly, so in the example above physical slots = DSM storage manager slots which is easier to maintain.... There is a thread here in the main English section from me asking about SM 12 bay chassis which goes through this issue. Edit: missed the internal slot question; yes you can. you'll find that the internal SATA slots will take storage manager slots first and then the HBA will take over; e.g. for a 6 sata connector motherboard + M1015 it will be Storage Manager slots 1-6 internal SATA, Slots 7-14 HBA but the first 6 slots will order according to the sata numbers and then the HBA will be random. My preference if I was you, spend the $300USD or so for an Adaptec 1000-16i HBA as its 12G SAS/SATA and mini-HD connectors so is more SAS3 based not SAS2... Obviously do your own further research to ensure that this works for you; but I am in a similar position and this is what I am looking at.

If I understand this question correctly, you want your 6 individual drives in the server to be seen as one single drive for the mediaplayer but then see each disk individually on the PC? If that is the question then you cannot using DSM at all. DSM only allows you to jbod span which basically stiches the drives together in to one package with a single filesystem over the top. If you want to do this, then I would recommend drivepool (no parity) or tRaid (parity) on windows as they allow the drives to be individual with their own content but then a virtual drive is created that spans them, but its all virtual and files are still being stored on separate hdds which can be removed and seen on other pcs.