Log ms-01 as a mediacenter with usb4 to pcie hba for sas drives.

[thanuxman]

Hey

hope everyone is doing all right.

i can use some advices on a frankenbuild .

I have a ms-01 from minisforum. terrific machine.

i plan to plug some good LP gpu some day (wait for the new generations or for A4000 ada prices to get lower.

so i may need the pcie4 x8 integrated port.

Still i have this big big storage bay x12 slots i got from work, antique piece.

I removed the built-in horrible proprietary stuff and i literally took off the backplane

the idea being :

* plug this usb4 to pcie adapter
* plug an HBA card into e/i into it
* use SFF to SAS adapter to plug the disks
* plug PSU SATA power connectors to disks
* doing zfs via from the ms-01 with linux or freebsd.

PSU for disks + ms-01 pdu being some very low power storage systems for a big zfs pool (like 84TiB)

Questions are is it ok to do zfs in thoses conditions ? i couldn't find anything relevant posts on usb4 interfaces regarding ZFS's red flags.

Should i ask directly on truenas forums ?

Do you think this build is total nonsense ? should i just go with the hba card on integrated pcie, keep usb4-to-pcie for external gpu and stop posting stupid questions on this forum ?

any inputs would be appreciated

thanks

 

[hrh_ginsterbusch]

Kinda offtopic but also on-topic: Tech Notice did a review of the it, and tested if replacing the CPU is gonna improve things


cu, w0lf.

 

[SFFMunkee]

The best way to find out is to try it.

I've tested OCuLink to PCIe HBA + 12 disks with TrueNAS and it works perfectly fine.
Whether it would be suitable for a production system or longterm storage with ZFS I don't know.

I suspect the key is ensuring you've got high quality cables and keep them protected from damage, as that's where you'll introduce signal issues quickly.

::EDIT:: The other problem you might find is getting USB4 to work properly with PCIe signalling on anything that will also be happy to drive an HBA and run ZFS. For my purposes OCuLink is literally just a physical adapter for PCIe signalling from an M.2 slot, whereas USB4 would require some sort of controller and driver.

TL;DR - I'd be more inclined to put the GPU over USB4 and the storage over the native PCIe slot.

 

[thanuxman]

thanks @SFFMunkee to point me those caveats.

I'll stay with the safer choice of pcie for HBA because storage is pretty serious stuff and go for usb4 OCuLink GPU solution.

i'll update this post once everything is up and running.

 

[SFFMunkee]

thanks @SFFMunkee to point me those caveats.

I'll stay with the safer choice of pcie for HBA because storage is pretty serious stuff and go for usb4 OCuLink GPU solution.

i'll update this post once everything is up and running.

Happy to help, reach out if you have any questions or would like me to test anything as I’ve got spare bits and bobs of many varieties and may have something I can try for you