I’m super excited to get my hands on this board to build my own homelab with multiple drives. Due to the board’s size and limitations, I have been deep browsing the web for ways I can make the Framework board work for this use case.
I’m keeping a Gist on GitHub updated with any new findings I find with recommendations for parts and components for those who want a no-compromise reliable setup with their mainboard!
It assumes the mainboard is purchased on its own and everything else is third party.
I wondered what this community might think about the guide. Any feedback would be super welcome, and let me know if I got anything wrong.
Just screened over and saw that you intend to use the 9500-8i from Broadcom.
I make the same state, but I have a ryzen embedded board, not as powerfull as that one, but with ECC RAM and that is the best thing I ever did as a self-hoster.
You an see my initial setup here, as it has the details and some images.
I have added some disks, and made some performance tests with the 9500-8i.
Needless to say, that it was easily beat by a no-name 8 port S-ATA controller connected to PCIeX 8 in literally all speed-tests I did. And it remained cool, while the 9500-8i was reaching 82⁰C in normal operations (means, nothing to do) while passive cooled. I could fry some eggs on that.
The speed improvement on RAID 10 should have been visible. But honestly I only had only about 700Mbps with luck. And, I had waited a complete day so that all blocks of the raid are in sync etc.
So I dumped that controller and am currently using the no-name controller connected to 8x2Gb S-ATA SSD’s in a RAID 10 configuration using BTRFS.
From experience, using Enterprise class hardware only justifies the price for the consultants required to setup the hardware and maintain it.
For the IPMI, I am using the PiKVM project and am using a programmable HDMI switch to change the screens from my server to the cluster nodes or serial port of the firewal.
I can secure these way better then any IPMI based device.
That does make sense as a noname controller does just passthrough, where as HBAs just add lots of enterprise-level protections on top (and does more than SATA too). Maybe I have underestimated those simple SATA controller for simple SATA use cases!
I do intend to stick with my 8i, I did some idle tests (as I don’t really have any reason to use my drives before my board and my test board was flaky) and with that simple fan mod it did bring the temps down to the low 40s with fresh thermal paste too. I was pretty happy with that as I knew it isn’t truly meant for consumer use.
Thanks for the resource too, i’ll give it a proper read after work!
I plan to use the 9500-8i in non-RAID mode so it’s a direct pass through to ZFS so should be pretty performant. My setup boils down to being potentially overkill but I trust these HBAs and had the budget to go all out. But I am not in disagreement of your choices. That controller sounds just fine for how you use it.
I modified the guide to not be so dismissive of them on reflection. Thanks for the info!
That’s totally reasonable. For me, the added energy is made up by it being a HBA which is very robust, I can live with it consuming a handful of watts (I think typical energy usage is ~6W) and the 9500 is meant to be very efficient relative to other HBAs and even supports better CPU C states than older HBAs due to ASPM.
Any feedback would be super welcome, and let me know if I got anything wrong.
but I trust these HBAs and had the budget to go all out. But I am not in disagreement of your choices. That controller sounds just fine for how you use it. 