Time to start B120i FAQ?

[Royco]

There are some questions about the B120I. Perhaps we should make a FAQ and make it sticky?

 

Q. AHCI vs B120i raid?

Q. B120i vs dedicated PCI RAID card (P222 or other)?

Q. Linux and B120i?

Q. Port 5 or ODD port?

Q. What is the B120i? (intel based HybridRAID solution?)

 

 

[ikon]

Questions, questions, what is it with you penguins and your questions??

 

Actually, it sounds like a pretty good idea.

[Royco]

The penguin has a surprised or questioning ( ) look on his face, doesn't he?

 

I will start working on some answers too. Hopefully someone can review and correct them, when/if needed.

[ikon]

Puzzled is how I would describe it

[kave]

Number one question: With the latest firmware, what is the fan speed when the raid is disabled?

[ikon]

One of the facts; the B120i cannot expand RAID arrays.

[HellDiverUK]

Number one question: With the latest firmware, what is the fan speed when the raid is disabled?

 

12-15% depending on CPU temp.  AKA loud.

[kave]

I can report that when using CentOS with 4*3TB SATA Drives and one 120GB SATA, with AHCI mode on,  Plex Mediaserver doing indexing and copying data for hours on a Gigabit network makes the fan run at 10%.

 

Fantastic!!! I am so happy with my Microserver now.

[Royco]

Question

I get his error. Is my gen 8 broken?

Array Controller read cache was configured for this controller, but the system was unable to allocate the requested system memory. The read cache memory is set to 0MB

 

 

Answer

The B120i uses system main memory as read cache. If you've the default 2GB memory installed, you might get this error, and upgrading the size might solve it. See topic here. 

[RichardG]

I'm a brand new owner of a Gen 8 server (some good deals out there!) and have been reading through these great forums for the last few days to get up to speed and decide the best install for me. I've attempted to summarise my learning about the B120i controller and pros and cons. Hopefully any errors  can be corrected by more experience members to form a useful first post that gives something back to the forum.

 

1. The B120i can operate in 2 modes, RAID and AHCI compatible. 
2. When operating in RAID mode the drive temperatures can be read and the system fan is adjusted appropriately. This results in a system fan speed of around 6% at idle which is quiet. 
3. When operating in AHCI mode the drive temps are not read and the system fan speed is set at a higher minimum, around 10%, this is noisier. Some reports of higher fan speed of 15%.
4. There is no hardware acceleration as all the clever stuff is done by the driver which uses the main CPU.
5. The B120i controller has no cache and needs to use system memory if a cache required.
6. There are no performance differences when operating in RAID or AHCI mode.
7. When operating in AHCI mode the drives can spin down during idle but in RAID mode they cannot.
8. If an SSD is used in place of the DVD drive (ODD port) then it can be booted when in RAID mode but not in AHCI mode (work around using SD/USB for windows presumably something could also be done using grub for Linux but not seen any example)
9. Drives formatted under RAID mode can be moved to other servers running an HP RAID controller. Those formatted AHCI can be moved to other servers also using a standard AHCI controller. Moving drives between either will require a full format.
10. Linux RAID drivers are available from HP but are not open source. May be some issues when kernel is updated as drivers will also need updating.
11. must be something else....?

So for Linux users it's a bit of a mixed bag. For those (me) who want to run Ubuntu server then running under RAID mode gives low fan speed, the ability to boot from an SSD in the DVD slot but no drive spin down and possibly some issues with HP driver during upgrades. Running in AHCI mode gives higher fan speed and no easy way to boot off an SSD in DVD slot.

 

Richard

Edited December 21, 2014 by RichardG