Hi all, I am building a new small footprint NAS for home with 8 drives and a raid controller and need a mini-itx motherboard but I need one with with dual NIC's that I can use 802.1ad Link Aggregation (NIC Teaming). I'm having trouble trying to find any, I need to keep the on-board PCIe slot for the raid controller which is why I need the board to have dual NIC'.s and be team-able. I would like socket 1155 as I have an i3 to go it but would consider moving to a different socket if I find the right board. Anyone got any suggestions? Cheers
The Gigabyte GA-B75N, Gigabye GA-H77N-WIFI and the Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WIFI have dual NICs but I haven't a clue if they support teaming or not.
I think yes that will be hard to find... but maybe Jetway NF9E-Q77? If you can go to 1150 there is ASRock IMB-181, Jetway NF9J-Q87. Oddly enough it's much easier to find Atom stuff with dual nic teaming, but most of the easier to find cheaper ones you have to trade off with only a 1x pci-e. Though there is the Supermicro X10SBA. You also perhaps consider something like supermicro A1SAi-2550F or Asrock C2750D4I ?
hi looking at the gigabyte ga-b75n board linked above it says Dual LAN Teaming I have 1 and I didn't know that will have to test that
I would stick to intel nics if you want something that works as expected for aggregate. I never had much luck with realtek, but they do fail over ok... maybe I've just been unlucky with them. I haven't tried it yet since it's native part of Windows now in 2012, perhaps it works better now that don't have to rely on specific teaming driver.
The Intel DQ77KB could be nice. It has dual Intel NIC with link aggregation and has built-in DC-DC (thank to Thin mini-ITX form factor), mPCIe and mSATA slot. Keep in mind that the PCIe-4x slot is limited to 35W and the board only accepts CPU with a maximum TDP of 65W. Major drawback is its availability
Problem with that one is with so many drives I think it would be tough to find a good brick psu with enough amps as to not have issues with initial draw when all the drives spin up. If the controller supports staggered spin up its less of an issue, but I would also be worried to run that many drives off the single sata power the board provides. Those kind of boards really are not meant to be used for many multi disk storage servers, but things like ultra thin desktops, htpc, digital signage and the like with only 1-2 disks.
That was my concern when suggesting this mobo. 180W bricks are easy to find but I do not know how many drives can be powered from a single SATA power plug. There's an mITX LGA1150 from Tyan, but there's no mention whereas it features link aggregation or not : http://www.tyan.com/Motherboards_S5533_S5533GM2NR-LE The Asrock E3C226D2I supports teaming, but it is an LGA1150 server board : http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C226D2I
Thanks for all the suggestions guys, the Avoton stuff (Supermicro A1SAi-2550F or Asrock C2750D4I) looks awesome but just too much cash at the moment being new. Yeah from previous experience I think I would only be happy with Intel Team NIC's over Realtek. The Intel DQ77KB is nice but my raid card is an x8 slot so wouldn't fit Theres a fair few s1150 solutions like the Asrock E3C226D2I that would be perfect but would need a new CPU as well. Hmmm few things to think about, thanks very much for the help so far fella's
Indeed the Avoton stuff is pricy... but then you can also consider how long a 4 or 8 core ultra low power solution that is so feature rich may last. it could be a good way to go. Really when you think about it, $350-400 isn't super terrible for an actual server class board with those features AND a CPU. I've been dragging my heels a lot... but I am personally strongly considering replacing my Pentium G620/Zotac H67 itx setup I am currently running for my home server with one of the supermicro avoton boards. I'll probably go matx instead though... I want to have 3x sets of parity drives+ssd cache for each set. So with 9+3 drives it really doesn't even make that much sense to stick with itx. You might really consider the same as well. matx stuff with what you are looking for is a LOT easier to find and with 8 drives the size of cases you need is likely to be more towards matx size anyway... unless you are going with 2.5" disk in which case you will pay a very high premium for 2TB+.