Discussion Hello from a storage enthusiast with a new (to me) SAS project!

Hi everyone,

A friend pointed me to this forum, saying it's the best place for in-depth hardware discussions, so I'm excited to join the community!

My name is fohot42001, and I've been tinkering with servers and enterprise hardware for a few years now. I mostly focus on building homelabs and resurrecting retired enterprise gear. I'm always knee-deep in something, whether it's setting up a Proxmox cluster or messing around with ZFS.

I just picked up a piece for my latest project that I'm pretty stoked about: a SAS 12Gbps SSD 480GB MU 2.5-Inch drive. I'm planning to use it as a fast cache or log drive in my Dell PowerEdge server.

I have a couple of questions I'm hoping the experts here can help with:

1. Controller Compatibility: I know 12Gbps SAS is backward compatible with 6Gbps, but will I see a significant real-world performance hit if my HBA (an LSI 9207-8i) is only 6Gbps? Or should I really be looking for a proper 12Gbps HBA to unlock its full potential?
2. Drive Longevity: This is a used enterprise drive. For those of you who have used similar refurbished SAS SSDs, how has their health and endurance been in your experience? Any tips on what to look out for?
3. Use Case: Given that it's "only" 480GB, what do you think is the ideal use for a drive like this in a homelab? SLOG? ZIL? Hyper-V cache? I'm open to suggestions!

I'm looking forward to learning from you all and contributing where I can. Thanks for having me!

Best,

edit by Mod: User Name im Posting ergänzt / eingefügt

Really, your name is [Your Name] ?

@DorfkindOHV
Lies mal hier, dann dürfe dir klar sein, das da etwas schief gelaufen ist.

Hello everyone,

I'm in the planning stages for a new server build centered around a . This specific configuration, with its high core count and multi-socket capabilities via UPI, is intended for a mixed workload environment.

The primary use cases will be:

• Virtualization: Hosting a small number of development and production VMs (a mix of Windows and Linux).
• Software Development & CI/CD: Running containerized applications (Docker), build servers, and development databases.
• General File & Application Server duties.

Given this hardware and workload, I'm evaluating the optimal operating system for the host. I'm looking for a stable, performant, and well-supported foundation.

My core dilemma is: Should I use a robust, enterprise-grade Linux distribution or would a Windows Server setup be more suitable for my mixed environment?

• For Linux-focused perspectives: Which specific distribution would you recommend (eg, RHEL/Rocky Linux, Ubuntu Server, Debian) and why? I'm particularly interested in stability, kernel performance for this CPU architecture, and native support for the underlying hardware features.
• For Windows Server-focused perspectives: Which edition of Windows Server 2022 would make the most sense to fully leverage this Xeon's capabilities, especially regarding core scheduling and virtualization support with Hyper-V?

I'm eager to hear from anyone with experience deploying on similar Xeon Scalable hardware. What has been your real-world experience with OS performance, driver support, and overall stability on this platform?

Thanks in advance for your insights!