Test Radxa Taco 5x SATA NAS with 2.5G and 1G Ethernet

[geerlingguy]

See original issue: #202

I have a Taco (well, the Penta main board that goes inside) and would like to do some testing on it; run some benchmarks, test compiling ZFS, etc.

Things to test:

• Power consumption (at wall, using Kill-A-Watt) at idle with 5 SATA drives + NVMe, and running benches over network
• Network performance (single port, 2.5G)
• NVMe performance (single drive)
• SATA performance (single drive)
• SATA performance (5-drive RAID0)
• SATA performance (5-drive RAID5)
• SATA performance (5-drive ZFS RAIDZ1)

[cengbrecht]

Oh man, I missed out on this one hard.
I have a 16 drive cluster dual intel server that I would be happy to test this on. (Meaning use the drives)
I have spare drives, and the modules to test! This is exactly what I am trying to build. :P

[panosangel]

This is really the ultimate rpi NAS board! Can't wait to see that review :)

Let's see if it's time to replace my old Intel i7 w/ 4 sata disk @ Mergerfs/Snapraid setup.

[mjeshurun]

The Radxa Taco board looks like an awesome NAS solution. I'm really happy they are designing it!
In the last few days I was considering the Argon EON, but I didn't like their solution for transferring the data over USB 3.0.
The Radxa Taco confirmed my doubts. I'll definitely choose the Taco over the EON :)
@hipboi do you have plans substituting the USB 2.0 plug with a USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 plug?
Hope it comes out soon.

[oDn]

This is VERY exiting!

[ElCapitanT]

How would a case, for a setup with SSD, ideally look like?
Assuming that hot-swap should be integrated and the SSD's do not dispense too much heat.

Greetings from the north of Germany, too!

[Icarusradio]

I looked at the previous issue #202, where @andyattebery mentioned one issue:

I haven't tested the 2.5GbE controller on Raspberry Pi OS, but it looks like the kernel driver/module isn't loaded, and I don't see the network interface.

I have played with RTL8125B for some time (on x86 of course) and met the same problem. I found a solution on Ask Ubuntu which suggests kernel newer than 5.9 supports the NIC out of the box. Maybe there is more need to be done for Raspberry Pi. Another approach is to try Realtek's driver.

Also, I remember Jeff once tested a 2.5GbE NIC in the Pi vs ASUSTOR video. I don't know whether this card uses RTL8125 or RTL8125B. From my understanding, the former has better compatibility than the latter.

[geerlingguy]

Since I have one on hand, let's get the specifics:

• PCIe Switch: ASMedia ASM1806
• NIC: Realtek RTL8125B
• SATA controller: JMB585

The RTL8125B is the same chip used in other 2.5G network cards I've tested (notably the Rosewill: #40).

To get it working, you'll have to cross-compile the Pi kernel with the following option enabled in menuconfig:

Device Drivers
  > Network device support
    > Ethernet driver support
      > Realtek devices
        > Realtek 8169/8168/8101/8125 ethernet support

Raspberry Pi OS is not likely to add support for various NICs out of the box since it's built to work only with the hardware Raspberry Pi currently builds-in, and very minimal other hardware (I got them to add SATA support but that's pretty universal/generic—these NIC drivers are not).

[andyattebery]

I was able to get the Realtek driver working without having to recompile the kernel with the module on the newest version of Raspberry Pi OS. Jeff mentions in his post about 2.5GbE he had trouble compiling it, so maybe something has changed.

1. Install raspberrypi-kernel-headers (sudo apt install raspberrypi-kernel-headers)
2. Download 2.5G Ethernet LINUX driver r8125 for kernel up to 5.6
3. Unarchive driver (tar -xf r8125-9.006.04.tar.bz2)
4. Build and install driver (cd r8125-9.006.04; sudo ./autorun.sh)

[geerlingguy]

@andyattebery - Good to know! Did you use 32-bit Pi OS or 64-bit? A lot has changed in the past year, it might install easily on both now.

[andyattebery]

Both 32-bit and 64-bit work. On one 32-bit installation lspci wasn't returning anything and the SATA drives weren't showing up. However, I just did a fresh install, updated the packages, installed the driver, and everything is working fine.

[hipboi]

@mjeshurun @bydorfler
we have the 4x PCIe switch for the CM4, which are used as following:

• 1x for 2.5 GbE
• 1x for 5x SATA
• 1x for NVMe
• 1x for WiFi 6

which do you think not important and want to replace? The idea was to build a NAS with NVMe as cache and fast WiFi streaming.

[mjeshurun]

@mjeshurun @bydorfler we have the 4x PCIe switch for the CM4, which are used as following:

• 1x for 2.5 GbE
• 1x for 5x SATA
• 1x for NVMe
• 1x for WiFi 6

which do you think not important and want to replace? The idea was to build a NAS with NVMe as cache and fast WiFi streaming.

Hi @hipboi , I think all the PCIe switches you mentioned are important.
@bydorfler 's suggestion might be a better alternative. To replace 1x SATA port with a PCIe connector.
4x SATA ports are plenty to connect enough TB using SSD/HDD, so an extra PCIe will be much more valuable.

[geerlingguy]

@mjeshurun - With a 4-way PCIe switch, you only get 4 'devices' (the ones listed above).

Unfortunately, you can't take one device (the 5x SATA controller) and hot-wire a PCIe port on top of it—you'd need another PCIe switch (or switch to a PCIe switch chip that handles more like an 8x or 12x, and those cost more money and I would assume are larger in board space).