A2SDi-8C-HLN4F - Onboard SATA ports or LSI 9211-8i?

[thomas-hn]

Hello,

for my TrueNAS SCALE system I have a Supermicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F which provides 12x SATA3 (6 Gbps) ports of the System-on-Chip (SoC) controller.
Additionally I have an LSI 9211-8i lying around and are wondering if there would be any benefit if I install the HBA and attach my 8 SATA drives to the LSI 9211-8i instead of the onboard SATA ports. I am aware that the TrueNAS Mini X+ uses the same motherboard with the onboard SATA ports, so the onboard SATA ports see to work fine.
However, would I get any benefit of using the HBA beside the possibility to also connect SAS drives or is it rather not recommended (e.g. to avoid possible problems in case the HBA dies, overheats, etc.)?

Thanks a lot,

Thomas

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You will save a lot of energy by not using the LSI HBA. The onboard SATA ports are fine.

 

[Etorix]

SATA ports from Intel or AMD chipsets are fine, so use these first.
Unless you need more than 12 drives, or actual SAS drives, the x4 PCIe slot is best used for a SFP+ NIC, a L2ARC (if useful at all), a SLOG (if useful at all, that's an even bigger "IF"…), or plainly left empty. Less devices means less power and less points of failure.