Adaptec user need advice on LSI Controllers

[schwartznet]

Im looking at getting a an megaraid LSi Controller or an HBA from LSI. My question is does LSi require you to add individual drives to its bios to be recognized like my Adaptec 31605 does? Thats their way of doing "JBOD" . I need an controller that can do at least 16 drives and will do plug and play my current Adaptec doesnt fit that need. :/ Any advice would be awesome thanks

 

[survive]

Hi schwartznet,

I think this:

http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9201-16i.aspx

is what you are looking for. That's a plain old SAS HBA, should be about as dumb as a box of rocks. What's nice about a proper LSI HBA is that it does exactly nothing to your disks to make them visible through the controller. Personally I took a 6 drive raidz built on an AMD motherboard and moved them over to a BR0i (LSI 1068 chip) controller and they just worked....I had to do nothing to get the pool imported.

I think the bigger problem you are going to face might be dealing with any metadata crap the Adaptec wrote to your drives to identify them as the JBOD disks. Be aware that might turn out to be a huge problem for you. I would encourage you to grab a couple of drives and make a test pool and see if the show up on an LSI card, or if they display somewhat more disagreeable behavior.

-Will

 

[schwartznet]

The good news is I'm making a new server and copying to it. I'll def be trying to get one of these cards then. Thanks again for the advice and help!!

 

[schwartznet]

Also I was just asking about lsi since I saw it was FreeBSD supported with 16 ports. Is there and alternate and more affordable solution u recommend??

 

[survive]

Hi schwartznet,

Are there more affordable choices, yes there are. Would I recommend them? No I would not.

Here's my "go to" list of controllers. It's somewhat dated, but the SAS\HBA controller market isn't exactly the fastest moving thing out there.

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

Note that depending on the motherboard you are buying you could always go for a pair of IBM 1015 cards. Those are just re-badged LSI controllers with 8 ports that go in an 8x PCI-e slot. You can usually find them for around $75.00 each.

-Will

 

[schwartznet]

any idea where i can find them for that price? Im seeing them on ebay for $150ish in buy it now

 

[schwartznet]

Survive it says the IBM 1015 are raid cards if I use two of these do they modify the hard drive at all?

 

[survive]

Hi schwartznet,

You have to flash what's called the "IT" firmware onto the cards. LSI has 2 firmwares, "IR" which has the integrated RAID & "IT" which makes the card into a dumb HBA....you could call it ZFS mode if you wanted.

Take a look at this page for instructions on how to flash the card:

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-m1015-part-4/

Might as well read the whole 4 part series while you are there.

-Will

 

[schwartznet]

Survive,

So i went to my cousins and he GAVE me 2 LSI SAS9220-8i's will these work for my purposes?

 

[schwartznet]

He also gave me an LSI SAS3442E-R idk which is better lol

 

[survive]

Hi schwartznet,

The SAS9220-8i's are M1015's for all intents, they just have the SAS connectors on the other end of the card. The other card is a previous generation card.

Good score.

-Will