Adapter Question

[abclobato]

I have a simple question .

I was thinking of buying a Raid Pcie X4 - asm1064.

Would that work on true nas or not ?

Currently I am using a old computer I had to be my TrueNas Server

it`s a B85-PRO GAMER, so I was thinking on expading my storage with that card, would that work or it`s just a bad Idea ?

 

[NugentS]

No - just no
You want an HBA from LSI, flashed to IT mode to work properly

 

[HoneyBadger]

To add to the reply above; while the card you've linked isn't a "RAID controller" per se, it does use what looks like a PCIe switching chip and multiple 4-port SATA controllers, rather than a single controller that's capable of a greater number of devices (such as an HBA.) This tends to result in a lack of bandwidth to your drives. ZFS is capable of generating a lot of traffic on the "back end" of your storage interface, especially when it's performing data integrity checks ("scrubs") and this can easily overwhelm controllers like this that have "oversubscribed" their bandwidth capabilities.

Some resources available on this are:

The basic description of why "HBAs" are suggested, over "RAID controllers":

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

Some more in-depth technical detail about why "port multipliers" and other types of bandwidth oversubscription are bad:

Multiply your problems with SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers

This resource was originally created by user: jgreco on the TrueNAS Community Forums Archive. Please DM this account or comment in this thread to claim it. In the last year or two, we’ve had a resurgence of users asking about SATA Port Multipliers and cheap SATA controllers. Please, do NOT use...

www.truenas.com

And the well-supported alternative, SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and its expander technology, is described here:

Don't be afraid to be SAS-sy ... a primer on basic SAS and SATA

With the introduction of SAS 12Gbps, seems like "it's time" to do a braindump on SAS. Work in progress, as usual. History By the late '90's, SCSI and PATA were the dominant technologies to attach disks. Both were parallel bus multiple drop...

www.truenas.com

TL;DR you want to buy an LSI HBA, or an OEM model that can be converted into one. If you need more than eight drives, you will want to add a "SAS Expander" (not a "SATA Port Multiplier") to the system, or use a drive chassis/backplane that includes this technology. Most rackmounts have an option for this.

 

[abclobato]

Thank You for the response.

A Lsi 9211-8i, would be more apropriate them ?

 

[NugentS]

Much, much better

 

[HoneyBadger]

Thank You for the response.

A Lsi 9211-8i, would be more apropriate them ?

That's the suggested LSI card, yes. Some OEM vendors (eg: Dell, Lenovo) will often rebrand this card to their own model (Dell PERC H200, IBM M1015) and there's a process to reflash the original LSI firmware back on to them. This could be a cost-effective solution for a personal use/home machine.

 

[abclobato]

Thank you @HoneyBadger and @NugentS.

 

[Whattteva]

That's the suggested LSI card, yes. Some OEM vendors (eg: Dell, Lenovo) will often rebrand this card to their own model (Dell PERC H200, IBM M1015) and there's a process to reflash the original LSI firmware back on to them. This could be a cost-effective solution for a personal use/home machine.

I'll add on to this suggestion with the OEM I'm currently using, HPE H220 (LSI 9205-8i).