Alternative HBA/RAID controller

[overkill]

Firstly, I'd like to say that I've read a good part of the recommendations/wikis. I've been planning my NAS build for a year, and have been reading about software choices, ZFS, hardware, etc... on and off whenever I have few minutes off of work.

Anyways, point of my post is to ask for recommendation/discuss about controllers OTHER than the all time-favorite M1015/LSI 9211-8i . Why?
1. Call me cheapskate if you want, these cards are recommended with 50$, 75$ price tags, maybe times changed, maybe demand for these cards went up and therefore I cannot find them at those prices at all, more like 100$ to 150$ a piece. At those price I'm starting to think other cards with more ports is more attractive.
2. Yea they're nice, but they're also old, maybe time for a little refresh on a hardware recommendation? Perhaps something more often stocked rather than having to go through ebay?
3. What if you want to consolidate? Yes they're nice but you'd need 3 of them to fill a Norco 4224 (yes, I'm looking at that case, and complaining about 25-75$x3 difference in controller cost, cheapskate, I know). Maybe something with more ports, takes up less PCIe slots, and the combined cost might actually be cheaper than buying 3 of those.
4. Entirely speculation but maybe if we take some demand off of the popular M1015 card, maybe their prices would drop? It seems to me anybody who wants to do a home NAS is pointed straight to that controller, be it FreeNAS, NAS4Free, unRaid, or DIY ZFS.

Why don't I do my homework instead of asking for recommendation/suggestion?
1. These hardware are out of production. Aside from widely supported hardware (M1015), it's hard to find information on others aside from their manual/white paper, and that's a lot of dry reading that I don't even know where to begin because manufacturers and vendors mostly do not list deprecated products.
2. Even reading their manual/white paper isn't going to help much. Much of what we're doing here is not standard practice, larger than home but smaller than businesses, and that's the void where manuals fail to meet and only experience fills the gap. Experiences I don't have.
3. Even more so on non-standard practice, cross-flashing the M1015 to IT mode is a fine example of that. Perhaps some other RAID controller can be cross-flash as well, something with more ports, cheaper combined cost, perhaps?

So please, recommend one, don't recommend one, what you're using and how is that working out for you, can you pull SMART info through said cards or not, including but not limited to, are all welcome.

Thanks.

 

[cyberjock]

I got all of your answers...
1. Price jumped when people realized they were the absolute perfect card for ZFS.
2. They're old, but there's nothing better for the price point. You can't get a 16 port card for $200 or a 24 port card for $300 that is as compatible and has the kind of support in the FreeBSD community as the M1015/LSI cards. So despite being almost 4 years old, it's really not old. Especially if you consider how slow the storage market moves. It's still SAS 6Gbps, still supports >2TB drives, etc. There's nothing that a "new" card would offer that would make you want to look elsewhere.
3. You are correct. I have that exact case, and I use an M1015 with a SAS expander. If you actually want 24 ports on a single card, you're going to have to spend money for that luxury. There's a thread somewhere that discusses it. Last I check the recommended 24 port cards were like $450 used on ebay.
4. How would you suppose we do that? This is simple supply/demand. There's no other card that rivals the M1015 in quantity, support, performance or features.

1. They may be, but who cares if you are going to flash it to IT mode anyway? It will be a dumb HBA with zero configuration options available to you. You probably don't get upset because you can't find detailed information in Intel SATA controllers on your motherboard. There's no reason to need anything else from the M1015.
2. Yep.
3. There are plenty of other models. The problem is that buying them and reflashing them isn't saving you money. Look at how much the LSI 9211-8i costs... it's more than double the cost of the M1015. So why would you want to do that to yourself? ;) The problem is that once you start going bigger than the M1015(or even going to other 8-port controllers), cost skyrockets *fast*.

In short, there's just no substitute at the price point. When quantities/price/performance of M1015s start drying up then we'll probably recommend something else. Even if a SAS 12Gbps card was offered I wouldn't recommend the switch unless its actually cheaper or at least the same price. Why? Because your bottleneck is your 1Gb LAN, so who cares if the interconnect is faster.

Gotta put things in perspective. There's just no alternative that is even appearing on the horizon right now.

 

[overkill]

Wow, thanks for the quick reply.
1 & 4, So supply/demand drives the price for the card up. At some point though, the price should weighs out, making alternative more attractive.
2 & 3. I'm not complaining they're old as in obsolete, I'm saying they're old because supply runs low on them. Maybe something else that is in-production rather than discontinued would be nice, something that can be bought in a reputable vendor rather than ebay for those who so choose that route despite the cost. And speaking of choice, if one thinks saving a PCIe slot worth the extra cost of a 16 port over 2x8, then let him be. Maybe that extra slot is used for a 4-port NIC for aggregated link that would make use of the speed. The way I see it, most documentation points to the M1015 and that is all. That isn't exactly telling people much choice, especially those with little experience in the controller hardware. Even the post http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/confused-about-that-lsi-card-join-the-crowd.11901/ isn't saying much of other cards either.

I was googling "lsi it firmware" after posting and ran across this post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.0 . It doesn't mention the M1015 under SAS2008 but there's the IBM BR10i, which goes for 45$, 50$ easily on ebay. How does that fare with the M1015/9211-8i? If they're pretty much the same performance/reliability/supported under FreeBSD, maybe it's worth mentioning? - Correction, it doesn't offer >3TB support, so it's inferior to the M1015.

It's those alternatives I'd like to get comments and suggestions on. Let this be a place that something other than M1015 is recommended, so one can have the choice and the know to pick another one. Maybe not the much-more-pricy to deter others but a reasonably sound alternative.

 

[cyberjock]

Trust me.. there's a cubic asston of eyes always looking for the best deal. The M1015 is recommended on dozens of different projects for the same reasons. You can be sure that if something suddenly beats the M1015 it will make *major* waves throughout the field.