Currently recommended HBA (used)

[Kosta]

Hello,
In short: I have a Supermicro X11 with 4110 and currently a single 9211-8i HBA in IT-Mode for TrueNAS on ESXi.
I am going be to expanding to 24 drives in upcoming years, and would like a 2nd HBA, preferrably used.
Was looking at LSI 9201-16i on eBay for €170.
Is that a recommended solution nowdays or is there a better choice for the money?
Thank you.

 

[sretalla]

The 93xx series is twice as fast and can handle faster SSDs, but if that's not in your plans, then the card you're looking at will drive HDDs just fine.

 

[Kosta]

Indeed, that is not in my plans. 24 disk array is actually for "data-dump". Capacity before speed. I have little need for fast storage. If I need it fast, I want it to be on NVMEs, and not SSDs - in that case, speed before capacity. Currently having 2 Samsung NVMEs that are my productive datastores.
So yes, thank you, I think I'll go with that card.

 

[sretalla]

If I need it fast, I want it to be on NVMEs, and not SSDs

Just for clarity, those 2 things aren't mutually exclusive...

Many people refer to M.2 NVME drives as SSDs...

Also, even taking form factor into account, there are 2.5" NVME SSDs which usually have a U2 style interface (which can connect to an appropriate HBA at faster speeds than SATA)

Like this one:

https://documents.westerndigital.com/content/dam/doc-library/en_us/assets/public/western-digital/product/data-center-drives/ultrastar-nvme-series/data-sheet-ultrastar-dc-sn630.pdf

 

[Kosta]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. What I meant, I most likely won't be going for 2,5 inch drives on the backplane (hot-swap). I decided to go with Inter-Tech 4724 case, which has a backplane-upgrade-option to 12G. But for now, 6G is enough. The only part where I might think about implementing SSDs is for TrueNAS caching and ESXi boot. And these will fit somewhere in the case and be connected to SATA directly.
And NVMEs: one is on the mainboard directly, and all others will go into slots via adapters, if more than two are ever needed.

I was aware, but didn't know exactly, that there are other solutions. However, I am trying to keep it simple and within a certain budget. While I love such stuff at work, we have two sites with VMware SRM, Horizon and all that, at home, I am trying to keep it in sensible proportions. I just need storage space :)