Disk HBA Card

[shwan_kr1]

Hello FreeNAS Community,

I am looking for an HBA card (A RAID controller card supporting Non-RAID mode or JBOD mode) so that RAID functionality would be implemented by ZFS and ZFS would have direct access to disks. However I need the following specifications too please:
* The HBA card must have external ports.
* The HBA card must support up to 64 SAS disks or more preferably SAS/SATA disks.
* The HBA card must have at least two SFF-8088 connectors.
* At least SAS 6Gb/s.
* PCI Express 2.0 x8.

I'd really appreciate it if you please mention to me as many compatible card models as you can.

Many thanks in advance!

Best,
Shwan

 

[Samuel Tai]

The Forum Resources are your friend:

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.ixsystems.com

 

[shwan_kr1]

Many thanks Samuel, very useful information, especially the fact that even if a manufacturer of a RAID controller card says their card supports HBA mode it may not really do!
However, I still did not see answers for my question. With the information I learned from the post you shared, I'm even more concerned now and now sure which card I should buy for our FreeNAS production server. Could you please list just few models that you have in mind that have the features I listed above in my original question?