SOLVED Doubting between HBAs for a HP DL380G9 server

[DonZalmrol]

Hi all,

I'm doubting between (currently) 2 HBA controllers for my HP DL380G9 server. At the moment I'm using the build-in HP P440AR controller in HBA mode, this is apperantly not a true HBA controller, does not provide SMART readings, uses the CCISS driver and quoting @jgreco :

This isn't compatible with TrueNAS, please refer to

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

The CCISS driver is not particularly robust and putting it in a lobotomized "HBA mode" does not fix this; it just makes it a moronic RAID controller. You should replace the Smart Array controller with a true HBA if you want problem-free operation.

My current set up is

• HP DL380 Gen9
• HP P440AR controller in HBA mode
• HPE 12Gb SAS Expander Card
• 128GB RAM DDR4 ECC
• Intel Xeon E5-2630L v3 @ 1.80GHz
• Nvidia Quadro P2000 5GB
• 2x Intel SSD 120GB boot-pool
• 2x Samsung SSD 512 mirrored pool for APPS storage
• 5x 14TB HGST DC HC530 for DATA storage

My two options at this moment:

• The LSI 9207-8i 6Gbs SAS 2308 PCI-E 3.0 HBA IT Mode
  • Pros:
    • Cheap
    • Well known
    • SFF-8087 (my current cables)
    • 6Gb/s SAS performance (I have SATA disks)
  • Cons:
    • Old
    • SAS2
    • 600MB/s
      
• LSI SAS 9300-16i 16-Port 12Gb/s SAS-3
  • Pros:
    • Newer
    • 12Gb/s
    • SAS3
  • Cons:
    • Expensive
    • SFF-8644 (need new cables)

I'm "torn" between both controllers, one for the price & the no need to purchase new cables, then on the otherhand the 9300 is newer, faster and is much more future proof.

Anybody that has either card that can tell their experiences about them?

Thx!

 

[sretalla]

LSI SAS 9300-16i 16-Port 12Gb/s SAS-3

I have one.

Works fine, gets hot (needs good ventilation).

The LSI 9207-8i 6Gbs SAS 2308 PCI-E 3.0 HBA IT Mode

Don't have one, but it would run a bit cooler and likely be perfectly fine for HDDs... you would only notice a difference in performance between this one and the SAS3 one only if you need to run SSDs at full speed from it.

Plenty of folks in the forum have these and report few issues if any.

 

[DonZalmrol]

Thanks for the reply, do you need to connect the aux power cable? As I can't find if its needed or not...
About the heat, my server should have ample cooling for it, but I'll take it in account.

 

[DonZalmrol]

Went with the "LSI SAS 9300-16i" HBA and connected the aux power, it seems it is needed when you use an unknown amount of drives to provide additional power to the HBA.

 

[Scharbag]

Not wanting to thread jack but I am confused. I have my HPE-440a in HBA mode and I seem to be able to read all of the SMART information from my boot disks (I am running 2 300G 10K RPM boot disks).

Code:

smartctl -a /dev/da0
smartctl 7.2 2021-09-14 r5236 [FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p7 amd64] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-20, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Vendor:               HP
Product:              EG0300FCSPH
Revision:             HPD2
Compliance:           SPC-3
User Capacity:        300,000,000,000 bytes [300 GB]
Logical block size:   512 bytes
Rotation Rate:        10000 rpm
Form Factor:          2.5 inches
Logical Unit id:      0x500003963801a2c0
Serial number:        4590A0JOFTM91515
Device type:          disk
Transport protocol:   SAS (SPL-3)
Local Time is:        Mon Oct  2 09:08:50 2023 PDT
SMART support is:     Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is:     Enabled
Temperature Warning:  Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Health Status: OK

Current Drive Temperature:     33 C
Drive Trip Temperature:        65 C

Accumulated power on time, hours:minutes 66850:52
Manufactured in week 15 of year 2015
Specified cycle count over device lifetime:  50000
Accumulated start-stop cycles:  44
Specified load-unload count over device lifetime:  200000
Accumulated load-unload cycles:  0
Elements in grown defect list: 0

Error counter log:
           Errors Corrected by           Total   Correction     Gigabytes    Total
               ECC          rereads/    errors   algorithm      processed    uncorrected
           fast | delayed   rewrites  corrected  invocations   [10^9 bytes]  errors
read:          0        1         0         0          0    1044603.877           0
write:         0        0         0         0          0      60505.338           0

Non-medium error count:      260

SMART Self-test log
Num  Test              Status                 segment  LifeTime  LBA_first_err [SK ASC ASQ]
     Description                              number   (hours)
# 1  Background short  Completed                   -   65535                 - [-   -    -]
# 2  Background long   Completed                   -   65535                 - [-   -    -]
# 3  Background short  Completed                   -   65535                 - [-   -    -]

Long (extended) Self-test duration: 2782 seconds [46.4 minutes]

Is this because I am using HPE drives? Is the above in fact complete SMART?

Would like to understand this further for sure. I am only using the 440a to boot into TrueNAS - all other disks are connected with a 9300-8e card through an Intel SAS2 expander.

Cheers,

 

[NugentS]

Using a RAID card to boot TrueNAS IS in fact a valid configuration. Ideally you have three disks. 2 disks on the RAID card as a mirror (seen by TN as a single disk) and then a 3rd disk in TN as a mirror to the RAID mirror. TN thinks it has a mirror and is happy and you get boot resilience.

So you seem golden, if not optimal