HBA - which one to go for / as a spare (ebay)

[phier]

Hello,
I own LSI SAS9211-8i but to other box and/or as a spare I want to order one more card from ebay. Could you recommend which one is good to go?

LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i Zero Memory Full Height PCIe-x8 SAS RAID Controller | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i Zero Memory Full Height PCIe-x8 SAS RAID Controller at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

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IBM RAID Controller ServeRAID M1115 SAS-SATA PCI-E x8 - 46C8928 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for IBM RAID Controller ServeRAID M1115 SAS-SATA PCI-E x8 - 46C8928 at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

www.ebay.co.uk

HBA Card IBM M1015 IT Mode SAS SATA 6Gbps LSI 9220-8i FreeNAS unRAID ZFS | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for HBA Card IBM M1015 IT Mode SAS SATA 6Gbps LSI 9220-8i FreeNAS unRAID ZFS at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

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LSI 9207-8i Logic SAS Internal Storage Controller 14445251811 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for LSI 9207-8i Logic SAS Internal Storage Controller at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

www.ebay.co.uk

I tried to pickup UK sellers.

thanks!

 

[MisterE2002]

It depends on your (speed) requirements. And priority number one is the used chipset.

 

[phier]

@MisterE2002 hello,
well i have traditional SATA 3.5" as seagate exos drives; so assuming 6gbps? What do you mean by chipset? I listed these cards as all are used as recommended in the truenas howto document...

so for example IBM RAID-Controller ServeRAID M1115 SAS-SATA PCI-E x8 - 46C8928 should be safe to go for?

thanks!

 

[MisterE2002]

You start with the chipset. This is actually what matters. The "brand" of the card does not matter that much. https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...and-hba-complete-listing-plus-oem-models.599/

Some brands are more difficult to flash.

Personally i opted for a 2308 (AOC-S2308L-L8E) card. Newer pci-e 3 support. 2008 are also populuar. But supermicro has (probably) less fake cards and are easier to flash by just using the official firmware.

 

[Psantos]

Hi guys,

I had this system deployed days ago in my home lab. Everything works perfectly, except my 2 HBA cards aren't recognized by Truenas Scale. Can someone please advise me where the mistake is?

Supermicro 846 with 24 1TB SAS drives
Motherboard: X9DRi-LN4F+ Supermicro
02 Lenovo 16port 6Gbps SAS/SATA expander PCIe card. https://www.ebay.com/itm/394046667073

Thank you so much
Paulo

 

[jgreco]

That's an SAS expander. It's not going to be "recognized" because it's a passive part. It isn't an HBA. Please go to the SAS Primer and read up on this.

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 topologies and this kind of sucked. SATA and Serial...

www.truenas.com

Once you hook up an actual HBA to one of the ports, your drives will show up. I believe the onboard SFF-8087 on the X9DRi is SATA-only so cannot be used to connect to the expander card; you will need an actual HBA card.

 

[Psantos]

That's an SAS expander. It's not going to be "recognized" because it's a passive part. It isn't an HBA. Please go to the SAS Primer and read up on this.

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 topologies and this kind of sucked. SATA and Serial...

www.truenas.com

Once you hook up an actual HBA to one of the ports, your drives will show up. I believe the onboard SFF-8087 on the X9DRi is SATA-only so cannot be used to connect to the expander card; you will need an actual HBA card.

Ohhh you're right!! Perfect! I really appreciate your help! I already ordered an HBA card.

Thank you so much!
Paulo

 

[Whattteva]

If I remember correctly, TrueNAS has built-in commands to flash these cards with the correct firmware versions. I don't have the link to that post though. Would anyone here be so kind to post the link? Also, I remember it was for TrueNAS CORE, but not sure if the tool also ships with TrueNAS SCALE.

 

[jgreco]

If I remember correctly, TrueNAS has built-in commands to flash these cards with the correct firmware versions. I don't have the link to that post though. Would anyone here be so kind to post the link? Also, I remember it was for TrueNAS CORE, but not sure if the tool also ships with TrueNAS SCALE.

The LSI "sas2flash" and "sas3flash" tools have shipped with TrueNAS for many years.