Hello, can someone please help with sas card advice ? lsi 2008 vs 9300

[DrStein99]

Hello. I'm new to these forums, but not new to Truenas. Been using for years, since it was Freenas. I'm upgrading a server I have running sas, lsi cards. I have a 2008 lsi hba controller, 8i.

I have questions, was hoping to get advice. I am confused trying to buy upgrade sas controller, I need 2 more cables internal, to fill another bay in that server. Right now I have the 2008 i8 card, it only has 2 cables come out that serves 8 drives in one bay. I added another bay for 8 more drives, but maxed out on cables out of this controller. I need another 2 more of those same cables out, to handle a total of 16 drives, in 2 bays.

I want to upgrade to lsi 9300 controller. But it seems more confusing. the 9300 8i controllers look like they have different connectors, with 4 ports on it (reference images below):

I can see the cables are paired, so it gives 4 ports out, with the cables is 8 ends on a 9300 8i. What confuses me is that my 2008 8i controller has only 2 ports (image below):

So.... Why a 2008 8i says "8i" with only 2 ports, that provide for 8 drives - and the 9300 8i has 4 ports. How many drives does the 9300 handle? Is that a whole different type of backplane that I can not use, because of the SAS III level or something? If that is the case, then I would not be able to use the 9300 card because my existing drive bays wont accept the type of controller, and I would just need to buy another 2008 controller with 4 internal ports instead of 2, to serve my additional 8-drive bay.

Can someone please help with advise? Thank you.

 

[Ericloewe]

See also jgreco's resource on SAS.

I can see the cables are paired, so it gives 4 ports out,

I'm not sure what you're looking at, but that's not right. Those are standard SFF-8643 connectors - same general concept of the SFF-8087 connectors popular in the SAS2 generation, but in a smaller connector that supports higher frequencies. Adapters are readily available.
Keep in mind that the -8i appendix to the product name tells you how many lanes the card has - in this case, 8 internal.

 

[DrStein99]

See also jgreco's resource on SAS.

I'm not sure what you're looking at, but that's not right. Those are standard SFF-8643 connectors - same general concept of the SFF-8087 connectors popular in the SAS2 generation, but in a smaller connector that supports higher frequencies. Adapters are readily available.
Keep in mind that the -8i appendix to the product name tells you how many lanes the card has - in this case, 8 internal.

In summary: I have an 8-bay internal bank with 2 cables into it with a LSI 2008 8i card. i want to double it, and upgrade to a 9300 card.

I believe a LSI 9300 16i card solves my issue, as long as the cabling matches that mates to my existing 8-drive banks which use 2 cables for each bank.

 

[Ericloewe]

The cabling matches in that the cables can be swapped 1:1, but the connectors are different, so you'd need four new cables.

 

[DrStein99]

Thanks for the reply. On second thought, it doesn't look like I need a 9300 card, I red a few posts that explain that SAS 3.0 isn't useful unless I have arrays of SSD drives. I rather not double my budget for something that needs a microsecond stopwatch to judge it's performance increase over the course of 1 minute.

 

[Ericloewe]

So either add a second SAS2 controller or an expander. Your choice.

 

[DrStein99]

It's complicated, I have to get another riser card to use full height slots, then yes just buy another cheap 8i card. I would then have 3 cards in back there blocking that wonderful flow of heat off of a 16-bank of hard drives. Not ideal, but it gets the job done.