Help picking out an hba card, 9205, 9207, 9211, h220, etc ???

[Thelgow]

Hello all,

I've always liked to have a few hdd's in my machine and over the years I've hit the cap of the 8 sata ports on my motherboard and just dealt with it.
Fast forward to now and my job is decomming a site and we have a slew of 2TB SAS drives. There are a few 3.84TB SSD's they put to the side for a lab and I'd love to try and get my hands on 1 or 2 of those.
But regardless, I have several 256GB ssd's I've picked up over the years. 1 of my 2TB with plex media died and I've had enough and think its time to finally start making backups and mirroring stuff. I don't like the idea of RAID really since to my knowledge it was hardware controlled and a horror to move around. .
So I heard about an HBA card could give me SAS support in addition to just more available ports for whatever.
So where do I go from here? Its a standard desktop pc, asus z170 pro-gaming motherboard.
my dilemma is in trying to research this Im going in circles now. So many variations, some apparently are all just vendor differences in firmware, etc.
Pcie2.0 vs 3.0 which would be a factor if I do get some SAS SSDs.
Also I assume in this case windows or whatevers built in RAID1 would be sufficient?

I did also pick up an r720 server but I dont really know what Im doing but from what I can piece together it has a perc h710i which doesnt allow passthru/IT. Also not sure how I feel about leaving one online 24/7 and electric bill yet.
I've had my desktop pc on 24/7 for years and already used to whatever that bill entails.

So any tips? Additionally some help with wiring. We have decommed r710's with perc i6's and perc h700's and I see a mix of wiring there as well but different from the pics I've seen of the LSI 92xx cards mentioned.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The 9205/9207 etc are the LSI official card names. If you're planning on running a slew of SSDs you'll want to avoid the older (but higher-numbered) 9211-8i as they get a little overwhelmed trying to deal with the number of I/Os that multiple SSDs can push.

The "H200" and similar are the OEM versions of the same cards. They can often be obtained for much less money, and can be converted to the LSI cards via a process often called "cross-flashing" which removes the vendor (Dell/HP/IBM) firmware and replaces it with the LSI one.

Seek out the HP H220, which converts to either the LSI 9205-8i or 9207-8i.

 

[Thelgow]

The 9205/9207 etc are the LSI official card names. If you're planning on running a slew of SSDs you'll want to avoid the older (but higher-numbered) 9211-8i as they get a little overwhelmed trying to deal with the number of I/Os that multiple SSDs can push.

The "H200" and similar are the OEM versions of the same cards. They can often be obtained for much less money, and can be converted to the LSI cards via a process often called "cross-flashing" which removes the vendor (Dell/HP/IBM) firmware and replaces it with the LSI one.

Seek out the HP H220, which converts to either the LSI 9205-8i or 9207-8i.

Ok, this is what I starting to come to conclusion with. So effectively 9205 = 9207? Both do pcie 3.0 as I see some variation on these mentioned as well.
From there then I get a cable that has the SAS hba end to the SAS bit that looks like sata, and then a sata power cable splitter?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, this is what I starting to come to conclusion with. So effectively 9205 = 9207? Both do pcie 3.0 as I see some variation on these mentioned as well.
From there then I get a cable that has the SAS hba end to the SAS bit that looks like sata, and then a sata power cable splitter?

I believe the 9205 is an OEM-only version and the 9207 is what's sold as a retail card. (Or is it the other way?) Either way, both are SAS2308 based PCIe 3.0 cards.

For the cable you want what's called a "forward breakout cable" to go from the single large SAS port to the four individual drive ports. Some have the power pins joined, others it's a separate pigtail style connector. Both are fine for SATA but only the all-in-one will work for SAS drives.

 

[Thelgow]

I believe the 9205 is an OEM-only version and the 9207 is what's sold as a retail card. (Or is it the other way?) Either way, both are SAS2308 based PCIe 3.0 cards.

For the cable you want what's called a "forward breakout cable" to go from the single large SAS port to the four individual drive ports. Some have the power pins joined, others it's a separate pigtail style connector. Both are fine for SATA but only the all-in-one will work for SAS drives.

Perfect, thank you. I guess for now one with SAS ports is fine and down the road 1 more and 1 SATA should cover all my bases.
So misleading with the model numbers and effectively same product and with crossflash involved, just proves its the same thing.