Opinions on RocketRAID 2720SGL

[Gnome]

Amazon is selling the RocketRAID 2720SGL for $120, which is very tempting for an 8 port PCI-express 2.0 x8 SAS card which can operate in JBOD mode and supports FreeBSD.

Anyone using this card in FreeNAS 8?
Is there a reason not to get it?

There isn't much info out there about this card and FreeNAS/FreeBSD.

 

[survive]

Hi Gnome,

If you are comfortable cross-flashing firmwares and ok with using parts sourced from ebay see if you can find a deal on an IBM 1015 (LSI 2008 based) controller card. I see buy-it-nows for ~$75-80, throw in a pair of $10 cables and you should have a controller card you will be much happier with for less cash! Once you get it you will have to flash a proper HBA firmware on it to dumb it down for ZFS use.

Take a look here: http://www.servethehome.com/tag/ibm-m1015/

-Will

 

[Gnome]

Hi Gnome,

If you are comfortable cross-flashing firmwares and ok with using parts sourced from ebay see if you can find a deal on an IBM 1015 (LSI 2008 based) controller card. I see buy-it-nows for ~$75-80, throw in a pair of $10 cables and you should have a controller card you will be much happier with for less cash! Once you get it you will have to flash a proper HBA firmware on it to dumb it down for ZFS use.

Take a look here: http://www.servethehome.com/tag/ibm-m1015/

-Will

Hi Will, thanks for the feedback. I knew about the LSI 2008 based cards but the problem is I live in South Africa. It's a bit hard to get those cards here for less than $300-$500 (yep $500, it is unbelievable). Reason being that none of the US stores ship here (not even Amazon, not for that card).

Amazon does however ship the RocketRAID 2720SGL here.

I want to be able to use > 2TB hard-drives so I'm afraid the previous generation LSI isn't an option (although it can be had here in my country for $130).

 

[b1ghen]

Reason being that none of the US stores ship here (not even Amazon, not for that card).

Look into getting an IBM M1015 on Ebay instead, usually there are new cards that were pulled from servers for about 70 USD and up plus shipping, I'm sure there is a few that can ship to your country.

 

[Gnome]

I'm sure there is a few that can ship to your country.

True, I found some sellers who were willing to ship here: IBM M1501 $95, $21 shipping and import tax $15. Not too bad. Rest of my NAS hardware was cheap at least.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[JohnKnee]

If you are still looking at the RocketRaid 2720SGL, I have managed to get it to work with FreeNAS 8 with the help of Harlequin. Please see this post for instructions on how we did it.

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?166-high-point-2720sgl&p=12373&viewfull=1#post12373

It is a good card and works well. You will just have to redo some steps namely the kernel module, every time you upgrade FreeNAS until the driver is part of FreeBSD or FreeNAS.

Good Luck.

 

[Gnome]

It is a good card and works well. You will just have to redo some steps namely the kernel module, every time you upgrade FreeNAS until the driver is part of FreeBSD or FreeNAS.

I saw that thread about integration before I posted here. However, I was wondering if there were any problems and how does performance look?

With my computer specs (as below) I'm able to fully saturate a gigabit connection, I'm hoping to keep that going with whatever add-on card I use.

NAS Specs:
Intel 2100T CPU
Intel Bearup Lake H67
4x 4GB Kingston 1333Mhz DDR3 ValueRAM (16GB total)

 

[JohnKnee]

I have had no problems with my setup. Everything seems to run well.

As for performance, I have not done any benchmarking tests but for my limited streaming etc, it works well. I only have a 100Mbps connection to the server at present if that helps. Maybe Harlequin or Setius from the original thread can give more info. If I recall Harlequin had a transfer rate of 30-40MB/sec moving an iso to his NAS.