Philip Robar
Contributor
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2014
- Messages
- 116
Preface: Why might you be interested in the old cards I talk about below given their 2TB drive limit? It comes down to reputation and reliability. While you can get inexpensive 2 or 4 port SATA cards that support today's large drives, they tend to use lesser regarded controller chips. In short, the powers-that-be on the FreeNAS forums look down on these "cheap" cards and blame them for various problems seen with ZFS. In contrast the cards I list below use well regarded enterprise quality 3ware or LSI chips that are know to work well with FreeBSD, ZFS and most other OSs.
LSI SAS2008 based SAS controllers are currently and rightly so one of the top recommendations for people looking to expand the number of drives that their NAS can support. (The IBM M1015 being one of the most popular such cards.) Unfortunately, sellers have noticed how popular they have become so you're not likely to find a $60 bargain like the early buyers did. Current "Buy It Now" eBay prices are more likely to be around $120. Still a good deal, but not the steal they originally were.
While looking for such a card on eBay I noticed a lot of 3ware and LSI cards for $40 or less. After a little research I found that these are older 4 or 8 port cards that only support drives up to 2TB. If you can live with that limitation these cards are a steal. Here are the cards that I found to be interesting. (All are supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS.)
3ware 9650SE — These are cheap, as in $25 to $50 depending on how many ports you want. (I saw 4 to 12 port versions on eBay.) Also they're available in normal and low profile versions. Reviews are positive, with the only negative being that they can't be flashed to IT mode [1] so you have to set up disks as individual drives via the card's embedded RAID software which means that there is always a little unwanted overhead in a ZFS environment.
A better option for ZFS is an LSI SAS3041E with 4 SATA ports or an LSI SAS8704EM2 or SAS8708EM2 with 1 or 2 mini SAS ports which support 4 or 8 drives respectively. These go for $25+ depending on the number of ports and whether or not they include cables. (mini SAS SFF-8087 to 4 SATA cables go for $5+ on eBay.) All three can be flashed to IT mode.
I bought an LSI SAS3041E with 4 SATA cables for $25 including shipping a couple of days ago. I'll post an update after it arrives early next week.
[1] As opposed to RAID firmware, IT firmware is much simpler and makes all the attached drives visible in raw form to the OS.
LSI SAS2008 based SAS controllers are currently and rightly so one of the top recommendations for people looking to expand the number of drives that their NAS can support. (The IBM M1015 being one of the most popular such cards.) Unfortunately, sellers have noticed how popular they have become so you're not likely to find a $60 bargain like the early buyers did. Current "Buy It Now" eBay prices are more likely to be around $120. Still a good deal, but not the steal they originally were.
While looking for such a card on eBay I noticed a lot of 3ware and LSI cards for $40 or less. After a little research I found that these are older 4 or 8 port cards that only support drives up to 2TB. If you can live with that limitation these cards are a steal. Here are the cards that I found to be interesting. (All are supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS.)
3ware 9650SE — These are cheap, as in $25 to $50 depending on how many ports you want. (I saw 4 to 12 port versions on eBay.) Also they're available in normal and low profile versions. Reviews are positive, with the only negative being that they can't be flashed to IT mode [1] so you have to set up disks as individual drives via the card's embedded RAID software which means that there is always a little unwanted overhead in a ZFS environment.
A better option for ZFS is an LSI SAS3041E with 4 SATA ports or an LSI SAS8704EM2 or SAS8708EM2 with 1 or 2 mini SAS ports which support 4 or 8 drives respectively. These go for $25+ depending on the number of ports and whether or not they include cables. (mini SAS SFF-8087 to 4 SATA cables go for $5+ on eBay.) All three can be flashed to IT mode.
I bought an LSI SAS3041E with 4 SATA cables for $25 including shipping a couple of days ago. I'll post an update after it arrives early next week.
[1] As opposed to RAID firmware, IT firmware is much simpler and makes all the attached drives visible in raw form to the OS.
