I'm in a similar boat - already had some HP gear that I thought should work, got everything installed and no drives detected. Now I have to go back and buy some HBAs.
My main concern is support for 4TB drives and a card to support my external disk enclosure (external Mini-SAS).
Internally I think I'm going with the Dell PERC H310
Externally the LSI Logic SAS9200-8E (LSI00188)
Based on the above the PERC H310 is compatible, but are there any incompatibilities with 4TB drives? The SAS9200-8E I'm not 100% sure, or I could do the LSI Logic 9212-4i4e for a similar price.
Any insight or recommendations? Thanks!