Recommended controllers for Unraid

[GreenEyedMonster]

I would like to add 8 more drives total to my case.  What would be the simplest method to do this?  The SSD would be connected directly to the mother board and this would be all the spinning harddrives.

 

 

[ChatNoir]

1 hour ago, GreenEyedMonster said:

I would like to add 8 more drives total to my case. 

Then check the 8 ports options listed on the first post.

[JorgeB]

3 minutes ago, jojo345 said:

Does somebody have experience with these adapters with ASM chips?

Yes, though it's not just the chip that's important, rest of the controller might be garbage, try to stick with known quality models, e,g,:

 

https://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=151

[JorgeB]

2 minutes ago, jojo345 said:

Are there some other brands (selling in Europe) you can recommend?

The one I mentioned is available in Europe, got a few from Amazon.es, nobrand direct from China might be OK, might not, once got one, also an Asmedia, that kept giving CRC errors.

[JorgeB]

13 minutes ago, jojo345 said:

I dont pay €25-50 plus shipping for a 2 port adapter card like this.

Yeah, they're not cheap, but sometimes you get what you pay for.

[Marv]

Hi, I just received my first SAS HBA.

I bought a SAS 9207-8i which already had the latest firmware and IT mode enabled.

I also ordered two SFF-8087 to 4x SATA forward cables as described in the first post.

 

Unfortunately, I received the following cables: AWM 20744 E170689 SAS3.0

 

Can I use these aswell for my WD Reds or do I need to send them back and get the SFF-8087?

Edited February 12, 2022 by Marv

[JorgeB]

SAS cables work with SATA devices, for SAS devices you need to use SAS cables only, so they will work, of course you also need to connect the power to them, seems obvious but it wouldn't be the first time someone didn't do it.

[Marv]

thanks for clarifying. Just wanted to be sure I do everything correct as this is the first time I use something SAS related.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Marv

[KRiSX]

after my adventure yesterday with my adaptec having a heart attack, I think I'm going to swap it out for an LSI and I'm aiming for a 9207-8i... however googling now has be paranoid about fakes - any opinions on these listings? 

 

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/175133386946?epid=1385797553&hash=item28c6c368c2:g:pEwAAOSwPP1h9NgJ&frcectupt=true

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/185266212380?epid=25025684119&hash=item2b22ba0e1c:g:Y6gAAOSwLHFh6-tx&frcectupt=true

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/143372493429?hash=item2161aaa275:g:1TAAAOSwAUZhb8B2&frcectupt=true

 

either that or I play it safe and go for something like the SilverStone ECS04 which I believe I'd then have to flash, but at least I'd know its legit... didn't realise this was a problem in the world, but seems to be plenty of talk about it!

[JorgeB]

8 hours ago, KRiSX said:

any opinions on these listings? 

It's difficult to say for sure, but look for used server pulls, more likely to be genuine than for example a new one from China.

[KRiSX]

13 hours ago, JorgeB said:

It's difficult to say for sure, but look for used server pulls, more likely to be genuine than for example a new one from China.

 

Yeah, I believe I can get a HP H220 but I'll have to flash it myself. Shouldn't be too hard

[jdsutt]

I am building a new system and have long term plans to have 16 drives so I was thinking one of the LSI 16 port cards made sense to get. I’m unclear on the 6gb/s vs. 12gb/s difference in the older and newer cards, though. Some research I’ve done has led me to believe I might not need the extra speed from the newer card, but I wasn't exactly sure. My MB is Asus PRIME Z590-P. 

[JorgeB]

2 hours ago, jdsutt said:

I’m unclear on the 6gb/s vs. 12gb/s difference in the older and newer cards,

First you'd need SAS3 devices to support 12Gbps, SATA3 will only link at 6Gbps, and unless you're using SSDs it won't make a difference anyway.

[Agusta]

Super helpful, thanks for the sum-up.

[JorgeB]

On 1/29/2021 at 12:57 PM, JorgeB said:

Asmedia ASM1166

FYI pretty sure my controller based on this chip is corrupting data, will investigate further to confirm, and while I doubt it's a general issue with this Asmedia chip it's always good to keep this in mind with these cheap controllers, you can get a good one or not, sometimes they have UDMA CRC issues, or it could be more serious, hence when possible it's preferable to use an LSI HBA, they can be bough used at reasonable prices and should be much more reliable, though they also consume more power and generate more heat.

[spamalam]

I've had a bout of instability recently, and I'm pretty sure my Areca SAS controller is a problem and preventing a boot.  I have a spare SAS controller, but found my supermicro server won't boot if i put the same brand of sas controller in (it gets to the sas controller bootscreen and gets confused and holts during controller POST).  I have 24x SATA drives powered by 6x SAS ports (2x on the supermicro, 4x on the areca) connected to a SAS backplane, and 4 additional drives on the mainboard SATA ports.

 

To solve this I figured I would by a 4 or 6 port SAS controller and disable onboard and pull the areca.

 

I have a few questions:

1) Will I hit any bandwidth problems with a single controller over a single PCI-E 3.0 port to a SAS backplane?  I'm assuming I'm still going to be limited by the SATA drive speed here.  Would it be better for more than one controller or is all sharing the same channel anyway?

2) If i'm running in IT mode, is there any point in a battery on the card?  Particularly under a heavy write?

3) I found this:

NEW LSI Logic Controller Card 05-25699-00 9305-24i 24-Port SAS 12Gb/s pci-e 3.0

Does this work well with Unraid?  It has no battery, considering 2, is this a problem?

4) With LSI, in passthrough/jbod, I am assuming i can switch out to any controller/direct sata and its not doing any fruity logical volumes work when flashed to IT.

 

Thanks.

Edited April 26, 2022 by spamalam
added in sas backplane mention

[JorgeB]

15 minutes ago, spamalam said:

1) Will I hit any bandwidth problems with a single controller over a single PCI-E 3.0 port to a SAS backplane?  I'm assuming I'm still going to be limited by the SATA drive speed here. 

Should be good for roughly 250MB/s per drive, so likely not a bottleneck.

 

16 minutes ago, spamalam said:

2) If i'm running in IT mode, is there any point in a battery on the card?

No, batteries are for RAID controllers with onboard cache RAM, those are not recommended with Unraid.

 

16 minutes ago, spamalam said:

Does this work well with Unraid?

Yes.

 

17 minutes ago, spamalam said:

4) With LSI, in passthrough/jbod, I am assuming i can switch out to any controller/direct sata and its not doing any fruity logical volumes work when flashed to IT.

Correct.

[spamalam]

Short, sweet and very helpful.  Thank you very much.

[LeoTSH]

Hi There,

 

I'm looking to setup an Unraid server but after reading about RAID/HBA cards, I'm getting confused and would appreciate advice about it.

 

The motherboard is a Supermicro H11SSL-i which has 16 Sata 3 ports and the chassis has a 12 Hot Swap 3.5" cage bay.

 

• Do I need a HBA card in this scenario? Connecting up to 12 Sata cables might put some load on the lanes and having a HBA should be better?
• Should I need HBA, the chassis comes with a LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-8i (Can't find any info about IT flashing it), is it applicable or should I get one of the cards listed in the first page?
• Came across some discussions that for Sata drives, a maximum of 2TB will be displayed/used even if the drives have larger capacities. Should I switch over to using SAS drives instead?

Thanks!

[JorgeB]

6 hours ago, LeoTSH said:

Connecting up to 12 Sata cables might put some load on the lanes

Not sure what you mean by this, number of SATA cables is not a problem except for cable management.

 

6 hours ago, LeoTSH said:

Should I need HBA, the chassis comes with a LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-8i (Can't find any info about IT flashing it), is it applicable or should I get one of the cards listed in the first page?

Apparently it can be flashed to IT mode but there won't be SMART:

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/crossflashing-of-lsi-9341-8i-to-lsi-9300-8i-success-but-no-smart-pass-through.3522/

 

6 hours ago, LeoTSH said:

Came across some discussions that for Sata drives, a maximum of 2TB will be displayed/used even if the drives have larger capacities. Should I switch over to using SAS drives instead?

That's incorrect, it can happen with very old controllers/backplanes, with SATA or SAS.

[LeoTSH]

Quote

Not sure what you mean by this, number of SATA cables is not a problem except for cable management.

Ahh thanks for clearing that up!

I guess I can just forego the idea of getting a HBA and can just connect 12 drives using 12 SATAcables?

I was wondering if directly connecting the drives without using a HBA will affect CPU performance.

 

Quote

That's incorrect, it can happen with very old controllers/backplanes, with SATA or SAS.

I see, then I can stick with the SATA drives

 

Thanks!

[WhiteTowerBlackNode]

Hi.

 

I am in the process of building a new Unraid server.

 

Due do some recommendation, which I cannot find anymore, I got the HP 4K1135 (468405-002) SAS Expander card.

 

I tried using it with the correct cables I hope - Mini SAS 36P SFF-8087 to 4 SATA 7Pin.

 

But neither the BIOS nor Unraid does see anything. Now as I am examining the card closer, it has four ports labeled with "TO BACKPLANE". My card seems to be this card: image.

 

I initially ordered the wrong cables - Mini SAS (SFF-8643 Host) to 4X SATA (Target) -  and as I saw my mistake I researched a bit more and found the correct cables, but that there are also cables to connect this card's ports to backplanes.

 

Now I am confused, as I might have gotten the wrong card or I am using it wrong.

 

I also saw mentioning of "flashing it to IT mode" to be able to use it. That might be out of my league though, but I can try, I cannot return the used card anyway.

have

 

My older Unraid server does use four 4-Way SATA PCIe x1 Marvell 88SE9215, though it has a not recommended Marvel chipset. I am using two of those cars now on my newer server to set it up, I just wanted to to have one card for my 16 HDDs.

 

Can anyone point me in the correct direction?

 

 

It is all a bit overwhelming compared to the first server I built four years ago. I also want to use 2.5 Gb ethernet, but that will be a whole other journey.

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by WhiteTowerBlackNode
syntax

[BlinkerFluid]

That is a sas expander. It is powered by pcie but doesn't show up in post or anything as it is a dumb device using pcie just to power itself. You also need a sas card to go with it. 

Think of it like a network switch. You still need an ethernet card to interface with it. You run the sas cable or cables from pcie sas card into expander using any ports you want and from expander any still available ports out to the drives (unless the expander tells you which ones to use).

You are going to need a pcie sas card that can be flashed to IT mode to go with it. Sas 6 are pretty cheap the m1015 are what a lot of us have run but you can check back through this topic to see what recommended devices are. I have a 9300-8e (Sas 12)

 

 

Edited May 10, 2022 by BlinkerFluid

[WhiteTowerBlackNode]

13 hours ago, BlinkerFluid said:

That is a sas expander. It is powered by pcie but doesn't show up in post or anything as it is a dumb device using pcie just to power itself. You also need a sas card to go with it. 

Think of it like a network switch. You still need an ethernet card to interface with it. You run the sas cable or cables from pcie sas card into expander using any ports you want and from expander any still available ports out to the drives (unless the expander tells you which ones to use).

You are going to need a pcie sas card that can be flashed to IT mode to go with it. Sas 6 are pretty cheap the m1015 are what a lot of us have run but you can check back through this topic to see what recommended devices are. I have a 9300-8e (Sas 12)

 

 

Thanks for the reply. 

in other words, I need an extra SAS only card and connect both cards internally 

using what cable and what port on the expander? The expander card also has an external port. 
Can the extra SAS card live with the short PCIe or does it also need a longer slot?

 

i only have two long PCIe slots and two short ones. 

[BlinkerFluid]

20 minutes ago, WhiteTowerBlackNode said:

Thanks for the reply. 

in other words, I need an extra SAS only card and connect both cards internally 

using what cable and what port on the expander? The expander card also has an external port. 
Can the extra SAS card live with the short PCIe or does it also need a longer slot?

 

i only have two long PCIe slots and two short ones. 

 

yes. There is no way to interface with your drives without a sas card. The expander doesn't provide anything other than making more sas ports for you to connect stuff up with

The expander card can just be put in whatever slot it fits in. The smaller the better as it literally is only getting power from the pcie slot. You don't need to use the external port for it at all. Just connect your sas card into whatever expander port is easiest. Sounds like you want to go sas internal 8087 to sas internal 8087

Edited May 11, 2022 by BlinkerFluid