Recommended controllers for Unraid


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On 1/29/2021 at 7:57 AM, JorgeB said:

If more ports are needed you can use multiple controllers, controllers with more ports (there are 16 and 24 port LSI HBAs, like the 9201-16i, 9305-16i, 9305-24i, etc) or use one LSI HBA connected to a SAS expander, like the Intel RES2SV240 or HP SAS expander.

 I'm looking towards the more ports, less cards approach and you said like the "...9305-24i, etc" what other 24 port cards can you think of off of the top of your head. the 9305-24i cards i founc are available on newegg and/or amazon but i'm not sure if I can trust the sellers and I checked Art of Server on ebay and they don't have any currently.

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On 7/17/2022 at 5:30 PM, SergeantCC4 said:

what other 24 port cards can you think of off of the top of your head.

I was basically referring to any other 24 port LSI 24, if there are any, not sure there is one from the 9400 series, another option is an 8 port HBA with an expander.

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9 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

I was basically referring to any other 24 port LSI 24, if there are any, not sure there is one from the 9400 series, another option is an 8 port HBA with an expander.

Couldn't that lead to bottlenecking at some point like during parity check/rebuilds? I know it's a small portion of use case and I'm being picky but I'd rather get something I can move to another case and not have to worry about newer tech capping it out.

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3 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Depends on the controller/expander, see here for some actual numbers.

I was going to have (eventually) 20-24 Exos drives. I saw in that link you sent that there is a LSI 9207-8i PCIe gen3 x8 card but it says "(4800MB/s)". I'm a little confused. I thought PCIe gen 3 was 1GB/lane. Wouldn't this go up to 8GB total then? I don't know what I'm missing.

 

If that's the case the MB I was looking at has a bunch of x4 mode PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and if I put that card in those and it runs in x4 mode I'll still get ~4GB/s in each slot? And this I can use the 9207.

 

Otherwise if I get the 9308-8i and I was thinking the Intel® SAS3 Expander RES3TV360 I can hook up all 24 hard drives in dual link and get about the same performance as one 24i controller? 

 

I'm slightly out of my element with HBAs and expanders and how they work. For example I'm having a hard time understanding dual link. Is it literally just both cables go from the HBA to the expander?

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1 hour ago, SergeantCC4 said:

but it says "(4800MB/s)".

That's the link speed from the HBA to the expander, 8x600MB/s with dual link, and the max theoretical speed possible, you can get better than that with a SAS3 HBA+Expander, I got around 5500MB/s total with the 9300-8i and Intel RES3TV360, because they are SATA devices they will never reach quite max PCIe 3.0 device, for that you'd need SAS3 devices, still good speed for 24 devices, and note that in this case, unlike with a SAS2 HBA + expander, speed might vary with the devices used, can only speak for the devices I used to test, unless you buy SAS3 disks.

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2 hours ago, JorgeB said:

I got around 5500MB/s total with the 9300-8i and Intel RES3TV360, because they are SATA devices they will never reach quite max PCIe 3.0 device, for that you'd need SAS3 devices, still good speed for 24 devices

So I shouldn't have to worry too much about my (eventual) 24 hard drives capping out over the expander to the 9308-8i over PCIe 3.0 x8 link?

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11 hours ago, SergeantCC4 said:

So I shouldn't have to worry too much about my (eventual) 24 hard drives capping out over the expander to the 9308-8i over PCIe 3.0 x8 link?

I wouldn't, there could be small bottleneck when using the outer sectors with 24 drives, but nothing major.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used the search and didn't see anyone mention the Broadcom 9500-8i HBA's. I recently purchased a 9500-8i for use with Unraid and it works really well under 6.10.3.

 

Completely plug and play due to the Kernel having the appropriate driver and the performance is as you would expect, extremely fast. Just thought I'd post this as even on Google I didn't see more than one topic where someone said they had this card combined with Unraid so thought I'd chime in with a recommend.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm looking to purchase one or more controller(s) to maximize my SATA ports while maintaining Unraid stability.  Right now, I'm using all six onboard SATA 6Gb/s connections for 2 SSD cache, 1 HDD parity, and 3 HDD data. 

Slots available: (2) PCIe x1, (2) PCIe x16, (1) M.2 32Gb/s

 

I was considering purchasing these cards having JMicron JMB582 Chipset on the recommended list.  Any input??

IO CREST 2 Port SATA III PCI-e 3.0 x1
IO CREST Internal 5 Port Non-RAID SATA III 6GB/s M.2 B+M
 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello, I recently got this expander card
https://www.vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=286
contacted Vantec Support to find out it is using the Jmicron JMS585 chipset. At the same time I moved Unraid and all my drives over to a different case (different CPU, MOBO, etc.)
And I'm having weird issues with my cache drive not showing up. It was originally plugged into the mobo, I tried different mobo ports and on the Vantec expander and it is not showing up. When I get home I'm gonna try taking the expander out and see if its recognized with just the original drives all on the mobo.

Posting to see if anyone has any insight on the chip or something else I should try.

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5 hours ago, JorgeB said:

That's likely a typo, JMS are Jmicron's USB chips and there's no JMS585 that I can find.

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/58682-m2-to-sata-card-it-will-work/?do=findComment&comment=271385
Possibly, you aren't the only one to make that speculation.

But it is also a common enough typo in that case that I believed it to be a thing without having the familiarity to make and educated comparison.
image.png.ce84edcc39d4471e1f13ddf09df1bf65.png

 

All the same, I can't cancel the ebay order and microcenter is good about returns, and I need to pick up more ram. And long term the LSI card supports more drives.

Thanks for the help though.

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Any recommendations for a x1 flex cable to fit under a GPU thats covering up a pci port?

 

I have a gigbyte 560m d3h with:

PCIe4 16x - Nvidia rtx a2000 double width GPU.

PCIe3 1x - Covered by GPU but hoping to use a flex cable to run a sata extender 4x card.

PCI - OLD School PCI port (no idea why they didnt stick this f*cker under the graphics card instead of the PCIe3 x1 slot.)

PCI3 16x - 10g card in here - card is x4 size. 

 

I did buy this old pci sata card but obviously will be bottlenecked https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002598521420.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.3bc41802TrMTlW

 

Better option is use a flex cable and mount the PCIe3 1x card slightly higher on the OLD SCHOOL PCI space.

 

I note you can get 10g network cards with 2x m.2 slots built in... but sata ports would be more useful...  https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/qm2-2p10g1tb

 

Edited by dopeytree
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  • 4 weeks later...

I has an issue whereby my server was crashing when doing a parity check, turns out it was the cheaper controller (SATA port multiplier) although nothing showed up on the system logs.

 

This was the card I went for, based upon the AMS1166 chipset as advised in the recommended controller post.  I don't have a x4 slot on the MB so had to go with the x1.  That said the speed of this thing compared to my older dodgy card is a big jump (parity check went from around 36MB/s to 100MB/s) 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B097RBLM9G?ref_=pe_27063361_487360311_302_E_DDE_dt_1

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I purchased a LSI 9260-8i by recommendation. It has a SAS 2108 Raid-on-chip chipset and I'm not sure how UNRAID feels about it. I am VERY new to setting up a NAS and am not sure how to get this running with LSI SAS Controller. I was hopeful that just plugging it all in and power up would register the cards connected to it... no such luck.

 

Any links or helpful videos that I can look into would be great!

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14 hours ago, jeremy.doran.95 said:

So I purchased a LSI 9260-8i by recommendation

We don't recommend that model, that's a MegaRAID controller, and AFAIK it cannot be flash to IT mode, you might be able to use in in JBOD mode but will run into trouble if you change controllers later.

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I have a Gigabyte 970A-DS3P motherboard with PCI-E 2.0 support, with 2 PCI Express x16 slots. 

 

I plan to order "PCIE 4X with 10 SATA port" card version from this website:

PCI-E Sata Adapter 4X PCIE Sata PCI Express Expansion Card with 10 Ports PCIE3.0 (using ASM1166+JMB585 chipset):

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOKtbzq

 

Another nominate card could be this one:

PCIE SATA Card SATA 3.0 PCIe Card, PCIe To SATA Controller Expansion Card with 16 Ports (using ASM1064 x 4 chipset):

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mK9YdS0

 

I need 6 disks for RAID6 + 2 for spare disks, so 8 ports could be enough, but for future flexibility I'm looking for card with 10-16 SATA ports.

Since PCI-E 2.0 X1 is slow, I choose PCI-E 2.0 X4 card version, it should be enough. 

 

Which card will work with my motherboard? 

Which card is better and why? 

 

 

Thanks! 

Edited by klor
Chipsets
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