I just got a troubling email from Supermicro support ... they told me it wasn't advisable to put 3 x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards into the 3 x PCI-e slots on the Supermicro X8SIL-F motherboard (they said 2 were fine).  They said they've seen some issues when people have tried to use all 3 at the same time and that they believed the issue lay with the Marvel controller chip on the MV8 cards (they called it a "Marvel chip limitation").

 

I'm currently building a "beast" server, and wanted to use at least 26 drives (unraid maxed out + extra outside-of-unraid drives) ... if I can't use the 3rd MV8 card, I'll be down 8 drives.

 

Any thoughts, suggestions ... anyone using 3 x MV8's + X8SIL-F ... successfully or had problems?  Alternate cards you'd suggest?

 

Cheers

 

Toby

There is the Adaptec 1430sa (or Rosewill equivalent). x4 card supporting 4 drives. 6+8+8+4=26. The is also the BR10i. It is an x8 card supporting 8 drives. Great card actually, if you have 2T and smaller disks. It currently won't support 3T drives. 6+8+8+8=30.

If the problem lies with the Marvel controller, would the newer, LSI-based, Supermicro cards be okay?  The current unRAID betas include the driver to support these cards, and you get higher performance (PCIe and SATA3).

 

Otherwise, there are other Adaptec cards supporting 16 drives and more, so you could get away with only two cards.  However, I don't know of anyone who has tried these cards with unRAID.