Gun-shy about Controller card purchase--What is working now?


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I was all geared up to get a SAS2LP-MV8, and was going to use an old card with a Marvell 9230 chipset in the meantime; and then I did a search. It seems that there are all kinds of problems with the Marvell chipsets and virtualization (which I use heavily). Plus the Supermicro card appears to have problems now too, where it was the gold standard.

 

What cards ARE known to work with current unraid systems?

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+1 for LSI, they're simply the best you can get.  Everyone prefers them and everyone supports them for pretty much everything.

 

I've been battling with Dell/HP for years to offer stock LSI cards for our purchases, they're just now starting to offer them as they're realizing no one wants to deal with their shit firmware.  Seems the popularity growth of opensource storage has finally got the message across.

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Regarding the LSI based cards; I now have 4 of these 8 port Intel RS2WC080 that I had cross flashed with the LSI IT P20 firmware.  The ebay seller in the following forum topic has been selling them new in box for $70 +shipping (all 4 of mine came from them):

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=47102.0

 

These are retail NIB, so they come with (2) minisas -> 4xSATA cables.

 

I think I will get one of these and see how it goes, but I've been looking around, and all of the information on flashing seems pretty old. Do you have a suggestion on where to look for instructions on the flash?

 

I have to admit I am surprised that this is so hard to find, I would think with all of the DYI storage being built that there would be a fix for the Marvell problem by now.

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Regarding the LSI based cards; I now have 4 of these 8 port Intel RS2WC080 that I had cross flashed with the LSI IT P20 firmware.  The ebay seller in the following forum topic has been selling them new in box for $70 +shipping (all 4 of mine came from them):

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=47102.0

 

These are retail NIB, so they come with (2) minisas -> 4xSATA cables.

 

I think I will get one of these and see how it goes, but I've been looking around, and all of the information on flashing seems pretty old. Do you have a suggestion on where to look for instructions on the flash?

 

I have to admit I am surprised that this is so hard to find, I would think with all of the DYI storage being built that there would be a fix for the Marvell problem by now.

 

The last couple of pages on that Good Deals thread for the Intel RS2WC080 has my cheat sheet for flashing this specific card.  Also the monster thread at the top of this Storage Devices and Controllers section has details pertaining to this card (the 4th comment on the first page).

 

Regards,

Jake

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