Or it is too risky.. and I should stick to the 'end of life' 9300-16i ?

 

Will/can existing driver in unRaid support the new Broadcom 9400-16i ?

 

thanks,

Edited October 26, 20178 yr by michael123

On 10/26/2017 at 12:25 PM, michael123 said:

Will/can existing driver in unRaid support the new Broadcom 9400-16i ?

That's the first risk that comes to my mind as well. Other than asking here on the forums, or buying the card and trying it and taking the risk, I'm not sure what command line in unRAID would list what drivers are included to see if the driver is there. I've faced this same question myself when I took a risk buying a newer card.

 

On 10/26/2017 at 12:25 PM, michael123 said:

Or it is too risky.. and I should stick to the 'end of life' 9300-16i ?

I think there are ways to mitgate the risk. I purchased from a onine seller that allowed 30 days returns, no questions asked. thankfully in my situation the card worked. Is the risk work it vs the 9300? Wow I had no idea that this question would have taken me on a 15 minute journey to undersand what he 9400 is offering compared to the 9300. I've always kind of ignored the U.2 interface since I haven't seen many storage devices utilize it. But wow it's so much more, for those curious, the spec I read here is fun read: http://www.ssdformfactor.org/docs/SSD_Form_Factor_Version1_00.pdf

 

9300 or 9400? I'm going to assume you have a way to utilize the new features in the 9400, or expect you will within one year, if not, just stick with the 9300. However in my mind the decision is solely determined by two questions that you have to ask yourself...

 

1- Are you doing this because a constraint is driving your decision? It could be you are using a small form factor with only 1 PCIe slot, in that case the 9400 makes sense. If you have two or more PCIe slots, then I would simply ask, why take the risk when you can get a 9300 and trust it'll do it's job, and if you want U.2, get a separate card to do that.

 

2- If you're asking because you want to have fun and explore, then find a way that lowers your risk exposure like I mentioned above and give it a try, and report back if it works!

 

Good luck!!!

 

 

Thanks for the comprehensive answer.

 

9300 is hard to get now from 'normal' resellers, in most places it is out of stock.

 

While on the other hand 9400 is very new, and also hard to find. I've seen it on newegg however

 

What did you buy? 9300?

4 hours ago, michael123 said:

What did you buy? 9300?

 

I bought this: http://www.areca.com.tw/products/1883.htm

ARC-1883i

 

and this: http://www.areca.com.tw/products/pcie341.htm

ARC-1265il-16

 

 

been quite happy with both, and since they do JBOD, I don't think I'd purchase another LSI HBA again. Only minor complaint here here:

 

 

 

I might pull the trigger on one of these: http://www.areca.com.tw/products/12x6_external.htm

ARC-1226-8x

 

Cause I recently bought one of these: http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/847/SC847E26-RJBOD1

This one seems to me cheaper

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118273&cm_re=9400-16i-_-16-118-273-_-Product

 

and passively cooled (?)

 

 

 

 

@michael123 wow cool card. I need external interface. Also after trying the Areca experience.. the web based interface, and having RAID as an option to do RAID-0 or now doing RAID-6 as my parity drive, it's been a lot of fun. I'd like to continue to explore more with Areca options. Please keep anymore more suggestions coming, I'm in no rush.

@Lev I have an old box bought directly from Lime maybe 9-10 years ago. I have 15 drives chassis, so I wanted to get a new supermicro X11 board, and add 16-port (internal) adapter so I could live happily for next 10 years. As it is unraid, I just need an HBA "plug-n-play" (but not "plug-n-pray"). Disks are SATA3, except for the m.2 cache drive, which I will mount directly to the motherboard. Do you know anything I can plug in, connect the wires, and forget under unraid -?

 

 

My LSI 9201-16i's were plug and play and are fast enough for the current spinners on the market.  Just made sure I got used server pulls and not a fake new controller from China off eBay.

Edited October 31, 20178 yr by BobPhoenix

41 minutes ago, BobPhoenix said:

My LSI 9201-16i's were plug and play and are fast enough for the current spinners on the market.  Just made sure I got used server pulls and not a fake new controller from China off eBay.

 

I usually buy from Amazon, I saw Benchmark Technology sells now

How fast is this card? Did you have a chance to benchmark it?

I got an average parity check of 163.1MB/s on my 15 drive array of 6TB HGST NAS drives just yesterday.

1 minute ago, BobPhoenix said:

I got an average parity check of 163.1MB/s on my 15 drive array of 6TB HGST NAS drives just yesterday.

 

Nice, that's the drives I have as well.

Today I have roughly half of this

 

And the bottleneck is basically in the drives themselves, right?

 

Seems to be.  The check before that was considerably slower ( 87.8 MB/s) but I probably had accesses to the system while the parity check was going on.  This time I purposely started it at bedtime and moved my backup directory to a different server.  My backups happen overnight and I use the server during the day so by moving the backup folder to a different unRAID box I got time to do the parity check at night with no accesses and increased the parity check speed.

2 hours ago, BobPhoenix said:

Seems to be.  The check before that was considerably slower ( 87.8 MB/s) but I probably had accesses to the system while the parity check was going on.  This time I purposely started it at bedtime and moved my backup directory to a different server.  My backups happen overnight and I use the server during the day so by moving the backup folder to a different unRAID box I got time to do the parity check at night with no accesses and increased the parity check speed.

 

Nice. Do you know if these are the cables I need to connect the drives?

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BTEYLEQ/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?smid=A21TE5CLHZDYA7&psc=1

 

Do you think that 0.5m will be sufficient?

Not with the LSI-9201-16i's I've ordered. They have SFF-8087 connectors.  The connectors for a LSI-9201-16i would be Forward breakout cables that have SFF-8087 connector on the Controller end and Sata plugs on the other for individual drives.

 

If you are talking about a LSI-9300-16i or a LSI-9400-16i I don't have one of those controllers so I cannot tell you about them.

 

The cable I would buy for a LSI-9201-16i to individual drives would be:

https://www.amazon.com/Internal-SFF-8087-Forward-Breakout-Cable/dp/B0735N9HY9

 

There are different lengths so get whatever size you need.  I have some .5M, .6M and 1M cables.

Edited November 1, 20178 yr by BobPhoenix

Should I put the 9201-16i into "IT" mode?

What about firmware? 

That might be an overkill, but even given your proven recommendation somewhat I hesitate buying 7-old card for a box, which I hope will serve me for next 8 years

 

Maybe spend 200$ more for future-proofing on Adaptec HBA 1000-16i 12Gb/s -?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0187UOUDW/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

 

I saw it is supported by unRaid 6.3

On a second thought, SATA3 is limited to 600 MB/sec anyway, and I have no plans to put anything expensive like SAS drives into unRaid

So since i need two 16 port cards for my system i guess i need to ask ... what is THE best card on the market with 16 ports currently (all internal)?

cost not a issue what should i grab for my 4u unraid server?

Is the answer the 9400i is the best but random guess as to if it will work or not.

 

I kind of hate to spend a grand to "find out" if it works.

 

What did you decide michael123?

1 minute ago, merlyn said:

What did you decide michael123?

 

I hesitated ordering 9400-16i as it is quite new and wasn't sure about support.. 

Then I saw already discontinued 9300-16i is sold for 30% more than its retail.

I looked for 9201-16i card. It is a card from 2011, but supposed to be sufficient for SATA3 anyway. I contact Benchmark Technologies that are considered the best retailer for these things on Amazon. They could not tell me what's the firmware version installed there, when I asked about manufacture date, they said it might be 2013 or 2015.

 

So I pulled the trigger on Adaptec 1000-16i above, bought it yesterday from newegg. I saw here on the forum that it is supported in unraid 6.3 and later.

 

hummm ....

 

I normally think LSI when i think controller card but now you have me thinking.

Mind coming back and posting how it went when you get the adaptec shipped  in?

 

thanks in advance

Sure, I will update the forum, but it will take few weeks.

I understand now the community is the basis for unraid :-(

 

16 hours ago, merlyn said:

cost not a issue what should i grab for my 4u unraid server?

 

ARC-1883ix-24 ||  https://www.amazon.com/Areca-ARC-1883IX-24-INTERNAL-EXTERNAL-PORTS/dp/B00N99QNWI

 

That'd be my pick @merlyn. I have the ARC-1883i and I LOVE IT, that thing above is a monster, if I had a full height chassis I'd pull the trigger on it too. I'm limited to half height cards like the 1883i

@Lev It is really a monster, but tell me - why do we need a RAID controller for unRaid machine?

2 minutes ago, michael123 said:

@Lev It is really a monster, but tell me - why do we need a RAID controller for unRaid machine?

 

@michael123 One doesn't need anything, one simply wants more...