Hello,

 

Am looking into building a new NAS running unRAID but this new one will have 24 bays, Am looking around for a Raid card 2x 12 port or one single 24 port card, which is the best brand to buy ? Also does unRAID support Raid cards or do they need something to configure them.

 

Kind Regards

Fat Guy

You will have to begin by defining 'Best'.  you might begin by a bit of research in this thread:

 

     https://forums.lime-technology.com/topic/11753-sata-controller-cards/

 

 

It was started a few year back but folks are still posting up with a similar questions to yours so you could start by perusing the posts over the past year to eighteen  months.  You also have the SATA ports on your motherboard to use also.  So base your choice of a MB on that fact.  Those SATA ports are usually the fastest and most reliable ones you can get.  Many of us are sticking to LSI based expansion cards lately.  They are available from many sources including 'pull-outs' from retired servers that are often rebranded LSI cards with such OEM names as IBM and Dell.  These often have to be re-flashed to have the IT-mode firmware.  

 

You will probably find that cards with more than eight ports on them are quite expensive on a per-port basis.  You might be better server served by adding a requirement for at least three  PCI Express X16 slots to your MB selection requirements. 

I installed today 16-port Adaptec 

https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/support/sas/sas/aha-1000-16i/

 

Worked flawlessly with latest unRaid (6.3.5). Aka plug-n-play, no need to reflash anything

 

 

 

 

The LSI SAS9201-16i is a good 16 port card. No flashing necessary. A bit pricey, but when you consider the 16 ports, not too bad. Doesn't support TRIM, and bandwidth not enough for a bunch of SSDs. But great for spinners.

 

The LSI SAS9201-8i is a good 8 port card. And very very inexpensive. Again, no flashing and not great for SSDs.

 

One each would get you to 24 ports and would be my suggestion.

 

There is also a -16e version of the card that is very economical. However, it is setup to support 16 EXTERNAL drives. Routing the external cables back into the server is more than doable, and would save quite a bit of money.

 

Lots of options.

I have ordered 3 of https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-IBM-LSI-ServeRAID-M1015-6Gbps-PCI-E-controller-46M0861-SAS9220-8I/192161127069?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 

 

To go on a backplane and they worked fine in unraid without flashing the firmware

 

I then ordered 2 more (from the same seller, about 3 months later) and they required reflashing to detect drives in unraid. I'm sure they are running diffrent firmware, even though they look like the same card, the two that needed flashing no longer have the webUI. I'm now waiting on the SAS to 4x SATA cables before I can try them out proper ( I only had one cable to test)