16 port non-raid card

chancey

chancey

Hi, i will soon be migrating 12 drive hardware 3ware raid6 to 18 drive raid60 using zfs (raid60 meaning 3 x 6 raid 6). I need a pci-express card that can handle 16 drives (the rest can be plugged into the mobo for a total of 20 drives.)

I won't be using it for hardware raid so it doesn't need any of that, plus it must be able to export drives directly to the system so that the raw drives can be moved to a different server later, I know that my 3ware card doesn't let you do that because creating a single drive is in effect an array with 3ware meta on it and will destroy the contents of that drive.

Obviously it needs to be compatible with FreeBSD 8.0+ and if im spending this much on a new system I don't want a super cheat sata card that will push 18 drives through a single sata channel. I was able to achieve 1gb/s on my 3ware card.

Thanks
 
Matty said:
areca has a 16 hba but without a freebsd driver.
supermicro has a 8 port lsi hba. so you could use two of these http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm
Click to expand...

Um, I don't mean to be rude, neither of those are useful. The first one clearly isn't worth mentioning and the supermicro is an 8 port (I need 16) and doesn't mention anywhere I can see that drives can be exported directly to the system, nor does it mention FreeBSD is even a supported OS.
 
I think the best option I can find is a highpoint rocketraid 2340 for ~AU$750. I know this is supported by freebsd and come to think about it, its not such a big deal if the drives are exported directly to the system because i can't move 18 drives to another motherboard anyway, the raid card will have to move along with the drives.

I'm still open to suggestion though ... perhaps there are issues with using this card, or with zfs etc?
 
chancey said:
Um, I don't mean to be rude, neither of those are useful. The first one clearly isn't worth mentioning and the supermicro is an 8 port (I need 16) and doesn't mention anywhere I can see that drives can be exported directly to the system, nor does it mention FreeBSD is even a supported OS.
Click to expand...

the areca will get a driver soon and the supermicro is supported by the lsi mpt driver.

Point is there are little good (pricewise) options when it comes to 16 ports.

so why don't settle with 2x8 ports. That is if your motherboard has two pci-e 8x ports of course

About the highpoint. Does the driver support hot swap? or is that a non-issue?
 
Well the good news is that my 3ware card can export unconfigured drives ... which means I won't need to buy any cards. I can build the initial zfs pool with the mobo, destroy the 3ware array and add the drives to the total pool ... perfect.

I couldn't find anywhere to buy the supermicro card in australia, but on ebay through a US seller its very cheap, under $200 ... why is that?
 
You can buy any supported SAS HBA with SAS Backplane for 16 ports. I think there are none of 16-ports controllers without RAID support. Only SAS HBA + SAS Expander.
 
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