Solved LSI 9201-16e and FreeBSD 11?

I have to replace a failing SAS HBA and found a great deal on the LSI 9201-16. Vendor driver support only seems to go up to FreeBSD 10.0 for this card and I did not find it on the list of supported disk controllers for FreeBSD 11.

My question now: does anybody have this HBA running on 10.4 or, better, on 11.1? Will the 10.0 driver work in 11.x?
 
Thank you for the answers!

I ordered one now and it seems that there is a fire sale on these, at least in North America. Various sellers offer these cards (new) as low as CAD 61.75 (including shipping in Canada), I have seen them on ebay as well, for around $30 (US) plus shipping - again for a new card.

Wonder what is going on here, maybe a massive overstock?
 
These cards typically cost around 200-300 euro. I think I bought my LSI 9207-8i for 235 euro. But beware of those really cheap ones, I've heard some rumors they're actually cheap Chinese knock-offs. But for 25-30 euro they're cheap enough to give it a try. You won't lose too much money if they turned out to be bogus.
 
Interesting. I bought through Amazon marketplace, so I should be somewhat protected. Card is not shipped from China, at least. Is there any way to check if the card is legitimate or not?
 
I will report back once I get the card (shipping will take at least a week). Some google-fu gave a little insight on how to recognize at least some of the fakes (not all "strange" cards are fakes, due to a lot of OEM deals by LSI). I will run the card with a test pool of old drives with no valuable data and see what the performance and stability looks like.

What baffles me: why would anybody counterfeit a card this old? I mean, they could just as well fake something more desirable / newer.
 
What baffles me: why would anybody counterfeit a card this old?
It might be an older card it's still quite popular. And people may be looking for a replacement of an OEM labeled device that burned out. If the OEM can't (or won't) supply a replacement card people will start looking for alternatives. It's generally cheaper to buy a rebranded card than having to replace the whole server. So from a business point of view it's actually quite smart to produce new cards based on old designs, there's definitely a market for it.
 
The card finally arrived. I could not test it so far (out of country at the moment), but I had some photos taken. So I would like to ask anybody with experience regarding LSI cards in general and the LSI 9201-16e in particular if this card looks genuine to them.

Note: I blackened out part of the serial number and the SAS address, just in case that the FreeBSD forum is read by some weirdos.

https://imgur.com/a/x4lbS

https://imgur.com/a/XAPWe

Embedding pictures into my post did not work for me (design or bug?), hence the links only. All feedback appreciated.
 
The card finally arrived. I could not test it so far (out of country at the moment), but I had some photos taken. So I would like to ask anybody with experience regarding LSI cards in general and the LSI 9201-16e in particular if this card looks genuine to them.

Note: I blackened out part of the serial number and the SAS address, just in case that the FreeBSD forum is read by some weirdos.

https://imgur.com/a/x4lbS

https://imgur.com/a/XAPWe

For reference: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118147
 
Thank you. I did not see any noticable difference between my card and the Newegg pictures, which is good, I guess.
 
Final follow-up: card was installed and works extremely well with my 45-bay Supermicro JBOD. Transfer speeds are near the theoretical limit for a 6 GBit/s SAS channel. Also tested it with multiple JBODs and up to 32 active disk drives. The system has been rock-stable for the two weeks since I installed the card. Still unbelievable that the card was just 60 bucks...
 
Back
Top