Are there any ok-priced 12/16/20 HBA cards?

[zicoz]

I've currently got some IBM 1015 cards with the LSI firmware, but since I only have 4 PCI-E ports I'm looking for something with more ports. Since I'm running my server in a Norco 20-drive chassis, the optimal card would have 5 ports, but are there any ok cards under $1000? If not are there any 4 port ones? Or am I forced to go down to 12?

How about expander cards like the 28 port chenbro? Or would that affect my performance too much?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHENBRO-28-...920&pid=100011&prg=1005&rk=1&sd=140854572165&

 

[dba]

16 ports cards have gotten quite reasonable. 24 ports cards are still quite expensive - expanders are the low-cost alternative in that scenario.

A used LSI 9202-16e, if you can find one and if you have an x16 slot available, is a fantastic card that costs between $225 and $300 and provides 16 external ports. You want interal ports, so this probably isn't for you unless you like extra wiring.

The LSI 9201-16e and -16i cards also have 16 ports, external and internal respectively, and start at around $400 new for the internal port version. Both versions of this card are full-height cards, which won't work if you only have room for half-height cards of course - though not a problem in a Norco 4U chassis. These cards are slower than the 9202, but that will only be a problem with large numbers of SSD drives.

The brand-new Adaptec 71605E, promises, for $400 new, PCIe3, 16 internal ports, and 6GB/Second. I haven't yet tried one, but I probably will eventually. The specifications look great, but it'll have to have LSI-like reliability to convince me.

Check these forums for some good expander discussions, especially if you are using VMWare. The HP and Intel expanders get the most coverage here.

 

[Patrick]

The other major consideration is that a lot of the >8 port cards are in fact, cards with expanders built-in. The LSI 9202-16e is an interesting example because it has two 8-port controllers on a single PCB. If you do have an expander chassis, going from a RAID card/ HBA's onboard expander to another off-board expander can be troublesome.

 

[zicoz]

Thank you I'll look into those cards.

Currently my expander chassis uses one of the Intel that's attached to an IBM-1015 card in the main chassis, I'm guessing that'll be the way I do it going forward as well, but I need to replace at least one of my 1015 cards with something that has more ports if I want to expand more later on.

The 16e sounds interesting though. Perhaps one of those where 2 ports are connected to one expander chassis and the other 2 to another? Could the Chenbro expander work in that situation?

So I can go LSI 9202-16e in main chassis to Chenbro in the expander chassis with 2 cables?

 

[zicoz]

Ok, the time has come for me to pull the trigger on some cards now as my Supermicro X9SRL-F has arrived.

Could I run into any problems if I mix a 9202-16e card with 9206-16e cards? I want a 16e card now, but I like the 9206 as well, but seems impossible to get atm, there is a retailer in Norway, but they want 8000NOK ($1500) for it.