These cards show up from time to time around this price as one offs but this seller has > 25 available at the time of posting. Rear facing ports make this appealing for 2u servers and getting tri-mode card at the SAS3008 card price is even better. There is another thread here on flashing these and require StorCLI efi. Avago 530-8i PCI-E RAID 12GB 03-50008-25004 01KN505 Lenovo Adapter | eBay
I just got a 430-16i to use with some SAS3 SSDs and it works great. Wish this deal was around a week ago. Nice find.
Wow! It hasn't even been an hour since I posted. There are already pending offers for over 20. Darn STH vultures!
similar card at 99$ w obo , unless im missing something: Avago 530-8i PCI-E RAID 12GB 03-50008-25004 01KN505 Lenovo Adapter | eBay EDIT; looks like this is the same seller just relisting more cards at 10
Guess the same seller found 40+ more cards in stock and listed little higher. Still a good price for a "new other".
just got 80$ accepted for BO . @OP a link to the original thread for flashing would be SUPER helpful..just sayin, since search yields no such thread. Edit: Found it by way of the Google machine: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...si-sas3408-got-myself-a-530-8i-on-ebay.21588/
For those who got these for NVME, what cables are you considering? These look interesting, although pricey. Funtin U.2 (SFF-8639) to HD Mini-SAS (SFF-8643) Cable 2 for 2.5" NVMe SSD https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6CH6P8
So on the 8i model only 1 physical port is good for 1 NVME U.2 SSD right? There's no way of expanding 2 ports to take up to 4-8 drives?
did you even look at the item? It clearly has two ports From Lenovo ThinkSystem RAID 530 Series Internal RAID Adapters Product Guide > Lenovo Press
Okay, but 1 port is for 1 drive (in Tri-Mode, presumably). I'm wanting to know if it can handle BEYOND 2 NVMe U.2 SSDs on the SAME adapter.
The sas3408 controller on the card seems to support 4...from the SAS3408 docs: However, as mentioned, the 530-8i is == to the 9440-8i in the title, so if you look that up: MegaRAID 9440-8i So you choose.
I would assume that there are corresponding tri-mode backplanes. Since ebay does not know that concept it might as well not exist.
Quick scan of the docs refer to 1 x4 NVMe or 2 x2 NVMe per port. There are 8643 > 2x U2 cables. I don't know much NVMe drives.
It's most likely a "combo" cable like this, https://www.amazon.com/Funtin-SFF-8...id=1548335460&sr=8-14&keywords=mini+sas+to+U2 Though I guess I could be wrong. I'm not seeing one true mini SAS HD to 2 U.2 cables. I think it's a 1 to 1 think. A quick google didn't yield anything about NVME expanders but truthfully I didn't look very hard cause I'm not about to be in the market for a bunch of NVME drives. Regardless, this is still a great/relatively way to add the capability to systems for cache drives or other purposes
as @nthu9280 said In the broadcom literature for tri-mode adapters there is reference to cabling to 4 NVMe adapters running at presumably x2 speed: But I'm not sure what kind of cabling there is that is one mini-SAS to 2 NVMe x2. The Chapter 5 it references only has this: I am wondering if the backplanes are what handle the "splitting" of the lanes between 2 to 4 drives. The document says the 9440-8i can support 4 NVMe devices at, presumably again, x2 speed. Which is still going to be better than most SAS 12 Gbps disks.
