9440-8i (Lenovo 530-8i) for $89 OBO

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

 

Wow, I guess flashing these to IT-mode isnt a problem?

 

They are "low end" cacheless raid cards according to the Lenovo site...interesting.

 

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!

 

And the auction has ended!!

 

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

 

For that price, you can get about 7 of these from Intel:
SFF PCle SSD Cable - SSD Spare Parts

 

Awesome find!

 

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.