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

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nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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San Antonio, TX
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
 

tjk

Active Member
Mar 3, 2013
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They are "low end" cacheless raid cards according to the Lenovo site...interesting.
 
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SPCRich

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Mar 16, 2017
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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/

Hi,
I have the knowledge of the 530-8i HBA 9400-8i

download FW:
HBA 9400-8i Tri-Mode Storage Adapter

1. We have jumper J4 - ON. And boot to efi

2. storcli / cx download firmware file = HBA_9405W-16i_SAS_SATA_Profile.bin

3. We have jumper J4 - OFF.

4. boot to efi

5. storcli / cx download efibios file = mpt35sas_x64.rom

6. storcli.efi / cx download bios file = mpt35sas_legacy.rom

7. storcli.efi / cx set sasadd= (sas asdress)
 
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frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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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?
 
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SPCRich

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Mar 16, 2017
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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:

The SAS3408 supports up to 4 direct attached PCIe devices and complies...
However, as mentioned, the 530-8i is == to the 9440-8i in the title, so if you look that up:

MegaRAID 9440-8i

Connect up to 63 SAS/SATA devices or 24* NVMe devices per controller
So you choose.
 
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ru me

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Jun 2, 2018
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I would assume that there are corresponding tri-mode backplanes. Since ebay does not know that concept it might as well not exist.
 
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frogtech

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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
 
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frogtech

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as @nthu9280 said :D

In the broadcom literature for tri-mode adapters there is reference to cabling to 4 NVMe adapters running at presumably x2 speed:

upload_2019-1-24_8-30-36.png

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:

upload_2019-1-24_8-35-28.png

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.
 
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