Any reason I shouldn't buy an LSI 9400-16i?

[Mashie]

Greetings,

I currently have a 10x10TB software (mdadm) RAID6 array running on my Xeon E5-1650v3 based workstation. All the SATA drives are connected to the onboard controllers on the Gigabyte MW50-SV0 with a handful of ports still spare. The OS is Xubuntu 20.04.

I'm now looking to migrate the array to a dedicated HBA for future expandability and probably a Ryzen based CPU/motherbord the next upgrade cycle.

I have seen some decent deals on LSI 9400-16i HBA's, is there any reason I should consider a different HBA?

 

[Fritz]

Price?

 

[Mashie]

I'm sure there are other options under £250 + VAT but it would be nice to stay on PCIe 3.0.

 

[itronin]

A: None that I can think of so far when using for spinners or SAS SSD's (depends on workload)... I am not using them for NVMe.

In the US there was a seller who had NIB listed for 270.00 but was accepting OBO of 250.00 and I purchased some from them.
Their listing is still active but OOS - watching to see if they get more.

using in:
SM CSE-836 / 836 TQ BPN (Seagate and HGST spinners) ESXI
SM CSE-216 / 216A-N4 BPN (HGST SSD's) TNC

Pros
Good density - single x8 slot for 16 drives which matches the backplane in a CSE-836
Price only a bit more than 2 x used LSI 3008-8i using fewer lanes
Price was less than what I could find for LSI 9300-16i or 9305-16i
Firmware was easy to update from Linux and FreeBSD
It is supported in ESXI 7.0 (I'm preparing my systems for migration from H310's running ESXI 6.7)

Cons
I may will be bandwidth constrained using all of my SSD's (2 pools) from one x8 slot - however my workload won't stress that.

Other
I just ordered a used single from a seller in China for 260.00 - may be a knock-off based on one of the seller's images but we shall see.

 

[Mashie]

Thanks, good info there. It is a company in Hong Kong selling these so the import duty will be the same from there as from the US. No idea if they are knockoffs or not, plenty of positive feedback so a good sign.

I don't plan on using NVME nor SATA SSD's on these for the foreseeable future, only spinners.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

I was in a similar situation with a backup server a while back; a brand new 9300-16i was only £50 more than an OEM 8i SAS card (reflashed) and a s/h SAS expander, so it was a no-brinaer for me to pick the new card.

I'm seeing the 9400-16i coming in at just under £500 from my usual e-tailer which is a fair chunk of change (and the 9300-16i price isn't much cheaper); even though it's "only" PCIe 3.0 x8 that's still a theoretical maximum of 8GB/s so it'd conceivably bottleneck if you decked it out with SSDs but of course 8GB/s should be enough for anyone The PCIe 4.0 version, the 9500-16i, is rather more expensive at £650 but obviously more future-proof as far as support and throughput goes.

 

[StevenDTX]

I needed to free up a slot in my unraid box for a gpu, so I bought one. It works great. Iirc, I managed to get it for $230 though.

 

[ari2asem]

this site is in dutch. price for 9300-16i is 370 €

Broadcom LSI 9305-16i

tweakers.net

i have 2* 9400-16i....not that i want to sell, but if you pay nice price for it, then it is yours.
i am in EU (Holland)

 

[UhClem]

(Rather than buy new Western tech from the East, I'd go for used from wherever ...)

While OP references the 9400-16i, I see nothing in the described use case (16 spinners; PCIe 3.0) that isn't adequately handled by a SAS2/SATA3 HBA.

1. Adaptec ASR-71605 (evidence of handling 4500 MB/s or more) [4x sff8643] [$40-80]
2. LSI 9206-16e (2x LSI SAS2308, so full PCIe 3.0 x8 (6800+ MB/s) BUT 4x sff8644 ($50-100)
3. LSI 9207-8 (SAS2308) + SAS2 expander [IBM or Lenovo] (4300 MB/s SATA3 or 4500 MB/s SAS2) ($20-40 + $20) 2x sff8087 et al

But, hey, it's your money ...

 

[niekbergboer]

A very late reply, but since I have seen some of these on eBay again:

Does anyone have experience with running NVMe drives off of these (the third mode in "tri-mode"). Can one, for each on for the 2 (or 4, depending on the card), choose whether to use it for either SAS/SATA, or for NVMe? Does the card then detect that automatically?

 

[Edd189]

A very late reply, but since I have seen some of these on eBay again:

Does anyone have experience with running NVMe drives off of these (the third mode in "tri-mode"). Can one, for each on for the 2 (or 4, depending on the card), choose whether to use it for either SAS/SATA, or for NVMe? Does the card then detect that automatically?

I have the same question. At minimum it looks like some expensive cables to make NVMe drives work with this card.