Dell compellent SC8000 LSI 9206-16E

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nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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I didn't see much info on this card in the interwebz and asked in the RAID/HBA forum. Thanks @Sleyk for sharing his knowledge.
Dell PN: TFJRW are listed for $64.95 + FS.
Note these have newer SFF-8644 connectors though the card is 6gbps. And with dual SAS2308, the idle power draw of 14w is some thing to keep in mind.

Dell SAS Controller Compellent SC8000 4-port Host Bus Adapter H3-25553-01A TFJRW

Also I saw listings for different Dell PN: 1V1W2 which actually say 9206-16E but lowest was about 119 OBO, for a NIB card.

Here is the link to discussion in the RAID controllers on this site.

Dell SAS Controller Compellent SC8000 4-port Host Bus Adapter H3-25553-01A TFJRW



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frogtech

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I had planned on using these in a Dell C6100 and trying to route 2 sets of cables back into each node so that I could use the front bays as well as external enclosures later if I wanted to. But coming up with an area to route the cables back into proved pretty much impossible.
 
nephri

nephri

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What is the real purpose of a 16e card ?

I'm studying which are the best HBA topology for a high throughput and this card even if it's work on a PCIe 3.0 8x, you will have at best an average of 3.94 Gb/s per port.

Maybe i'm wrong but:
- 16 ports SAS-2 that requires 96 Gb/s bandwith
- 8x PCIe-3.0 provide 62.96 Gb/s bandwidth

So your hba will be limited to 62.96 Gb/s at the best (at full load).

Maybe i'm missing something, because even with the sexy 9300-8e card (that i'm looking for) you will require exactly the same bandwidth (but less ports to fullfill) and you will have at the end an average of 7.87 Gb/s per ports (at full load)

My computations let me thinking that we have reals differences of controller requirements in term of bandwidth and what they can have from their PCIe connection.

In this regard, the 9208-8i is a good option since at full load you can saturate each ports at 6Gb/s
 
TuxDude

TuxDude

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A storage array like a SC8000 is built for iops over throughput. And in the case of the SC8000 specifically, the expansion limits of the array are mostly constrained by the number of PCIe devices you can add to each controller node - the SC8000 controllers are really just dell R720 servers with SCOS instead of linux or windows or whatever. So when growing an SC8000 you only have so many slots to add HBAs (for more and more disk shelves, depending how many shelves you want to daisy-chain on one SAS bus), FC-HBAs (target mode, for clients to access the array), 10G-NICs (iSCSI targets), etc. And a lot of the slots in those servers are only 1/2 height slots - so Dell convinced them to build a quad-port low-profile HBA as linked in the OP so that us SC8000 owners can use those 1/2-height slots for connecting more back-end disk shelves.
 
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TuxDude

TuxDude

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Aestr said:
As @TuxDude mentioned, it's not always about more performance. Sometimes it's just about being able to access more drives.
Click to expand...
When you only have spinning disks in an array, more drives is more performance. Doing 30000+ IOPS against an array of spinning rust with no SSDs means a LOT of spinning rust, with no need for the full 96 gbit of bandwidth that the SAS lanes could theoretically supply.
 
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Mehmet

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Can i use this card in a non dell server? Does it need firmware update?

When i installed perc6i which i pulled off from a dell t5500 and tried to boot centos 6.7, it hanged forever because of megaraid sas driver problem. Do you have any idea?
 
themelon

themelon

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Mehmet said:
Can i use this card in a non dell server? Does it need firmware update?

When i installed perc6i which i pulled off from a dell t5500 and tried to boot centos 6.7, it hanged forever because of megaraid sas driver problem. Do you have any idea?
Click to expand...
I'm in for 2 as I could really use 4 ports in a low profile card.

Most likely you can use it in a non-Dell as I am planning to. Even if it does work without a firmware update I would still do one. Chances are good that it is old enough that the LSI driver will complain about versioning.
 
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nthu9280

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Got the card. It is NIB with both Dell & LSI stickers outside of the box. Flashing to the latest LSI 9206-16E was a breeze compared to the Dell H310. I have a love hate relationship with them :). Sas2Flash reported two 2308_2(D1) controllers with different SAS addresses. I just had to flash them each.

Now, I need to start looking for the 8644 cables at a good price..
 
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Gene

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Jan 27, 2016
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Thanks for the thread. This external sas card was exactly what i was looking for - ordered one and four 8644 cables.
 
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Gene

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got the 8644 cables in this week. Just replaced my m1015 card after flashing to 19 IT firmware.

It's working however it gets REALLY hot. It actually got so hot it dropped all my drives. I'm using it in a opencompute node and it doesn't have enough airflow i guess. I had to fashion a wind tunnel tube to it from another fan in the 4u case below that pushes ambient air and am seeing how that goes.
 
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ServerSemi

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Jan 12, 2017
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Be careful with that listing as it doesn't really show anything just an empty box. I really don't get lazy sellers that don't bother to post useful photos of the items they selling as is they giving it away for free you should just take their word for what they selling.
 
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nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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ElBerryKM13 said:
Be careful with that listing as it doesn't really show anything just an empty box. I really don't get lazy sellers that don't bother to post useful photos of the items they selling as is they giving it away for free you should just take their word for what they selling.
Click to expand...
Guess I will know in a few days and I'll post an update.
Don't know if they just copied the pic of the box from some other listing but It does look like the original Dell box and the buble packaging that I got when I started this thread.

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