HBA for SE3016 enclosure

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talsit

Member
Aug 8, 2013
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I recently picked up a SE3016 JBOD enclosure to repurpose 15 old hard drives I had laying around. I moved them to my garage and attached them to an HP DL120G7 with a Smart Array P212. The P212 had 1 internal and one external connection.

Right now I have the P212 managing the enclosure as 3 arrays just for fun. At one time I had looked into cross-flashing the P212 but gave up and got several M1015s.

Now I want to move this enclosure (after sound mods) into the house. Inside I have a server with a Supermicro X8DTI-F motherboard, a M1015 and an Intel expander.

What I want to do is replace the M1015 with a comparable HBA with external connectors so I can move the 8 HDDs from inside to outside the case and expand the Storage Spaces array on that server with more disks.

Is the LSI SAS9200-8E a good choice for this?

I had also read someone had success with a Dell card, they didn't specify the name, but I think it was the H800 flashed with 9211-8i IT firmware.

I don't want to go the 8087 > 8088 route, kids, pets, etc will put wear on anything passing through the case, I've had luck with them not messing with actual cables connected to cards though....
 

talsit

Member
Aug 8, 2013
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Thanks for that. I had thought of it but hadn't found one.

I'm also thinking about expansion and adding a second enclosure in the near future. I have 15 disks in the enclosure now, I don't need the space today but when I take the 8 drives out of my server I will have seven disks taking up drawer space again.
 

smithse79

Active Member
Sep 17, 2014
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I have a Dell Perc H200E. 2 external SAS ports and it is the same controller as the M1015. It can easily be flashed to IT mode or even to LSI firmware.
 

bds1904

Active Member
Aug 30, 2013
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I've never been a fan of the sff8087>sff8088 brackets. One more thing to go wrong.

I've used the sas9200-8e with great success on many builds. Cheap, fast and easy.
 

rubylaser

Active Member
Jan 4, 2013
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Michigan, USA
I found a used LSI 9205-8e a little while ago for $49. I flashed it to the P19 firmware, and it's been working great ever since.
 

talsit

Member
Aug 8, 2013
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Great! Thanks for the responses. I'll be on the lookout for some of these gems.
 

talsit

Member
Aug 8, 2013
112
20
18
I actually went ahead and pulled the trigger on a LSI 9201-16e. It's based on the SAS 2008 chipset and doesn't appear to have an IR mode.

If I understand the SE3016 correctly, I can attach two SFF-8088's from the enclosure to the server to increase bandwidth if needed. If not I have spare ports for $35 cheaper than I was finding on the 9201 and 9205-8e's.
 

manxam

Active Member
Jul 25, 2015
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The SE3016 (at least the 3 that I have) does not support MPIO, only pass-through. One cannot connect a second SFF-8088 cable and expect additional bandwidth, though one can 'daisy chain' another SE3016 using the second port.
 
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