IBM x3650 M3 internal HBA for FreeNAS - ASR-71605 and rewiring?

[Anaerin]

I have an IBM x3650 M3, with the 16-bay front, and it's currently running an M5015 RAID card (Which doesn't work with FreeNAS without some non-standard flags set, and even then it's... interesting).

The way it's connected internally is the 2 SFF8087 connectors on the x8 RAID card in one of the back x16 slots are then connected to a 2-4 SAS expander in the internal x8 slot, and the 4 SFF8087 connectors there then attach to the backplane. (Morten Hjorth has a video on the setup here:

)

What I want to do is switch to a FreeNAS-supported HBA, and ideally free up a slot, and I got the "smart" idea to replace the pair of cards with an Adaptec ASR-71605, which is half-height (and therefore should fit in the internal slot without issue). But the Adaptec card has SFF8643 Mini-SAS connectors on it, so I would also need to buy 4 converter cables.

Is this a good idea? Has anyone done anything like this before? Should I just grab a M1015 and swap the M5015 with that, forgetting the idea of freeing up a PCI-E slot?

 

[BLinux]

I don't know if FreeNAS has good support for the Adaptec ASR-71605H (assuming you meant the HBA version). And even if there's a FreeBSD driver for that HBA card, you might not find a lot of FreeNAS users using it. You might be better off using some sort of LSI HBA SAS controller instead.

For example, here's a 6yr old post regarding FreeNAS support of this card:

Feature #2502: Adaptec 71605 multidisk adapter support? - FreeNAS - iXsystems & FreeNAS Redmine

I don't know if things have changed since...

I think the M1015 (or M1115) idea might make more sense...

 

[Anaerin]

Well, there is an official Adaptec driver for these cards (aacraid(4)) but there isn't much info about it. I'm thinking the M1015/M1115 (Whichever is cheaper) is the way to go. I don't think an LSI 9201-16i is going to fit where the expander card is, and it's 5 times more expensive. An extra x16 slot is not worth that to me.