Looking for LSI 9211-8i replacement

[Kristian]

Hello Ladies and Gents,

my LSI 9211-8i died tody, after 3 years of good service.

Now I am looking for a replacement and am astonished how many cards there are.
As the 9211-8i was paired with an old HP SAS expander I am thinking to throw that one out too and go with new equipment.

I have to connect 24 drives, so I was planing to buy this SAS expander
Adaptec 82885T RAID Expander, PCIe 2.0 x4 (2283400-R) in Controllerkarten: SAS/SATA-Controller | heise online Preisvergleich

but I am really unshure which SAS Controller I should use.
I have no fancy raid going on, so its just for JBOD purposes.

I have tried a Adaptec 6805e i had lying around for years, but I am not impressed.
It takes forever to boot up and it wants to initialise drives (meaning before they are initialised the os cant see the drives)
So that would bring real problems, because then the data on all 24 hdds would be lost (because initialisation means apparantly that the drives are wiped)

So I think a new LSI controller is the way to go:

What do you think of the LSI SAS 9300-8i?
All other brands, inputs, thoughts are welcome.

 

[gea]

My thirst thought would be using several HBAs without an expander
like 3 x IBM 1015 (=cheaper 9211, flash to LSI 9211-IT) or the LSI 9207 (I would say the faster
successor of 9211 that comes with IT firmware per default while IR 0/1/10 Raid firmware is available)

The 9300 is the newer 12Gb line. I would skip at the moment when not needed (too new)
If I would pair with an expander, I would use LSI (or Intel that use LSI chips) but prefer expander-less with Sata disks.

 

[dba]

Hello Ladies and Gents,

my LSI 9211-8i died tody, after 3 years of good service.

Now I am looking for a replacement and am astonished how many cards there are.
As the 9211-8i was paired with an old HP SAS expander I am thinking to throw that one out too and go with new equipment.

I have to connect 24 drives, so I was planing to buy this SAS expander
Adaptec 82885T RAID Expander, PCIe 2.0 x4 (2283400-R) in Controllerkarten: SAS/SATA-Controller | heise online Preisvergleich

but I am really unshure which SAS Controller I should use.
I have no fancy raid going on, so its just for JBOD purposes.

I have tried a Adaptec 6805e i had lying around for years, but I am not impressed.
It takes forever to boot up and it wants to initialise drives (meaning before they are initialised the os cant see the drives)
So that would bring real problems, because then the data on all 24 hdds would be lost (because initialisation means apparantly that the drives are wiped)

So I think a new LSI controller is the way to go:

What do you think of the LSI SAS 9300-8i?
All other brands, inputs, thoughts are welcome.

I use the LSI 9300 cards extensively and have not had any problems. Very solid for me.
You don't really need the speed of the 12Gbit LSi 93xx, but since they cost just a bit more than the 6Gbit LSI 92xx cards, and will have a lifespan of many years, I think that it often makes sense to go for the upgrade. On the other hand, with hard drives as opposed to SSD drives, a used LSI 92xx or flashed IBM M1015 are also solid choices.
So if spending $250 on an HBA is no big deal, pick up an LSI 9300. If that sounds like a lot of money, find a 92xx on eBay instead.

 

[Kristian_Stracke]

Thanks a lot for your answers. Is there any sas expander you would suggest? Having more than one hba doesn't seem possible without buying a new mainboard

 

[Kristian]

Two more questions:
1.) After browsing the internet for hours and hours there doesn`t seem to be a LSI SAS expander with 12Gbps support. Is that right? I found an Intel expander:
Intel RES3FV288 RAID Expander but this one seems to have the PM8044 SXP chipset (PMC Sierra / Adaptec)
Any experiences yet with compatibility between the expander and LSI 93xx?

2.) I was thinking to buy the LSI SAS 9300-8i but when browsing for the cheapest seller I noticed that the LSI MegaRAID SAS 9341-8i is actually cheaper (by 40EUR) What am I missing here? Is there still the possibility (like with the 9211-8i) to disable the raidbios and use the card as hba?
Or would I want the 9300-8i for a special reason?

 

[PigLover]

I've been watching and as far as I can find the only "retail" SAS3 expanders in the wild are built on the PMC Sierra chip. Both Intel and Adaptec are shipping now.

It appears that the LSI SAS3 expander chips are being allocated purely to system builders. Dell, SuperMicro and some others are shipping them embedded in backplanes. But no expander boards that I can find.

Watch announcements this week from CES - might get some more info later in the week.

 

[Patrick]

Watch announcements this week from CES - might get some more info later in the week.

From what I have seen/ heard thus far, I would not hold my breath on a retail expander board being released this week. Not very "consumer" friendly. I would not be surprised if they started showing up soon though.