Nice Deal $28 - Adaptec ASR-71605 PCI-E 3.0 x8 16 Port SAS Controller

[Sleyk]

Following along with the great deals posted about the HP240 here: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...p-from-eu-seller-34-usd-from-us-seller.28719/

I wanted to make a thread on the similar made card which also features a Microsemi processor for similar price.

I believe this card might have been discussed here before, but I couldn't find the thread. Also, I negotiated a nice low price for you from the seller I deal with alot, so wanted to post it in great deals.

The difference between this card and the HP240, is that this card is 16i controller versus an 8i controller. The Adaptec features 4 x SFF 8643 ports, as opposed to 2 x SFF 8087 ports.

They are going for a decently similar price on eBay. You can snag one of these 16i cards for about $35 dollars, with Best Offer, you can probably go below $30. However, I have a ongoing relationship with the seller, and I got him to agree to the low price of $28 per card.

You need a passcode! I debated keeping it private, but for now, will post it in open. I pray this isnt crossposted. Passcode is "Sleyk"

I suppose the difference between the two cards might come down to the cost of purchasing new cables (8087 vs 8643) but if you are willing to purchase a HP240, this card also deserves a decent look for 16 ports sas.

In reality, even though not LSI chipset-based, this is not bad for a 16i card. For clarification, this is a 6Gb/s card, NOT a 12Gb/s card. (Thanks, Lopgok!) Seller has about 50+ cards left.

Go here: Adaptec ASR-71605 16-Port 6Gbs SAS SATA PCIe 3.0 Controller Low Profile | eBay (I negotiated with this seller, and setup a passcode.)

Also this seller has some, but I didnt talk to them, so not sure if they will do offer. Will have to send a message or offer to see what they will take: ASR-71605 Adaptec 1GB 16-INT Ports SFF8643 PCI-E EX8 GEN3 RAID Controller | eBay
(They have a picture of a cute chick as their listing pic. Lol!)

Also here is the drivers and info page for the Adaptec card: https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/support/raid/sas_raid/sas-71605/

 

[ari2asem]

one big advantage of adaptec 7 and up series is possibility to run either hba mode, either hardware raid mode. without flashing the card.

just CTRL+C during boot and enter card config menu, set what you want (hba or raid) and go.

of course when you change between these modes you loose your data.

i love adaptecs cards much more than any lsi, using windows

 

[Sleyk]

one big advantage of adaptec 7 and up series is possibility to run either hba mode, either hardware raid mode. without flashing the card.

just CTRL+C during boot and enter card config menu, set what you want (hba or raid) and go.

of course when you change between these modes you loose your data.

i love adaptecs cards much more than any lsi, using windows

Awesome feature! Didnt remember they allowed this. Thanks for mentioning that!

 

[Markess]

I believe this card might have been discussed here before, but I couldn't find the thread. Also, I negotiated a nice low price for you from the seller I deal with alot, so wanted to post it in great deals.

Here's the (or at least one of the) prior thread(s). The deal in that thread is gone, but there's some good discussion on setting up and using them:

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...28-sff-8643-to-4x-sata-6-10-ea-shipped.26914/

 

[tjk]

Anyone try these with current Freenas yet?

 

[Samir]

Another sweet deal! Solid deal for a storage server controller. Thank you for setting this up!

 

[BLinux]

EDIT: as @BeTeP pointed out, I was referring to a different ASA-71605H and not related to this card. Disregard remark below.

I had a ASR-71605H card for a Linux storage server and had a lot of instability, which I think was driver related. Adaptec's website didn't have any driver packages that applied to a relatively recent Linux distro so couldn't get it resolved. Basically, every time I rebooted, a few of the 16 drives would drop out. Found some other people who reported similar problems, also with Linux. Probably better luck if you're using Windows, but I wouldn't recommend this card for Linux.

 

[kagurazakakotori]

I had a ASR-71605H card for a Linux storage server and had a lot of instability, which I think was driver related. Adaptec's website didn't have any driver packages that applied to a relatively recent Linux distro so couldn't get it resolved. Basically, every time I rebooted, a few of the 16 drives would drop out. Found some other people who reported similar problems, also with Linux. Probably better luck if you're using Windows, but I wouldn't recommend this card for Linux.

You can give a try to the latest driver from ASR-81605 support page, my 71605 works fine with this driver on Ubuntu 18.04.

 

[frogtech]

I use a 71605 without any issues on FreeNAS. It's worked perfectly in HBA mode.

 

[Sleyk]

I use a 71605 without any issues on FreeNAS. It's worked perfectly in HBA mode.

Glad to hear this works great in Freenas. I have 4 on offer myself from the seller. Paid for 2, then will snag the other 2 this week. I plan to build a 2U ssd server, with 16 x 1TB ssd's, so this 16i card will work perfectly. Will take one slot, uses 3.0 x 8, so plenty of bandwidth. Only 6Gb/s, but plenty fast for this. Also low profile, so works perfectly for my 2U case.

Gonna build it with this: MB516SP-B_2.5" HDD/SSD CAGES_ICY DOCK manufacturer Removable enclosure, Screwless hard drive enclosure, SAS SATA Mobile Rack, DVR Surveillance Recording, Video Audio Editing, SATA portable hard drive enclosure

Over $300, but that drive density is like a hot girl with three tits, total recall style!

 

[Sleyk]

Also happy to see plenty of Firmware and Bios updates for the card. Looks like last Firmware/Bios update was May 2018, so just alittle over 2 years ago. For reference, last Firmware/Bios update for LSI 6Gb/s SAS 2008 is 2016. So not too bad for a 6Gb/s card. Will definitely use more of these in the future.

 

[Foray]

Gonna build it with this: MB516SP-B_2.5" HDD/SSD CAGES_ICY DOCK manufacturer Removable enclosure, Screwless hard drive enclosure, SAS SATA Mobile Rack, DVR Surveillance Recording, Video Audio Editing, SATA portable hard drive enclosure

Over $300, but that drive density is like a hot girl with three tits, total recall style!

I have the 8 bay version of this. Works great but half the lights have died.

 

[BeTeP]

I had a ASR-71605H card for a Linux storage server and had a lot of instability

There is no ASR-71605H. The adapter being discussed in this thread is ASR-71605 (no -H) which is different from ASA-71605H.
ASR is RAID, ASA is HBA. They have different firmwares (ASA's stopped being developed in 2015) and use different drivers.
So your experience does not apply.

Btw the lack of auto drive spin up (when more than 8 drives are detected) is a well documented feature of ASA line.

 

[Fritz]

Glad to hear this works great in Freenas. I have 4 on offer myself from the seller. Paid for 2, then will snag the other 2 this week. I plan to build a 2U ssd server, with 16 x 1TB ssd's, so this 16i card will work perfectly. Will take one slot, uses 3.0 x 8, so plenty of bandwidth. Only 6Gb/s, but plenty fast for this. Also low profile, so works perfectly for my 2U case.

Gonna build it with this: MB516SP-B_2.5" HDD/SSD CAGES_ICY DOCK manufacturer Removable enclosure, Screwless hard drive enclosure, SAS SATA Mobile Rack, DVR Surveillance Recording, Video Audio Editing, SATA portable hard drive enclosure

Over $300, but that drive density is like a hot girl with three tits, total recall style!

Notice the control board is between fan and the HD's. Your drives will cook in this thing. I have the 4 drive version and quit using it because the drives were topping 50c.

 

[ari2asem]

There is no ASR-71605H. The adapter being discussed in this thread is ASR-71605 (no -H) which is different from ASA-71605H.
ASR is RAID, ASA is HBA. They have different firmwares (ASA's stopped being developed in 2015) and use different drivers.
So your experience does not apply.

Btw the lack of auto drive spin up (when more than 8 drives are detected) is a well documented feature of ASA line.

sorry to say, but you are not correct. i got ASR (ASR71605E). it has both, hba and raid. i am using it in windows as hba.

Notice the control board is between fan and the HD's. Your drives will cook in this thing. I have the 4 drive version and quit using it because the drives were topping 50c.

i have 8 drive version, with 2 small 50mm fans. 8 drives of 7-9mm heigth inside it. got never higher than 30 degree Celsius in idle-mode.

@Sleyk, i would recommend to change the fan with more powerfull fan (e.g. 38mm thick)

 

[BeTeP]

sorry to say, but you are not correct. i got ASR. it has both, hba and raid. i am using it in windows as hba.

sigh. I hate having to spell out ELI5 level crap. Nothing you just said is contradicting anything in my reply you quoted.
ASR firmware supports both modes - RAID and HBA. ASA is HBA only.
My point was that @BLinux dissed different hardware.

 

[Markess]

I have this card. Got it from a prior deal (same price) and used it for a while, before upgrading to a motherboard with an onboard SAS controller.

-- Worked fine in HBA mode for 12 drives on Ubuntu 18.04 using the kernel drivers. This was a basic home storage server, & I didn't bother with any advanced features or optimization. But for basic features, this seemed to work fine.

-- I haven't used FreeNAS in a long time, but in researching this card, I ran across some folks that had problems with the HBA mode and ZFS in FreeNAS. YMMV. (edit: I see above that @frogtech is using one of these with FreeNAS. I think I'd trust him over comments from unknown sources on the internet)

-- Like any HBA/RAID card, this gets pretty warm. If its not going in a server chassis, folks may want to consider a fan to blow air on the heatsink. The heatsink hole pattern isn't an exact match, but a 50mm fan could probably be made to fit over the heatsink using long machine screws to sandwich the heatsink between the fan and PCB. (Heatsink holes are ~58.5mm on the Diagonal and a 50mm fan's holes are ~56.6mm on the diagonal) Again YMMV of course.

 

[RTM]

That looks pretty damn cool, you gotta love the fact that it (a SAS2 controller) uses SFF8643 and the H240 (a SAS3 controller) uses SFF8087, it is almost as if they coordinated it

It looks as if it will also be quite useful as a RAID controller too, though you should probably get a BBU for that.

I think it is awesome that we are getting more information out about these controllers, it is like hidden gems that people were ignoring all while LSI controllers were much more expensive. Maybe this will even out the pricing a little more, so people in need of SAS3008 (and newer) can get them for cheaper too.

/end rant I suppose you gotta have dreams right?

On another note, I am not seeing the controller on VMWare's HCL for ESXi 7.0 (6.7 was/is supported by a vmklinux driver):

VMware Compatibility Guide - I/O Device Search

www.vmware.com

I think this thread on vmware's forum confirms it:

ESXI vSphere Hypervisor 7.0 add sas/raid controller drivers to standard .iso file

How do I add an ADAPTEC - RAID Adaptec 71605 16-Ports SAS/SATA RAID Controller drivers to the new ESXI 7.0 iso image? I had a file I would just add to my usb after I built a usb from the iso in ver 6.7. File structure has changed and I don't know which file to replace anymore. I desperately...

communities.vmware.com

Fortunately ESXi support isn't everything and that price is awesome

 

[RTM]

So.... anyway in for 2, anyone happen to know if these will take standard "LSI" full height brackets?

 

[Markess]

So.... anyway in for 2, anyone happen to know if these will take standard "LSI" full height brackets?

I don't have a "genuine" LSI board handy, but the hole spacing matches my 3Ware 9750-8i. Spacing is ~53.5/54mm which I understand was a match for the older LSI models at least.

However, the tabs on the bracket for the ASR-71605 rest on the front of the PCB, with the screws coming through from the back. This is the opposite of the LSI mounting, where the tabs rest against the back of the card, and the screws come through from the front. On my card, it doesn't look like there's anything on the back that would prevent mounting an LSI bracket, but you'd want to check the fit before screwing one down.