RAID controller recommendation for Supermicro 836 + 16x 7200 rpm drives

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nutsnax

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Nov 6, 2014
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Hey just picked up a supermicro 836 chassis and I'm looking at raid controllers. I have a HP P812 right now but I don't think it will do 6gb/s for SATA drives (only SAS).

I'm curious what you guys would recommend as far as RAID controllers for 16x 7200 rpm drives (probably 4tb) in an 836 chassis with sas2 backplane?

I haven't gotten the drives yet.
 

BLinux

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Jul 7, 2016
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i would recommend something based on LSI SAS2208 chipset. and since you have the expander backplane on that 836, you only need one.
 

nutsnax

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OK I found a list of those ... the 9265-8i or 9266-8i looks to be in my price range with 1GB of DDR3 - does RAM amount really matter in this case and is cachecade worth looking into also? I have a spare Crucial 256GB SSD laying around.

edit: I also see the 9267-8i is also in the range... I can't really see that there is any difference between these other than maybe port placement? Anyone have any idea as to differences?
 

BLinux

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OK I found a list of those ... the 9265-8i or 9266-8i looks to be in my price range with 1GB of DDR3 - does RAM amount really matter in this case and is cachecade worth looking into also? I have a spare Crucial 256GB SSD laying around.

edit: I also see the 9267-8i is also in the range... I can't really see that there is any difference between these other than maybe port placement? Anyone have any idea as to differences?
don't know anything about cachecade so no comment on that one...

at least with older generation RAID controllers, the cache made a huge difference if the data set you're working on came out of cache for random I/O. but if your I/O patterns are larger, or sequential and larger, the cache size didn't make much difference. in fact, i found for large sequential I/O, I would gain more performance by using Write-Through cache. those controllers usually had 512MB or 1GB cache and the $$$ difference isn't that great now for older generation RAID hardware; i would get the 1GB just for S&G.

yeah, a lot of different models but most of them are basically the same, other than what you mentioned in terms of port configuration. LSI some times would use a different number if the card was made for OEM like IBM, Dell, HP, etc., so hardware wise they seem to be the same.
 

j_h_o

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Apr 21, 2015
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  • Intel does LSI rebadges of hardware RAID controllers. Sometimes they're available on eBay at reasonable prices with BBU, etc.
  • Don't use your Crucial. Enterprise (Intel, HGST, Samsung, etc.) or don't bother.
 

azev

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Jan 18, 2013
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CacheCade works well for random access, if you can find a card with the license included with minimal additional cost I say it is worth it.
I would use a better SSD for it though.... In my case I used 800Gb Enterprise SSD and it works magic if you use it for vm storage for example.
 

BLinux

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I went with this as this is the lowest I could find with a battery:

IBM ServeRAID M5110 SAS/SATA Adapter with 1Gb + battery 90Y4449 00AE807 US | eBay

hope I didn't screw up!
well, as long as you get a genuine card, i guess that should work. that particular seller on ebay I don't buy from... i've had a few transactions where I'm pretty sure I received counterfeit stuff from China that was staged in the US. (so it ships from US address, but it's the same counterfeit stuff from China)
 

nutsnax

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well, as long as you get a genuine card, i guess that should work. that particular seller on ebay I don't buy from... i've had a few transactions where I'm pretty sure I received counterfeit stuff from China that was staged in the US. (so it ships from US address, but it's the same counterfeit stuff from China)
yikes, well, I'll let you all know if it's counterfeit
 

nutsnax

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Just an update here, everything looks legit. The battery is new, it identifies as a serveraid 5110 and the config interface looks as it should. Thanks for the input!