SATA III controller for DL380 G6

[RimBlock]

Looks like I will finally get a DL380 G6 to use as a storage server.

Hopefully my HP P812 will handle the external and 8 of the internal drives but I am also getting a second cage which should allow the use of anotehr 8 2.5" drives, in my case I will put my SSDs in there.

What I need now is a controllet that will play nice with the DL380 G6, can do SATA III SSD speeds and is cheap .

Current contenders;
LSi 9211-8i
Dell H310

Any others woth a look around the same price range ?.

Thanks
RB

 

[mrkrad]

i use two 9266-8i (would have rather done 4 9266-4i) - make sure you get the 2nd riser

also p420/1gb fbwc work good and are cheap as heck.

 

[PigLover]

i use two 9266-8i (would have rather done 4 9266-4i) - make sure you get the 2nd riser

also p420/1gb fbwc work good and are cheap as heck.

The trouble with doing 4x 9266-4i in a DL380 G6 is that you don't have the PCIe lanes to make that work at high performance. Each of the two risers does have 3 PCIe slots - x16, x8 and x8 - but eletrically they are only wired as x8, x4, x4. That means you only have two true "x8" slots to work with (the x16 physical/x8 electrical slots on the top of the riser). It will work to plug in 4x 9266-4i's, but the performance will be so constrained by the PCIe x4 connections that you might as well just deal with 2x 9266-8i's getting saturated by the SSDs - you net performance will be better.

Put the P812 in one of them and a 92xx-8i in the other to drive your 8 SSDs in the 2nd cage. Should work great!

Of course, once you've done this, you've used up both of the x8 slots and there is no reasonable way to drive high-speed network. I notice from your signature that you have a "work in progress" to do 20GB/s Infiniband. No love for that in the DL380 if you use up both of the x8 slots for Raid/HBA.

Note: I have been told that HP did manufacture a "custom" riser with only two slots, both electrically x8. I saw one in use in HPs labs in Houston, but it doesn't have a published part number (its custom for a "special" customer, sorta like the Dell DCS version servers). I've never been able to find one available on the market.

 

[mrkrad]

i'm not following the math here, 8i = 8 lanes, 4i = 4 lanes. You get more dispatched queue depth with more controllers unless you are simply trying to do linear bandwidth.

Keep the x8 slots for network

 

[PigLover]

Fair play to that. In my haste I neglected the fact that the 4-port cards are, indeed, PCIe x4 cards.

 

[RimBlock]

The LSi 9266-4i is a PCIe x8 card but having only 4 lanes of 6G connectivity to drive ( or other devices) means it is unlikely to saturate 4 of the PCIe lanes.

Unfortunately they are going for around US$400 on EBay at this time so approx 4x the cost of the LSI 9211-8i per card.

Great info here from you both, thanks for that.

Yes I will be adding in an Infiniband card so the fact they are half wired PCIe slots is of major importance....

Two cheap x8 cards, each connected to only 4 drives should do the job then (or 4 if I want full bandwidth on all 16 drive bays) and I still have room for the P812 (or the LSI 9202-16e I also have) plus an Infiniband card.

Oh the fun... my bank manager and wife can hardly stand it .

RB