Supermicro HBA card.

[DocJuan]

Hi. It's been days of sleepless nights trying to figure how to fix my LSI 9300-8i. It led me to get another HBA card for now to get my stuff running. Ive came across this HBA card, it is an AOC-S3008L-L8E SuperMicro 8-Port SAS 12Gb/s PCI Express 3.0 Gen 3 HBA Controller Card. Though I need a 16i to replace 2x LSI 9300-8is (1 which had a fault), I would like to give supermicro a try. Same chip different brand. Any thoughts on this one?

 

[sko]

I've been running a few Supermicro-branded HBAs in Supermicro servers (e.g. my homelab server) for years now as well as its SAS2008 predecessor in some older servers. Never had any issues - but that being said I also haven't had any problems with the Chinese reference-design-copy HBAs which I often use in homelab or backup servers.

The only 3 LSI (or Avago, or Broadcom, or whoever bought or will buy them this year) HBAs that died on me or didn't work as they should, were all cross-flashed Dell variants. 2 of them (SAS2008) just died after a few weeks, the third (SAS3008) always threw errors left and right after a few days uptime (regardless of FW version). The former ones were replaced by some reference-design-copies from aliexpress which are still running today in a backup server. Those must be at least 6 or 7 years old by now...

 

[ano]

I run mostly supermicro ones on that gen, they work very good, I have 50-100?ish of them in prod misc places that specific 3008 you linked

 

[DocJuan]

I've been running a few Supermicro-branded HBAs in Supermicro servers (e.g. my homelab server) for years now as well as its SAS2008 predecessor in some older servers. Never had any issues - but that being said I also haven't had any problems with the Chinese reference-design-copy HBAs which I often use in homelab or backup servers.

The only 3 LSI (or Avago, or Broadcom, or whoever bought or will buy them this year) HBAs that died on me or didn't work as they should, were all cross-flashed Dell variants. 2 of them (SAS2008) just died after a few weeks, the third (SAS3008) always threw errors left and right after a few days uptime (regardless of FW version). The former ones were replaced by some reference-design-copies from aliexpress which are still running today in a backup server. Those must be at least 6 or 7 years old by now...

I have 2 LSI 9300-8i and 1 just had issues with random non detection of drives, randomly turns off and suddenly it just wont boot. I will give supermicro a try. Maybe buy 2 of them. Ive read mixed reviews but I think its worth the shot.

Chinese reference-design? how to distinguish? Btw, I bought from amazon some fluke products and some came with a box with chinese manual.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[DocJuan]

I run mostly supermicro ones on that gen, they work very good, I have 50-100?ish of them in prod misc places that specific 3008 you linked

good to know. Definitely getting them. By the way, have you tried the new PCIE4.0 that supports NVME? any recommendations?

 

[sko]

Chinese reference-design?

its not a chinese reference design, its those HBAs you can buy without any branding directly from china - those are usually identical to the LSI reference design and therefore also identical to the dell/hpe/whatever labeled 'variants' minus the stickers and the branded/vendor-locked firmware...

 

[DocJuan]

its not a chinese reference design, its those HBAs you can buy without any branding directly from china - those are usually identical to the LSI reference design and therefore also identical to the dell/hpe/whatever labeled 'variants' minus the stickers and the branded/vendor-locked firmware...

oh. if it works fine for a cheaper price I guess thats ok. But I prefer the ones with a brand. I noticed there is a rev1.01 and a rev 2.00 for the AOC-S3008L-L8E, whats the difference?

 

[ano]

no idea on diff, even our oldest are still happy