Supermicro SAS3 HBA

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Fritz

Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E. Seller wants $99. Offered $85 and got counter offer for $89. This is the best price I could find and it's not bad for a SAS3 HBA

Couldn't grab the link without the referral so Search for item 175005899965
 
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Kybber

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May 27, 2016
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Wow, I am looking for this exact item and just dropped by here to see if there were any great deals on it - good timing! :) Too bad he won't ship to Norway :( May look into forwarding services.

Edit: "Sorry, this item cannot be shipped to United States. You are unable to bid on or buy this item because: The seller has specified that this item cannot be shipped to addresses in United States." o_O
Edit2: Probably a bug in ebay triggered by me changing my primary address in Norway to the freight forwarder address in the US. Logged out and in again and now it works.
Edit3: Offer of $85 accepted and paid. Thanks, @Fritz !
 
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TrumanHW

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Sep 16, 2018
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Fritz said:
Best priced SAS3 HBA I could find -- Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E.
Listed: $99 OBO -- Paid $89
Click to expand...
Though I've heard SAS3 controllers get hotter than SAS2 controllers..?
(which made me wonder if that makes splitting the lanes across 2 cards preferable even)

Great price (I saved it in my watch list).

Though, I am curious which SAS3 products you'd look forward to using with SAS3 devs..?

SAS-3 SSD ..? Yes, easier to satiate the PCIe lane-criteria ...
But SAS-3 SSD cost about the same per TB (and less performance) than NVMe (in my experience).

I bet you have a good reason though, and ask to literally learn it.
Thanks...

PS, I ordered the last 2x [Huawei knock offs of the] Super Micro ReTimer card off eBay for $100ea
...to use in my R730xd
www.ebay.com/itm/184289523851

(Despite supermicro selling E5-2600 v3 / v4 which "supports 24x NVMe devices" (perhaps without specifying if that was 24 x4 or x2 NVMe devs, as 24 x4 needs 16 more (96) than the 80 total satisfied, without even 1 spared for a NIC, let alone the QPI). Still, that'd still yield 12x NVMe x4 devs, yet everyone was convinced it was "impossible to use over the 4 NVMe x4 devices Dell advertised" (despite conflicting manufacture statements using identical hardware) as if not a function of specifications, to include that Super Micro server -- which a user here succeeded using w 16x NVMe x4 drives (4 more than my intended max, at 8-12 devs). It was just amazing to hear each person invoke fallacious arguments and hypothetical preclusions, all of which were factually falsified upon researching them).
 
Fritz

Fritz

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Lately I've been buying 12G spinners as I wait for larger SSD prices to drop or another tech to show up and replace them. While spinners will never match SSD's they're still considerably faster than 6G.

I also found a couple of 2TB 12G drives. Didn't even know they existed.
 
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e97

e97

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Jun 3, 2015
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Nice find!

Wish I had more PCIe slots to grab these, full up.

Waiting for a 16 port. Also heat is a big factor. Had to throw a 60mm fan directly on the heatsink to keep my SAS9200-16E but its been running flawlessly.
 
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itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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I've purchased multiple items from this seller. to date nary an issue. also good price on that HBA with the full height bracket! Still not pre-chia but getting close!

Fritz said:
Lately I've been buying 12G spinners as I wait for larger SSD prices to drop or another tech to show up and replace them. While spinners will never match SSD's they're still considerably faster than 6G.
Click to expand...
Define "larger SSD" and the price / GB you are looking for, I'm curious.
 
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Markess

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May 19, 2018
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NIce find @Fritz! Best price I've seen in a long time for a card that's an actual HBA version.

The BO price is right down there with the price of the Dell H330 RAID cards, and you don't have to go through the seemingly bazillion step crossflash process necessary with Dells to make them "vanilla" SAS3008 HBAs

TrumanHW said:
Though, I am curious which SAS3 products you'd look forward to using with SAS3 devs..?
Click to expand...
Well, if you're one of the folks who got a chassis like this one https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/sm-cse-826-sweet-deal.34551/ that came complete with a SAS3 expander and cables that have SFF-8643 connectors, its easier to get a SAS3 HBA even if you don't need the speed right away. The alternative (getting/re-using a SAS 2 controller and buying cables that have SFF-8643 connectors on one end and SFF-8087 on the other), costs almost as much and is a generation older.

The system in the link is also a @Fritz find, so maybe he was buying an HBA for one of those? :p
 
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Fritz

Fritz

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Well strangely enough, this HBA is for another chassis. I already had a X10SRH-CF for this SM826. My current project is an SM 836TQ. I had upgraded it a while back with a SAS2 expander backplane and today I put the TQ backplane back in it in preparation for the arrival of the AOC-S3008L-L8E. For the time being it will be a Frankinserver, half SAS2 and half SAS3. Current MB is a X9SRH-7F with a builtin 2308 HBA. I have 8 12G drives to fill up the SAS3 half and 4 6G drives to go in the SAS2 half. It'll do for now.

I benchmarked the 12G drives hooked to the 2308 today and was surprised at the result. Not sure upgrading to an SAS3 HBA is worth it with 12G spinners but what the heck, gotta be progress.
 
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itronin

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Fritz said:
My current project is an SM 836TQ. I had upgraded it a while back with a SAS2 expander backplane and today I put the TQ backplane back in it in preparation for the arrival of the AOC-S3008L-L8E.
Click to expand...
I upgraded a bunch of mine with 9400-16i's (when they were $250 each) and one with a pair of AOC-S3008's. IMO The pair is the way to go if you are doing SAS3 SSD's... spinners I like having a single card. This is why I like the 836TQ (Compellent SC-030) so much! Just enough drives, nice easy card to manage them all. also a SPOF but whose counting that... Its a home lab its not like you have customers that will scream at you if it goes down ... oh wait... o_O :p
 
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rootshell

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So, a couple dumb questions of the day from someone very familiar with computer hardware, but has never played around with HBAs and SAS backplanes...

I have a SuperMicro 846BA-R920B 4U server chassis with the BPN-SAS-846A backplane that's intended for a converged NAS + Docker/VM home server build. I chose to go with the "A" backplane knowing I'd have to individually cable each drive to the HBA since I figured it would provide max performance & future proofing including ability to support SSD speeds (e.g. no multiplexing of drives going on; each drive has a dedicated connection to the HBA)... at the cost of a cabling mess. I currently have (8) WD 8TB Reds that will go into this chassis. Probably a few SSDs/NVMEs too for VM image hosting. Still working out MB/CPU/HBA for the project, but likely looking at the new E-2300 series, W-1300 series, D-1500 series, or Ryzen Zen3.

Q1: If I were to pickup one of these cards (AOC-S3008L-L8E), I assume I'd just need to flash the HBA into IT mode (JBOD mode) then cable all 8 drives using SAS-to-SATA breakout cables? I plan to run ZFS of some sort (Ubuntu, TrueNAS, etc.).

Q2: Looks like the card's miniSAS connector interface is SFF-8643? What SFF # would be on the 4x SATA breakout side of that cable? I assume it'd be something like this x2? Amazon.com

Q3: Other than PCI slot consumption, is there any performance or power consumption differences in running (2) 8i's vs. (1) 16i? I think either can handle my 8 spinners and couple SSDs OK, but am unsure on heat and power consumption of running 2x8 vs 1x16. I could probably get by with a single 8 port for the spinners and run the SSDs off of the MB's onboard SATA ports if needed, but would be nice to have 16 ports on the HBA since the chassis supports growth to 24 drives. But if the 8 and 16 port cards draw similar power, probably would be smarter to run (1) 16 vs (2) 8s.

Edit: Looks like the published spec is 13W for the 8 port. Wierdly, the 4 port consumes 14.25W. And the 9305-16i consumes 16.2W per spec. So it does look like running one 16 port card is more power efficient than running two 8 ports, which makes sense.
 
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Almighty

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I have a used one of these for sale and attached a Noctua 40mm fan on it to help with systems that don't have high pressure airflow. anyone interested for the same price (noctua fan installed free basically)?
 
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