Reddit mentions of LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301

LSI LOGIC SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301


Mini-SAS to 4x SATA Forward Breakout Cable


I picked up one of these cards and the breakout cables and it handles 8TB drives, easy to install. Works great

If it's just a data drive and you're not looking to do anything super fancy with it. These work great.

However, be advised that, because the card is PCI-E x1, if you were to actually plug in 4 hard drives or SSDs, you're gonna run smack against bandwidth limitations if you start trying to hammer I/O on the drives connected to the card all at once.

I have this exact card as well as the 2-port PCI-E x2 slot version in use and they work very well for supplementing on-board headers when you're a few short.

I would not attempt to use these cards to run HDDs/SSDs that were going to be datastores for VMs nor as the HBA for something like FreeNAS. If your goal is along those lines, you'd be much better off looking for an HBA like the 9207-8i. You can get those way, way cheap on ebay, and then you just need the correct cables for 'em.

You get a PCI-express SAS controller to install. They come in 2 and 4 port varieties, and you get SAS to SATA cables (turns one SAS port to 4 SATA connectors) to plug into it to connect your hard drives. That could be 16 drives per card, a couple of PCI-Express slots and you'll have more SATA connectors than you have room for hard drives.

Edit: I'm in no way recommending this specific one, but here is one example of what I'm talking about:

https://www.amazon.com/LSI-Logic-9207-8i-Controller-LSI00301/dp/B0085FT2JC/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=SAS+controller&qid=1567797015&s=gateway&sr=8-4 (it's a 2 port variety).

and for cables:

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=SAS+SATA+cables&qid=1567797027&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Assuming you have PCI express 3 in your computer expansion slots, Get a card like this:

LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085FT2JC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_xQ-jDbVZ3R30V

It will feed data connections to 8 sata drives all by itself.

It has 2 sff-8087 ports. Then get the special 'forward breakout' cable. Well two really. One end goes into the sff-8087 port and then it splits out into four sata data cables. Which go into the hard drives of course.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012BPLYJC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_2T-jDbHFP0FHC

The card can support hardware raid, but fewer and fewer folks do that. After all, hardware raid usually requires identical drives, and us folks at home often have a motley collection of drives of various sizes, speeds, and geometries. So software raid it is. In linux, folks often use freenas or unraid. In windows 10 you can use something called 'storage spaces'. Using raid will allow you to treat all those drives like one device... And have some tolerance for failure (which happens with so many)

Next question.. does your case have room? Do you have enough power connectors?

This is what I bought building my new rig: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085FT2JC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I paid less than the current price listed there. Shop around for the LSI 9207-8i, it's best bang for the buck HBA that's new in box I've found.

Yeah, it wasn't cheap but I'm hoping this NAS will last for years so I was willing to spend the money. This is the RAID Card that I got along with this SAS Expander

CT16G4WFD8266 edit: also make sure to only run it in pairs of two. Odd numbered ECC does not work well, if at all in Ryzen for whatever reason.

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I'm running 4 of these sticks in an Asrock X370 Taichi and Ryzen 1700 (another user reported they work with the 2700X and another board). First boot, ECC was enabled and automatically set to 2666mhz.

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Generally most Asus/Asrock motherboards have great support for ECC. I wouldn't be too concerned on the number of SATA ports though and would opt for higher quality motherboard like the aforementioned Asrock Rack or the X370 Taichi (12k capacitors, debug LED, stupid strong VRM, 10 SATA ports). With any board though you can always add an HBA like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085FT2JC/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=A3SCB8M3AWX80L&psc=1

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last edit: Taichi is ATX, you're looking for MicroATX. Definitely if you're not going the Asrock Rack route (IPMI is a nice selling feature) I would opt for the B450M Steel Legend. It has THE highest build quality of any consumer MicroATX board on AM4.

Here is the HBA I use with FreeNAS.

LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085FT2JC/

You will also need these to connect drives to that card.
Cable Matters Internal Mini SAS to SATA Cable https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012BPLYJC/

In order to use the drive at full link speed (SAS3) you would need something like this: https://www.amazon.com/LSI-Broadcom-9300-8i-PCI-Express-Profile/dp/B00DSURZYS and this cable to go with it (for a desktop anyhow): https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-Internal-SFF-8643-SFF-8482-connectors/dp/B01F378UF6

if you don't care about getting the full 12Gb/s from it you can go with the cheaper LSI-9207-8i controller ( https://www.amazon.com/LSI-Logic-9207-8i-Controller-LSI00301/dp/B0085FT2JC ) and this cable https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013G4FEGG/ which would allow you to get 6Gb/s which is the current max SATA speeds anyhow. (SATA1 is 1.5Gb/s, SATA2 is 3Gb/s, and SATA3 is 6Gb/s while SAS1 is 3Gb/s, SAS2 is 6Gb/s and SAS3 is 12Gb/s

I think the budget may be what ends up deciding it. I don't want to go with something that is going to be too slow though. I am using the storage area for my Plex media if that matters.

This the LSI HBA I've found so far and from what I see they're both 6Gb/s so I'm not seeing the advantage.

For the motherboard I didn't really notice any difference in my power bill when I starting using this one so I've never thought too much about it. Can you give me an example of a board you're talking about? The only thing that's ever been a little annoying with this box has been how loud it can be.

This is the case I'm using if that helps.

Cheap? $100-150 is going to be cheap. Anything cheaper, is shitty and you will have issues.

And fuck crossflashing. Get one of these: https://www.amazon.com/LSI-9207-8i-Storage-Controller-LSI00301/dp/B0085FT2JC

If you want brand new, there's this

eBay too

For used, if you want to flash it (super easy), you can pick up an H200. Keep in mind you want ones with internal SAS ports like this, not external.

I recently put in an LSI card to attach 8 HDD's into my array (I have 5 SSD's attached making up my cache - not ideal, but I had the parts so... ;-). Worked out of the box. no flashing. No updates. I ordered mine from Amazon.com. Was $75, but I did not want to risk it, as this is my server (worth the $25 to me for simple piece of mind).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085FT2JC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Combined that with the splitter cables (I used these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CKX6HVV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ) and I have had 0 issues.

It was by far the most highly recommended card, and I did not want to deal with a bunch of random issues to save $25 dollars.

I'm using two of these, myself:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085FT2JC

They work great with my 4 and 10 TB HGST NAS drives, but I did have a problem with my Samsung 850 EVO SSD. There is a firmware update available for them that I haven't tried yet (I just moved the EVO to on-board SATA ports and it's fine).

Edit: You'll need cables like these (it doesn't come with them): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013G4EMH8

I'll toss a plug in for UnRAID here, it would do what you want. I use it and love it. May be the simplest option for you as it is a file server, and can also manage VMs and docker containers. There are dockers for Plex, backup software (crashplan, etc), and many other useful things (unifi ap controller, openvpn server, web server, ftp, etc etc).

I also just picked up two of these for my new server:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085FT2JC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They work with JBOD and can be used with HDDs and SSDs. Not sure what the T30 and R710 have currently, but you may be able to flash them to IT mode for JBOD support.

If the 9207-8i is too pricey, you can get an H310 for around $50-100 and flash it to IT mode yourself. Amazon has them but ebay may be better.

They can be, yeah. But you can find them for pretty cheap some times, too. link

As for the 36 bay case, it costed me ~$600. $300 for the case, and $300 for "parts" (upgrading to SAS2, drive trays, rails).

As for the 45-60 bay enclosure, I'll be saving up for. $700-1000 is a reasonable price for these, used. THough, if you're luckly, you can find them for much less.

link

For a case maybe a node 804? Or a Silverstone ds380? If you can't find a micro atx or mini itx motherboard with enough sata ports you'll need a controller in IT mode. The mini itx is smaller but you'll be limited on memory ports and sata ports most likely. I suggest building it with pcpartpicker to ensure compatibility. You can also filter for various qualities like number of sata ports or number of 3.5 inch hard drives things like that.

Thanks so much for all this!

I had found the memory and controller card below in the interim.
https://www.amazon.com/Tech-PC3-12800-PowerEdge-A3721494-Snpp9rn2c/dp/B01C7YS08U

https://www.amazon.com/LSI-Logic-9207-8i-Controller-LSI00301/dp/B0085FT2JC

I think these will work. What do you think?

On this build I probably won't try to get a slog for the zil but in the future I may if we test and can hook these up to our vm hosts. Do you have any recommendations for that? I know NFS does sync writes so I think I'll need a slog if I do that.

Thanks so much. This one would already be in IT mode wouldn't it. Then I could just update the firmware using the normal firmware update process?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0085FT2JC