HBA Selection

[foetoid]

Hi all,

 

I'm new to the forums. Been a LTT subscriber since the house days. Brief history on me, I've been working in IT for 20+ years, however I've been out of the hardware space for the last ~10. Went to build myself a new TrueNAS setup and didn't follow the 7 P's (Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance).

 

Long story short, I bought a 2u chassis with a mini-SAS backplane and now I'm trying to find an appropriate HBA for the rig. I need it to support 12 drives across 3 connections. I've found an abundance of 8 drive HBA's with two connectors, but keep shooting blanks for a 3 port. Wouldn't be that big of a deal if I didn't have my other PCI-e slot filled with at 10GBase-T NIC. I still have a 1x slot open, but that's not going to help here.

 

I'm just using standard NAS SATA drives in the rig, so performance is not top of mind. Just need to dump data to disk.

 

If y'all have any recommendations, I'd be greatly appreciative. Thanks in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

Can you fit full height pcie cards, or do you need low profile cards? There are many 16 port hbas like the lsi 9201-16i

 

With sas you can use expanders, so you can easily split the 2 ports from the hba into 3 that your backplane needs.

[foetoid]

Unfortunately I'm stuck to half-height cards. I'm not familiar with the expanders. I assumed that the max per port based on product descriptions I've been reading for HBAs was 4 drives.

 

I would have assumed that cards that support the chassis I bought exist. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WH8M4N7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, foetoid said:

Unfortunately I'm stuck to half-height cards. I'm not familiar with the expanders. I assumed that the max per port based on product descriptions I've been reading for HBAs was 4 drives.

 

I would have assumed that cards that support the chassis I bought exist. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WH8M4N7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

sas expanders let you split the sas connectors like the sff8087 to support hundreds of drives a card. Many backplanes have them built in(Id really suggest a case like that here if you can). Otherwise, run 4 of the drives from the sata ports on the board, or hide some sas expander in your case.

[foetoid]

Gotcha, so in my case, the backplane requires three SFF-8643 connections which presumably map to 4 drives each since it's a 12 bay unit. Based on what I've been finding with these breakout cables, they're directional. SFF-8643 host to SATA target, but not the opposite (which makes sense). So in this case, I think I need something a bit different. (I really should have done more homework before buying this chassis... It wasn't my first choice, but it was what was available)

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, foetoid said:

Gotcha, so in my case, the backplane requires three SFF-8643 connections which presumably map to 4 drives each since it's a 12 bay unit. Based on what I've been finding with these breakout cables, they're directional. SFF-8643 host to SATA target, but not the opposite (which makes sense). So in this case, I think I need something a bit different. (I really should have done more homework before buying this chassis... It wasn't my first choice, but it was what was available)

It shoudl work with other way assuming there is no logic, so you can use the sata ports on your board for 4 of the drives. Otherwise you need a sas expander.

[foetoid]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It shoudl work with other way assuming there is no logic, so you can use the sata ports on your board for 4 of the drives. Otherwise you need a sas expander.

I initially thought the same thing and bought some cables to connect to both the motherboard and the PCI-E SATA controller, however there was no joy. Perhaps if the motherboard or the SATA card supported port-multiplication it would have worked, but out of the box it seems they want a 1:1 relationship. That's why I went to the HBA plan.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, foetoid said:

I initially thought the same thing and bought some cables to connect to both the motherboard and the PCI-E SATA controller, however there was no joy. Perhaps if the motherboard or the SATA card supported port-multiplication it would have worked, but out of the box it seems they want a 1:1 relationship. That's why I went to the HBA plan.

Probably has some sort of controller then..

 

How about a broadcom 9305-16i. Like this guy https://www.ebay.com/itm/353530813762?epid=11029122940&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item5250141d42:g:uV4AAOSwjaJgwyBA&amdata=enc%3AAQAGAAACgPYe5NmHp%2B2JMhMi7yxGiTJkPrKr5t53CooMSQt2orsSd0ReTLyM7cxPnI6zs468EIEZSr4DtY24YxABjybH2Gt4qldhdwrTIZlYwY3nUx3I9jj%2BxCCeaYn04eN%2BlmgkceRb9wr%2B4mjyWf3MgH65c%2FzyoBW7pt9XY0S5wgML2x0kOf9MXZSM8uWpcWDHAKik03vNdSDnhZOqY24xwgCuB0mAzUVKvxTu%2FJNC75XVngLLU6WBKa8HFWpx3DCM7swl4S3CPPZ3M5dpC3fKyb3yBnNwdncLixUtlyUU%2BWBwMd3r%2FtFuAFi7706L13tVBhDQuzq4st7Ly%2BegSk5qeVZmTJSdEk9bXTUtSzy8c0lIIEVbqCFZzSALrUp9C92VoRWtyl91aauxRRYKSwFgRga2xv6tCPV3R6gJe6MrJHENmBpDc7wuM%2FCNj2hCwvn%2FGK4ksrDpCUrTVnG2QO9iOJCqspzhmPn1%2Br7XSyR3WJaZldHvATPysMzaNU%2F1WZPVHWEwE%2Bxa1RriJYIXFoZDmNK2A88%2Ba4Dx81KecAyQLLhBEZ5jNe1Oxc2jp4HERw2r3tHclyyHsx8H9qpcZ3ENRsqECmdW6mG2GI6tPpr3q3%2BOaq6ufh%2Fs1Nw7kqXmsvFGnkgA5cc0VVgf9uwp4IL6n8WrypIvLHy6rCQuVs%2BdpxdMcyvTw65MDah34u%2F87130EJjLNz29cC9XF1er8gUSgsB7YXiXyF7gi7Xiza%2FyWYoRmHvsdKadMrDqpK0lArLBPNZ7bKwae6qrOD0hN%2F%2BXgbD5hhu%2B3rMsN%2BQSs2B8uqh8WWXqGnAGTG9VeB5cLOP7DEWvaMxlECTnf8tiF9hf92U5tiI%3D|ampid%3APL_CLK|clp%3A2334524

 

Not cheap, but fits your needs.

 

 

[foetoid]

Beautiful. Thank you!

[Jarsky]

Looks like you already have your answer, but for completeness LSI 9305-16i or 9400-16i HBA's are half height cards that support 16 channels (4 ports).

Also with breakout cables there are breakout cables, and reverse breakout cables. In order to go from 4 SATA to 1 SAS you need a reverse breakout cable.