good sas raid controller from ebay?

[bernie.j]

want to install a PCIE sas raid controller into a conventional desktop.

 

Just super confused by all the varied options, ranging from $50 for refurbished with battery and cables from hong kong, to $600.  Some from HP or Dell obviously marketed for servers, but they're still PCIE, so maybe there's no compatibility issue there.

I've noticed some are pcie 2, some are pcie 3, and to get pcie 4 is $$$.  I'm guessing that's a marker of age, and pcie 3 is new enough to be reliable but not so new as to be hundreds of dollars?

 

anyway, please suggest a couple models that are known to be reliable and should play nice compatibility-wise with windows 10/11, vmware, and centos?  well, like, IS it an issue to buy an HP or Dell one?

 

thank you for your help!

Bernie

[leadeater]

So HP/HPE are more their own custom ones, everyone else is OEM/ODM LSI/Broadcom. Long and short of it is no it does not matter what brand you buy, however as far as which model to get you must get one with a Battery/BBU/FlashCache if you want to actually use the hardware RAID features of the card and not use it in HBA mode. HBA mode is not supported for VMware (unless using vSAN)

[bernie.j]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

So HP/HPE are more their own custom ones, everyone else is OEM/ODM LSI/Broadcom. Long and short of it is no it does not matter what brand you buy, however as far as which model to get you must get one with a Battery/BBU/FlashCache if you want to actually use the hardware RAID features of the card and not use it in HBA mode. HBA mode is not supported for VMware (unless using vSAN)

Much appreciated!  No HP, insist on battery, got it.

 

... how backwards compatible are these?  E.g., let's say I get an LSI 9720.  I think that was a model I saw on ebay, but if it's accidentally fictional, doesn't change this thought experiment.   I get a specific model raid controller.   Everything is stable for years, but one sad fateful weekend in 2028, the raid controller ITSELF dies on me.  The 9720 is now an unobtainable antique, and I can only get the LSI model 9999 or newer because it's the year 2028.

Will the new replacement raid controller recognize my raid array that was built with the old one?

[leadeater]

5 minutes ago, bernie.j said:

... how backwards compatible are these?  E.g., let's say I get an LSI 9720.  I think that was a model I saw on ebay, but if it's accidentally fictional, doesn't change this thought experiment.   I get a specific model raid controller.

As long as it's an LSI and you're using just the standard RAID feature then you can import the array to any other LSI RAID card. The exceptions to this is generally only if you buy CacheCade and have SSD accelerate the array then you can only import to a similar licensed and configured RAID card.

 

Also forwards support is usually safer than backwards support but you'll often find most models of the same generation use the same RAID SoC chip anyway and wouldn't be an issue. I've not had problems but I'd hate to say 100% that if you created an array on a 9260-8i and tried to import it to a 9460/9560 that it would work, or the reverse direction.

 

Inter-generation between 92xx and 93xx should be fine.

[bernie.j]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

So HP/HPE are more their own custom ones, everyone else is OEM/ODM LSI/Broadcom. Long and short of it is no it does not matter what brand you buy, however as far as which model to get you must get one with a Battery/BBU/FlashCache if you want to actually use the hardware RAID features of the card and not use it in HBA mode. HBA mode is not supported for VMware (unless using vSAN)

Unrelated to my initial question,  but, I think you'd know the answers and they don't warrant their own thread:

 

One:

For absolute idiot-proof backups, in a build for my dad I envision using mirrored raid for the magnetic spinny disks for backups and bulk file storage.  For a raid 5, you obviously need a compatible raid controller and n-1 member disks.  But, to keep it simple, if I mirror using either windows disk management,  or Intel RST raid utilities: can you yank a member disk and attach it to a USB adapter like an external drive, and read all the files and folders like the raid array never existed? Or you'll still be shackled to needing the windows OS, or Intel utility,  to read anything. 

 

Two:

On my last build i have an Intel RST raid array.  Updated the bios to install win11.  The raid array went poof, but i still need to recover some files off of it.  It shows as rebuilding but no status or %, in the BIOS, so the member disks at least still register. 

Do I need to have faith and leave the computer just like this,  sitting in bios, for a day or two?  Or I need to boot into windows, and open the Intel rst utility from the OS to actively initiate or force the raid repair?

...The ROM utility used to come up with ctrl+I, but that no longer works for me and another forum member confirmed that the ROM utility is a thing of the past.

[bernie.j]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

As long as it's an LSI and you're using just the standard RAID feature then you can import the array to any other LSI RAID card. The exceptions to this is generally only if you buy CacheCade and have SSD accelerate the array then you can only import to a similar licensed and configured RAID card.

 

Also forwards support is usually safer than backwards support but you'll often find most models of the same generation use the same RAID SoC chip anyway and wouldn't be an issue. I've not had problems but I'd hate to say 100% that if you created an array on a 9260-8i and tried to import it to a 9460/9560 that it would work, or the reverse direction.

 

Inter-generation between 92xx and 93xx should be fine.

Thanks!  I've got enough to go off of.  Hadn't heard of cachecade or ssd accelerate,  but for a home computer, I'm also guessing they're probably foolishly overkill.  I'm guessing that's for server-grade with 8 or 12 commercial grade Intel ssds in an array?  I'll Google tomorrow:)  

 

I'll look for the newest in my budget, something pcie 3 rated.  I'm using mine for reliable backup and VMware datastores for a home lab range to muck about with, and I don't demand high speeds.  Just want trouble-free reliability and compatibility 

 

 

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, bernie.j said:

For absolute idiot-proof backups, in a build for my dad I envision using mirrored raid for the magnetic spinny disks for backups and bulk file storage.  For a raid 5, you obviously need a compatible raid controller and n-1 member disks.  But, to keep it simple, if I mirror using either windows disk management,  or Intel RST raid utilities: can you yank a member disk and attach it to a USB adapter like an external drive, and read all the files and folders like the raid array never existed? Or you'll still be shackled to needing the windows OS, or Intel utility,  to read anything. 

You are wanting to mirror two different RAID arrays? Just FYI this would not actually be a backup.

 

If you are using RAID 1 then yes you can pull a disk and read the data normally, even if you used the LSI RAID 1.

 

For backup you would be better off using Windows Backup along with Volume Shadow Copies (VSS) and set the VSS to use the backup disks to store the data changes. With previous versions you can just right click a file or folder and got to the previous versions tab and retrieve different versions of the file if you need to. If everything is lost then you can entirely recover using Windows Backup. 

 

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-backup-windows-10-automatically

 

Basically RAID is never backup no matter how you try and utilize it or configuration method you try, it's not for that and will not give you the protection a backup would.

 

14 minutes ago, bernie.j said:

On my last build i have an Intel RST raid array.  Updated the bios to install win11.  The raid array went poof, but i still need to recover some files off of it.  It shows as rebuilding but no status or %, in the BIOS, so the member disks at least still register. 

Do I need to have faith and leave the computer just like this,  sitting in bios, for a day or two?  Or I need to boot into windows, and open the Intel rst utility from the OS to actively initiate or force the raid repair?

...The ROM utility used to come up with ctrl+I, but that no longer works for me and another forum member confirmed that the ROM utility is a thing of the past.

If you can boot to the OS then boot to the OS, the software utilize is better than the BIOS utility. Also the mode likely reason your array dropped is the BIOS update changed you SATA port modes back to BIOS default and are no longer set to RAID, that would just be my guess unless you have already changed the mode back.

 

You'd really need to confirm the rebuild is actually active and happening.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, bernie.j said:

I'll look for the newest in my budget, something pcie 3 rated.  I'm using mine for reliable backup and VMware datastores for a home lab range to muck about with, and I don't demand high speeds.  Just want trouble-free reliability and compatibility 

Nice I have similar setups, I've got an LSI 9361-8i and a few IBM M5110 along with many LSI 9211-8i (in HBA mode/IT mode).

 

The LSI 9361 I also have CacheCade 2.0 and FastPath licenses, came with it used and for a great price so I couldn't not buy it haha. Yes CacheCade is for speeding up HDD arrays and it's not necessary in a home lab but it was cool and I wanted to try it. FastPath is for all SSD arrays to speed them up, normal RAID without FastPath actually limits the SSD array performance but it's not at all bad without it anyway.

 

This is why I like hardware RAID still, it's compatible with basically everything and also very easy to configure and use, with write-back cache also very high performance even with only a few HDDs in the array.