Recommended HBA for ZFS, contemporary

[Freddie Cash]

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 9:22 AM, Karl Denninger <karl at denninger.net> wrote:

> I'm still a fan of the LSI SAS-9211 cards along with (for higher
> density) a SAS port expander.  I've been extremely happy with this
> combination with one caveat -- most systems must boot from the actual
> card and not a port on the expander(s) you connect to it due to BIOS
> constraints.  They're also crazily cost-effective on-balance.
>
> In practice this means you have 4 ports on the base card available (2
> used for mirrored boot drives, 2 for other things) and the rest of the
> disks go on the expander, or you run more than one card.
>

​Alternatively, you can use the SATA/SAS ports on the motherboard for the
OS drives / to boot from, leaving all the ports on the HBAs for the data
disks.  :)  We also use the motherboard ports for the ZFS Log and Cache
devices, to separate the I/O channels.  Granted, this depends on the
motherboard having good quality SATA controllers, but most are good enough
for booting/loading programs from.


> The "smarter" the card the dumber the results tend to be when ZFS is in
> use, in my experience :)
>

​That's a great way to explain things.  Will have to remember that one!​

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com