Recommended HBA for ZFS, contemporary

[Mike]

On 8/22/2016 2:45 PM, Karl Denninger wrote:
> On 8/22/2016 13:38, Mike wrote:
>> On 8/22/2016 2:36 PM, Karl Denninger wrote:
>>> On 8/22/2016 13:34, Mike wrote:
>>>> On 8/22/2016 12:18 PM, Ben RUBSON wrote:
>>>>>> On 22 Aug 2016, at 18:14, InterNetX - Juergen Gotteswinter <juergen.gotteswinter at internetx.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> LSI SAS 2008 Based HBA, there are dozens of OEM available for Budget Prices
>>>>> With the IT firmware.
>>>> What's the significance of "IT firmware"?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It's (slightly) faster, provided you don't turn on any of the other
>>> stuff (which is always dumb with these adapters.)
>> Does it come with the HBA board(s), needs to be purchased or downloaded
>> separately?
> I've never gotten a card with it on it; I've always had to flash it. 
> Flashing these cards is a bit of a highwire act and can brick them, but
> I've never had it happen myself.  With that said my real reason to flash
> all of mine is to have all of them on the same firmware just so I can
> eliminate that as a possible contributor to problems if one starts
> acting up and the others are not.  It's more of a "good practice" thing
> than a need IMHO; it's not a lot of fun to try to run down a problem
> only to find out after much hair has been pulled out of one's own head
> that the problem is bad firmware on a board!

thx.