Recommended HBA for ZFS, contemporary

[Rich]

Well, the 2008 has been around for at least 7 years (if not longer, just
guessing from the oldest FW on LSI's site), and the 3008 came out only 3
years ago.

One of the reasons the 2008 is so well-known is that it, and its cousins
the 2[123]08, have ended up in a great many platforms and rebranded cards
by other people - on motherboards, Dell's "6Gbps SAS HBA" cards, [...]

They've been around so long that things like the 9220-8i (the infamous IBM
ServeRAID M1015) and friends, which aren't the 2008 but are close enough if
you squint, are dirt-cheap secondhand compared to the price of a new
9211-8i or 9311-8i.

The other difference is, there's not an obvious flaw in the 2008 and
friends that you need to buy the 3008 to fix. The LSI 1068E and friends
can't do drives over 2T, so you needed at least the 2008 for 3T drives.
There's no such incompatibility visible in the 2008/3008 distinction that
anyone's noticed yet.

Maybe when we get to another fun LBA count boundary (512 TB seems
promising), we'll see serious pressure. Otherwise, the 2008 is generally
"good enough" for the long tail of people that make up the majority of
online posts about things.

- Rich

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 3:20 AM, Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you Rich.
>
> I saw that the LSI 3008 can be put in IT mode, as with the well known 2008.
> Firmware & drivers seem to be well maintained, with a P13 release last
> month.
> 2 good points.
>
> However I did not found much much user feedback on it, nor recommandations.
> There should be no surprise compared to the 2008, but we never know...
>
> Ben
>
> > On 19 Oct 2016, at 08:24, Rich <rincebrain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > AFAIK, the only two vendors in the space with 12Gb HBAs are PMC-Sierra
> and
> > LSI/Avago.
> >
> > I can attest that the LSI 12Gb HBAs generally work as intended, though I
> > can't attest to that specifically on FreeBSD.
> >
> > When I last looked at this, PMC's 12Gb HBAs weren't out yet, so I have no
> > personal anecdata for you.
> >
> > - Rich
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 2:20 AM, Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Any feedback ?
> >>
> >> Many thanks !
> >>
> >> Ben
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 13 Oct 2016, at 10:53, Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> What would you recommend for those who want a 12Gb/s SAS HBA ?
> >>> LSI 3008 ?
> >>> As reliable as LSI 2008 ?
> >>>
> >>> Thank you !
> >>>
> >>> Ben
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> 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.
> >>>>
> >>>> Am 22.08.2016 um 18:08 schrieb Dmitry Morozovsky:
> >>>>> Dear colleagues,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> what is the list of preferred disk controllers to build storage
> >> server, say
> >>>>> 12-24 amd more 3.5" disks?  Not too much IOPS are expected, and some
> >> could be
> >>>>> mitigated with L2ARC with only metadata cached, I suppose.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Two usage schemes are file server for big files (mostly cold storage)
> >> and
> >>>>> backup/surveillance server (constant stream writes, occasional random
> >> reads)
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Any hints? Thanks!
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