Recommendation for LSI HBA card

[thechewywun]

I'm looking for recommendations for an LSI HBA card that will fit in my Dell R310.

Current setup

• Dell PowerEdge R310
• Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3430 @ 2.40GHz
• Perc S300 (not in use but still in the case)
• 16 GB of ECC 1333MHz RAM
• (4) 1TB drives
• TrueNAS-SCALE-22.12.3.2
• OS - Samsung 870 SSD

I'm looking for recommendations for an LSI HBA card that would work for this system. This is much older hardware but this is not going to be a production NAS, just home backup and I already owned the server so it seemed a natural repurposing of the hardware.

Currently the BIOS SATA controller only offers me ATA mode, or RAID mode, no AHCI mode/options

The current BIOS settings are setup for UEFI and as it stands now, I can boot into the system no problem, just can't create a pool since the drives are not available.


I'm good with eBay or any other outlet if you want to suggest another spot.

 

[sretalla]

Currently the BIOS SATA controller only offers me ATA mode, or RAID mode, no AHCI mode/options

It probably pre-dates AHCI.

ATA would be the option to select if you need to.

You're probably best to go with flashing a Dell PERC H310 since it's going to be in a Dell Server, so look for one of those on eBay.

I see The Art of Server has them at basically double the price of others available, but they pre-flash them and I see others in the forum reporting they are always good.

I don't see a problem going for the ~$30 ones though either.

 

[thechewywun]

It probably pre-dates AHCI.

ATA would be the option to select if you need to.

You're probably best to go with flashing a Dell PERC H310 since it's going to be in a Dell Server, so look for one of those on eBay.

I see The Art of Server has them at basically double the price of others available, but they pre-flash them and I see others in the forum reporting they are always good.

I don't see a problem going for the ~$30 ones though either.

I'm fine with paying more if it will save me flashing the firmware where it is possible to have issues, really a no brainer there, I'll have a look for those.

Would this work?

Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA w/ LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID | eBay

I have fully tested them using all 8 SAS lanes. I've used ZFS for many years. I'm familiar with ZFS on Linux, FreeNAS, and many of the technologies commonly used by other enthusiasts. They have been cross-flashed to Avago / LSI 9211-8i IT (Initiator Target) firmware version P20 (specifically...

www.ebay.com

 

[sretalla]

Would this work?

Looks like the right thing... maybe confirm what kind of slots you have in that server before pulling the trigger.

If you have PCIe slots that can take a card like that, you should be OK

 

[sretalla]

Yes, definitely look into that:

See the Integrated Storage Controller section here:

https://dl.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_poweredge/poweredge-r310_owner's%20manual_en-us.pdf

 

[sretalla]

From what I can see in the SAS backplane section, the card from eBay should be able to connect to the backplane with the right cable.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating things if your S300 was already connecting to the backplane, should just be a straight swap out with the H310.

 

[thechewywun]

There's 2 risers that were added (picked this up used a while back). Not sure which PCI(e) version they are, trying to look it up via the service tag on the Dell site but it's such an older server, I'm not finding much in the actual documentation. Yes, the S300 was connected up via 90 degree port.

I'll grab a picture of it when I get a chance.

 

[thechewywun]

Ok, thank you for that manual link, according to the manual the riser supports X8 and X16 Gen 2 and that particular card is Gen 2 so I think it should work. Next will be to find cables that will work.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

With the Art of Server (AoS) you know you're not getting a clone, something with odd internal settings, missing BIOS, etc., you're going to get a solid card that works with TrueNAS out of the box. That's potentially hours of your time saved and a bunch of frustration avoided. (I hacked my way through some messed-up cards and it can be a royal pain.)

The controller has 2 SFF-8087 connectors, and I've several posts with links to where I get different cables depending on usage, and they're quite affordable. So far reliability is 100%, but I'm really careful with them.

 

[thechewywun]

Ok, so the card is on it's way and I'm looking for the cables. @WI_Hedgehog I couldn't find exactly the posts you mentioned the cables but I'll keep looking

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Ok, so the card is on it's way and I'm looking for the cables. @WI_Hedgehog I couldn't find exactly the posts you mentioned the cables but I'll keep looking

Look in my signature, click on the server, go to the detailed build.

UPDATE: Oops, not everything is listed there. Let me know what you're going from-to (in reasonable detail like SFF-8087 to SATA) and I'll let you know. (I have quite a few cables, the server is on the 4th? upgrade.)

 

[thechewywun]

Ok, so thanks to Art of Server I found the cable I needed is a MINI SAS cable Dell p/n 0N262J. And I decided to buy a lottery ticket because the IT director I worked for 5 years ago actually had one of these that he pulled from an old server they scrapped. It fit perfectly and the drives showed up right away. I am now fully up and running and have created my pool and now the only slightly annoying thing is the server's fans are staying 100 percent cranked up so I'm going to have to figure out if there's a way to tap in and control the fan speed.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

the server's fans are staying 100 percent cranked up so I'm going to have to figure out if there's a way to tap in and control the fan speed.

There are several threads and some utilities on that. I have a splitter and controller to proportion speeds between sets of fans.

Noctua NA-FC1, 4-Pin PWM Fan Controller​