Question 1

So i can plug 2 SATA cables into this? Or SAS?

Accepted Answer

There are no SATA ports on this card. You use a cable like NewEgg Item Number N82E1 6 8 1 6 1 1 5 0 6 4 for basic connections (sorry for the spaces but NewEgg apparently doesn't want their own item numbers in answers so this is the first and only question I will help with. There's no point in trying if I can't give you specific information).
This cable breaks out into 4 SATA ports you then connect directly to your drives. The card has 2 ports for this cable so you can directly attach 8 SATA drives.

Question 2

Are there drivers for this card for Windows 10?

Accepted Answer

Yes, they are included in Windows 10 and downloadable from Avagos website.

Question 3

as the card only supports 2 raid sets, can I run more than one card in a system?

Accepted Answer

The card supports 2 x 4 SATA fanout cables directly, so it can handle up to 8 attached devices.  You can run multiple cards, but a better option is to run a SAS expander off one of the ports, which allows the port to handle many more than 4 disks.  There are a number of these available; most have 6 ports so you have 1 on the adapter (4 disks), 1 connected a port on the expander, and then the expander has 5 open for drives.  This gives you up to 24 SATA devices.

Question 4

Is this considered a hardware RAID card?

Accepted Answer

No.  It is a SAS/SATA HBA; that is, host-based adapter.  It has NO local cache and while it does handle "RAID" internally it is not going to be ideal for that sort of thing.  Note that it is compatible with SAS expanders, which means that it is quite capable of controlling dozens of disks (through said expanders), not just the 8 it supports on the two ports it comes with.

This card is best used with operating systems that support their own redundancy at the filesystem level such as ZFS on FreeBSD.

Question 5

Am I correct in assuming this card will run on a server such as unraid with JBOD?

Accepted Answer

It is a raid controller. You would have to flash the firmware from raid mode to IT mode to use it in unraid.

Question 6

will this card support unraid OS?

Accepted Answer

Unfortunately the card I received was counterfeit so I was unable to use it. A genuine LSI card will work with all OS Platforms.  I have other genuine LSI cards and they do work with unraid. You should go to Broadcom and unraid for the firmware that you need as the newest one is not always the one that works.

Question 7

How do you know if a drive has failed in your RAID? Does it do a warning popup in windows?

Accepted Answer

When you go with your normal boot before Windows starts the LSI software shows your drives status for those  disks attached to the card, This pause with  "CTR. + C" command lets you perform configuration. It's just like an additional controller. By the way the card does everything promised and LSI support is great.

Question 8

The LSI product brief specifies 200 LFM of airflow for this card to keep it cool. In practice, what is required to keep this card cool in a ZFS server?

The setup in question may or may not be in a server grade chassis, but it will not be set up to channel huge amounts of air through it.

Accepted Answer

I have this card in a server with a cross-flow fan setup that moves a fair bit -- but not an extreme -- amount of air through the chassis.  I've had no problems with it overheating in my environment.....  As the card itself does not have a fan mounted on it server chassis airflow is all it has for cooling....

Question 9

For all those running ZFS on Linux or FreeNAS. I'm looking to get this card and an enclosure. My concern is that the card doesn't support drive failure or activity LEDs. Is this something you all have run into/have been able to over come?

Thanks

Accepted Answer

I would need to double-check exactly how we're running this card, but I'm nearly 100% certain that we have functioning activity LEDs.  I haven't tested this exact card for failure behavior, but older models from LSI worked fine.  I know this card will detect drive removal/insertion without any problems.

I believe that FreeNAS uses partition uuids instead of /dev/da5p1 etc, which is something you definitely want to handle drive in/out/relocate in FreeBSD, or it won't pick up the altered drive without a pool offline/online.

Question 10

This is probably a stupid question, but I have to ask.

It says this supports up to 256 Devices...

How exactly would I hook up 256 devices to this?  Just if i wanted to?

The only way i can think of (not much experience with SAS) is SAS -> 4 Sata -> each Sata -> 5 port Sata port multipliers, and repeat until 256 devices?

Or is there somthing else out there that lets you hook up many drives 2 one of these?

Accepted Answer

Correct.  You run chained SAS expanders on each of the two ports.  A SAS expander typically has two "input" ports and can be chained through -- you have two channels on the board to initiate those chains from.

You'll run out of PCI I/O bandwidth long before you get to that many devices though if you actually try to do this.

Questions & Answers