Question 1

How many drives can this product handle?

Accepted Answer

Broadcom, the maker of LSI, suggests up to 128 drives can be operated on the one card if sufficiently and appropriately spanned with appropriate connectors or server backplanes.

Reality suggests data transfer rates could be significantly reduced under those workloads.

My experience is as follows:

I use 1 card for every 8 sas/sata drives to reduce latency and increase server response times.  I also have the memory cashe battery on each controller installed in a server for mission critical data stored on my business servers (like database servers or file servers).

On workstations where I am processing lots of video or photo images I only use 2 drives per port (for a total of 4 drives per card) to maximize throughput.

I am not sure how many discs you are attempting to 'chain' to this controller but I hope this information might be helpful in some way.

Cheers.

Question 2

will this card work with windows server 2012 r2?

Accepted Answer

I see no reason that it wouldn't.  I installs before Windows when you start your computer.  I really like mine.  Works great.

Question 3

Will this work with Lenovo ThinkServer TD340 or do I need to purchase the card directly from Lenovo? It's the same make and model, just doesn't have the word Lenovo infront. Thanks

Accepted Answer

I see no reason it shouldn't be. Many Server OEM's use/sell this card under their own brand name (for example, Oracle calls this card SGX-SAS6-INT-R-Z).

The only catch may be if you have a service contract with them. Even though this is probably the exact same card that they sell as the RAID 700, installing this one might be considered an "unsupported configuration" by them.

Question 4

What is the difference between this card(9260-8i) and the 9261-8i?

Accepted Answer

These cards use 512MB DDR2 for cache memory, not NVRAM/Flash.

The ONLY difference is the location and orientation of the SAS connectors. the 9261's connectors protrude from the rear of the card, which makes it more suitable for low profile installations where there's no room for the top protruding connectors on this card.

Question 5

Will this card work with 8x 20TB drives?

Accepted Answer

The LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-8i card supports various RAID configurations including RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60, which indicates it can handle multiple drives. However, the specific compatibility with 8x 20TB drives is not explicitly mentioned in the provided product information.

Question 6

Can 2 of these cards be installed at the same time for a total of 16 independent drives?

Accepted Answer

I have 24 drives with this card.  I'm using a backplane.  Similar to the following.

Question 7

Does the 9260-8i have a MS Server 2016 driver? Intend to install it in an older Lenovo TS440 server running Server 2016 Essentials.

Accepted Answer

I don't remember installing a driver.  It just worked for me (Ubuntu Linux, Windows 7, Windows 10, Windows Server 2008/2012/2016/2019).  It has it's own bios rom which shows up everytime you boot or reboot.

Question 8

What is the largest size SSD drive that this card will support?

Accepted Answer

I don't know the largest size, but I can tell you I have 8 x 10TB SATA drives hooked to it, 4 per channel and it has no issues.

Questions & Answers