LSI LOGIC SAS9200-8E 8PORT Ext 6GB Sata+SAS Pcie 2.0

I just completed a ZFS on Linux deployment and am very impressed with the results. There is no better deal than a setup like this: very inexpensive with excellent performance. The components were a  Supermicro 847  45 drive 4U chasis, an  LSI 9200-8e  external SAS card, 2  Monoprice 2M SFF-8088  cables, 10  Hitachi Ultrastar 4TB 7K4000 SAS  enterprise drives, and a  SanDisk Extreme II 480GB SSD  (as high speed L2ARC cache and ZIL). Despite running raidz2 in an 8 drive (+2 hot spares) configuration, I have read speeds of 760 MB/s and write speeds of 330 MB/s (on a Dell PowerEdge R610). I have complete confidence that this performance will scale up to saturate the SAS link with read/write speeds of 1 GB/s as I add in more drives, matching performance of my other (much more expensive, commercially sourced) disk arrays. The content on these disk arrays is being served over NFS via  Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet  cards with read speeds to RAM on the clients that are in the 500 MB/s range. The entire setup cost less than 6k for 40TB raw capacity; it's beautiful. Total hardware setup time was about 4 hours one afternoon with two people.This SAS card is the linchpin of the data system. It ties the disk array(s) to the server, bringing in two external mini SAS 8088 connections into a system through PCI Express 2.0 x8. In my opinion, LSI has become the defacto standard in the field. Their products are extremely reliable, fault tolerant, and blazing fast, all at an extremely reasonable price. Their technical support is also top notch. I can get a hold of someone who actually knows the gritty technical details with just a simple phone call. It really helps give you confidence in their components and provides the peace of mind you need to know that your system is not just going to work, but squeeze out every last bit of speed and power possible (no performance left on the table). Their technical support also doesn't harass you by asking for your name, phone number, address, birthday, mother's maiden name, or social security number. It's so refreshing to just call, ask questions, and get useful answers. LSI is doing things very right. I applaud them on that.These cards natively support multipath SAS, so you can nearly double your data rate to around 10-11 GB/s to a single array assuming the array also has dual input controllers. It also will do automatic failover, so in case one link goes down for any reason, it gracefully uses just the other SAS link, completely transparent to the system's OS. This makes SAS hotplugging truly possible. Ah, SCSI working the way it should!Note that this is not a RAID card, it's only a SAS host bus adapter. This is appropriate for JBOD access and software raid configurations (like ZFS). If you want the card to also do hardware RAID, you have to purchase an LSI megaraid card instead. ZFS and software RAID are better anyhow, so I'd vote to go with this card.If there was one thing I had to complain about (though there really isn't much), is that you can't do hardware-level drive encryption with this card (sad). If you want hardware-level encryption, you have to go with the more expensive megaraid cards. But if you don't need hardware encryption (not under HIPAA regulations, etc), and all you need is access to your JBOD array, then this is the card you want. It's a steal.

--After some adjustments (the first oldest PC I tried it on wouldn't boot or get to BIOS with this in the video-card PCIE slot) I'm pretty happy with the LSI SAS9200-8E. When I moved it to my other 2.4GHz quad-core ZFS server with 6GB DDR2 RAM, this card enabled me to remove an older 4-port SataII pcie card and clean up my cable mess.--NOTE that this card needs to be *actively cooled* according to the manual/mfr instructions, so I bought a"Titan Adjustable Dual Fan PCI Slot VGA Cooler (TTC-SC07TZ)" to go with it, which is working well and keeping it from heating up too much. You lose a PCI slot, but not having hardware failure / overheating issues is a definite plus.--Also, make sure you get the right forward breakout cable if you're doing external miniSAS to SATA - I did the research and purchased a"CableCreation External Mini SAS 26pin (SFF-8088) Male to 4x 7Pin Sata Cable, 1.0M" to go with this card, which is also working well.--From my own experience, if you are using standard SATA drives I would recommend an inexpensive 5-bay external drive cage/rack to go with this setup:"Sans Digital HDDRACK5 5-Bay IDE/SATA Hard Drive Organizing Rack" -- it works with a standard PC power supply to power the rack fan and the SATA drives. If you are doing RAID10 (NOBODY should be doing RAID5 anymore - see "RAID5 stops working in 2009" article) then the 5th bay can hold an extra hotswap drive or a large (6TB? 8TB?) drive to backup the ZFS pool.--I am using a mix of NAS drives for ZFS RAID10 - so far I would recommend using WD RED 1TB, WD RED 2TB, and Seagate NAS 2TB, in pairs. Currently building a server with Seagate 4TB NAS but haven't tested those yet. YMMV, but I do a full read-write test on every drive before deploying it and I haven't drive issues in a while. (Registering your drives on the mfr's website is something I recommend - you can easily get the serial numbers from ' smartctl -a /dev/sdX '.)(Note, I am posting these hints to make it easier for those who are planning a project and want the whole package to Just Work. I've gone through a LOT of reviews and put together a hardware package that works for my needs - if I can make someone else's purchasing decisions easier, so much the better. HTH)

For my application, this SAS card is working just fine.I am using it on a FreeBSD/ZFS system and it is just the job. It is an HBA card - so there is no built in raid which is what you need if you are using ZFS. I have connected drives up to this card using a Chenbro SAS expander and that all works transparently. FreeBSD suports this card out of the box with no need to load extra drivers.The drives appear as /dev/da0p1 and so on rather than as /dev/ada0p1. That does not affect my setup as I use gpt labels to identify everything and they are independent of the actual /dev/xxxxxx name. It might affect you if you are trying to boot from usb as your root drive may change from da0 to (say) da4 if you have 4 disks on the controller and they get da0, da1, da2 & da3.That is not a big deal though and I am delighted with the card.Mine came in a retail box with a low profile bracket which is perfect for a 2U server or a small form faactor desktop case.

I got this for use with a new Quantum External Quantum LTO 7 Tape backup. for backing up large video and photo files. I just upgraded to Windows 10 pro. Windows 10 auto-provided excellent working drivers. Avago bought LSI Logic so you will find support for server operating systems on Avago site. I bought an External Mini SAS 26pin (SFF-8088) Male to 4x 7Pin Sata Cable so I can use the second 4 lane plug to control up to 4 sata drives. This is not a raid controller so operating system will see them as individual drives. (JBOD) . So far this seems like a really great deal. If you look at what SAS controllers cost you should appreciate getting a quality server grade SAS controller for under $60.