Hello Everyone,
I’d like to compile a list of HBAs that are used, trusted and perhaps recommended by our community. If you are using Rockstor with a HBA, please reply with information such as the make and model, link to the product page, details of your build and experience so far… feel free to share as much/little as you want to.
I use an LSI 9211-8i (now Avago/Broadcom; same as IBM ServeRAID M1015) in IT-mode with 4x 2TB drives. Working flawlessly in RAID10 for months. 
The IBM ServeRAID M1015 is more or less an “insider’s tip”. It’s available for less than 100$ and has just to be flashed with the original LSI/Avago firmware and it’s then a real Avago SAS 9211-8i. Realiable HBA for liitle money 
I have both LSI 9207-8i, and Areca arc 1261ML (currently not in server due to driver issues, cannot figure out how to install on the new kernel).
Areca card - great performance in JBOD mode, but cannot get SMART to work without driver.
LSI 9207-8i - Bit slower performance, but work right out of box.
Only tested Raid 5
Link to areca card: http://www.scsi4me.com/areca-arc-1261ml.html
Will be mounted in JBOD mode, as drives can utilize onboard 2Gb cache, but btrfs still have 100% control over drives.
cepth did a review with a similar card: http://ceph.com/community/ceph-performance-part-2-write-throughput-without-ssd-journals/
Hi @suman, as you know I’m running Rockstor over Proxmox, so everything is virtual.
Actually running without problems over LSI 53C895A (an old one, discontinued, default over Proxmox)
If you want we can go testing over LSI 53C810, MegaRAID SAS8708EM2 and obviously Virtio
Flyer/Mirko
I’m using a IBM ServeRAID M1015 and to be more specific it’s connected to a SuperMicro SAS2-847EL1 backplane.
All works perfectly.
I’ve got three one LSI SAS9200-8e that works perfectly and then two cheap ones the PCIe x1 v2.0 iocrest SI-PEX40064 (marvell 88SE9215) and a PCI semlos something (SIL-3114)
The LSI works great it is faster than the expander (haven’t figured out the brand of it yet) in the Mr. Rackables JBOD chassis it is hooked to.
The two cheap ones are on the same array and work better than expected. I’m only using two ports on the semlos PCI based one though. When using RAID 10/5/6 on them they can saturate a 1Gbe link no problem.
When in a RAID 1 though they can’t seem to hit more than 60MB/s with brief forays into the 80MB/s range.
LSI SAS 9207-8i with breakout cables to 2x 4-port SATA3 hotswap backplanes (in cages: Chenbro 84H210710-090).
All in a Chenbro SR107 and currently driving 2x WD Red Pro 6Tb (rev: WD6002FFWX) per cage. So 24TB organized into 2x 6TB RAID1 pools.
[root@storageserver ~]# dmesg | grep mpt2sas [ 1.005273] mpt2sas_cm0: 64 BIT PCI BUS DMA ADDRESSING SUPPORTED, total mem (32874904 kB) [ 1.024254] mpt2sas_cm0: MSI-X vectors supported: 16, no of cores: 8, max_msix_vectors: -1 [ 1.024524] mpt2sas0-msix0: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 136 [ 1.024526] mpt2sas0-msix1: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 137 [ 1.024527] mpt2sas0-msix2: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 138 [ 1.024528] mpt2sas0-msix3: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 139 [ 1.024529] mpt2sas0-msix4: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 140 [ 1.024530] mpt2sas0-msix5: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 141 [ 1.024531] mpt2sas0-msix6: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 142 [ 1.024531] mpt2sas0-msix7: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 143 [ 1.024533] mpt2sas_cm0: iomem(0x00000000de240000), mapped(0xffffc900036e0000), size(65536) [ 1.024534] mpt2sas_cm0: ioport(0x000000000000e000), size(256) [ 1.029908] mpt2sas_cm0: sending message unit reset !! [ 1.031237] mpt2sas_cm0: message unit reset: SUCCESS [ 1.086284] mpt2sas_cm0: Allocated physical memory: size(17329 kB) [ 1.086287] mpt2sas_cm0: Current Controller Queue Depth(9979),Max Controller Queue Depth(10240) [ 1.086288] mpt2sas_cm0: Scatter Gather Elements per IO(128) [ 1.095380] mpt2sas_cm0: LSISAS2308: FWVersion(20.00.07.00), ChipRevision(0x05), BiosVersion(07.39.02.00) [ 1.095383] mpt2sas_cm0: Protocol=( [ 1.095746] mpt2sas_cm0: sending port enable !! [ 3.702095] mpt2sas_cm0: host_add: handle(0x0001), sas_addr(0x500605b009cf9f00), phys(8) [ 8.830222] mpt2sas_cm0: port enable: SUCCESS
Its flashed with IT mode FW. I’m not feeling too sure about the ‘mpt’ driver though; read that one should be used for IR mode, and ‘mps’ is more applicable.