This video was a great add-on to the "Comparing HBA IT mode SAS controllers | 2020 Edition" video. And I rewatched the "Don't Be AFRAID" video a few times more today, too. It's really one of the best. It helped me a LOT. I shared this video and your channel with coworkers who, like me, look for great content helping us with our home labs. Hope that helps!
One small detail about the LSI not mentioned, is the 4 pin header for adding HDD activity LED’s. There’s a 3.3V and ground for each port. I know it’s mostly cosmetic, but I have a hard time seeing the multitude of board mounted LED’s, since my card is near the bottom of the MB. it just adds an easy to see diagnostic for each port. It’s the only card I’ve seen those headers on.
Unfortunately I encountered that fuse problem mentioned in point 6. Ordered and used since August 2022. My machine was down since early November 2022 and yesterday wanted to turn it on and the card gave no life. Slotted it in another PCIE, in a new machine but nothing. Sadly I do not have the capability to fix this fuse so no other choice to get a new one. Ordered the same one simply because I knew it worked without a hitch on my Asus PRIME Z690M running Unraid. Don't want to deal with the Dell one potentially not working on it. Keep up the good work Art of Server!
I'm sorry to hear that. The fuse is a very cheap component and is easily replaced. See if you can find a local electronics repair shop and they can probably take care of it in about 10 minutes.
I chose the Fujitsu RAID Controller D2607, with the same controller, the LSI SAS2008. I found it on a website where the different cards were collected by the LSI chipset. It's on its way to me, hope it will work in my TrueNAS Core with a Gigabyte motherboard.
I also recently added another SAS controller to replace one that died and I managed to flash it to IT mode. It is working great and was a good purchase, much cheaper than many others.
For that many drives, either use multiple -8i cards or use a SAS expander. For SAS expander setups, watch some of the videos in this playlist: ua-cam.com/play/PL28eVGz5vFQ-pn6eFBC6AmfbL3yPcBDV7.html If budget is no concern, and you have limited PCIe slots, consider the 9201-16i, 9300-16i, 9305-24i, 9400-16i as alternatives. Those cards are pricey, and other than 9201-16i, run hot too. Might want to checkout the 2020 HBA comparison video I talked about at the start of this video too.
@@ArtofServer thank you for the recommendations. I will definitely look into the videos and cards. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
I bought a 9211 but not from you - if I'd seen this video first I would have gone to your store. Noted for next time. Thanks for making content like this. Do you think an LSI 9211 8i needs a fan attached to the card? I have an Antec P101 which has 3 front-facing fans which should blow across the entire motherboard, but I'm concerned about the hard drive cages blocking some of the air. I'm assuming if the HBA overheats, I'll get some type of warning/error, rather than permanently damaging my card (or worse, introducing errors into my data)?
I do recommend, as per Broadcom's documenation, that at least some airflow is blowing over the heatsink of a 9211-8i card. Doesn't have to be massive airflow, even a case fan blowing on GPU and PCIe cards would do. What I've observed in overheat situations is that the card will crash, and the driver software will attempt to restart the card. Usually it can successfully restart it, but then crash again until the cooling situation is resolved. Most of the time, it can sustain this pattern for some time, but I have heard of cases where it eventually just won't restart again.
@@ArtofServer thanks, I slapped a 40mm fan on top of the heat sink with zipties, then plugged the fan into one of the sys fan headers and set it to run at 50%. The heatsink is cool to the touch!
I was looking at the LSI card and have a question, I notice it's pci-e 2, how would that effect the speed of 8 spinning drives, would you still get full speeds? If you do would it still potentially be an issue in the future if I go to ssd?
Hello, I have an LSI 9211-8i card, and unfortunately, I'm receiving checksum errors on the drives connected to it in my TrueNAS system. I'm using it passed through as PCI passthrough in Proxmox, with TrueNAS running on a VM. Would replacing the HBA card with something like a Perc 310 potentially solve my problem? The drives have been tested and are definitely functional.
checksum errors where? like checksum errors on the SATA drives SMART attribute 199 (UDMA CRC)? or on PCIe bus? Usually, UDMA CRC errors are due to poor SAS connections (not properly inserted cables) or a bad cable. If it is PCIe bus side, there's a lot of potential reasons, one of them being damage to the PCIe lanes on the card, but could also be defective PCIe slot or motherboard.
@@ArtofServer the errors appear in the drives tab in truenas. How can I check what type of errors these are? The motherboard is definitely functional, because I tried to change the motherboard and the errors also occur on another one. the cable and socket do not appear to be damaged.
One thing I've heard repeated a few times is the H310 has a lower device limit (~32 drives), compared to the LSI card, when used with an expander. I've read the specs a while ago and from memory it seems to only talk about the limit in raid mode. Could you confirm if there is any difference (in IT mode), and what those limits are? Cheers :)
The number of addressable drives is determined by the lowest common denominator between what the hardware can support and what the firmware can support. The LSI SAS2008 chip being the same in the H310 vs 9201-8i, then the difference is likely in the firmware. That said, if you put LSI IT mode firmware (from the 9201-8i) on the H310 card, I think you will have the same limit as the 9201-8i. The Dell firmware may have a different limit, because I know the Dell firmware also puts an artificial limit on the queue depth. It might have been Dell's way to differentiate the H310 from their higher end cards to justify the price differential.
Is there a huge difference in performance from the 9200 series card, which is pcie 2.0, versus the 9300 series in pcie 3.0? I'm spec'ing out an AM4 build for the sole purpose of having a pcie 3.0 x8 slot, but it's definitely more costly than AM3 or 2 (like using an Asrock x470d4u mobo). But those previous gens only go up to pcie 2. Sorry for all the numbers in the question, but if anyone has an answer I'd really appreciate it. It's a question of running 8 drives in zfs at a reasonable speed despite the 6gb cap in the 9200 series card.
Depends on what drives you're using. SAS2008 is usually enough for most HDD storage systems, but not SSDs. For SSDs, I would use SAS2308 or newer and depends on your SSDs? (SATA-3, SAS-2, or SAS-3) Watch this video for more guidance: ua-cam.com/video/Q4e8kmuGm6o/v-deo.html
Im trying to make a truenas build and what would be the Best Buy and future proof cuz I hear I have to pass my hdds? I’ve always use the connectors on a motherboard so this is completely new to me
I would not worry about "future proofing" if your NAS is mostly HDDs. The future of storage is going to be NVMe, but for large capacity storage, HDD is still king for cost per terabyte. HDD is old technology and anything you get today is mostly going to future proof that already. If you want to future proof for NVMe, you can't do that with SAS technology anyway - just get a motherboard with lots of PCIe lanes instead. Watch this video: ua-cam.com/video/hTbKzQZk21w/v-deo.html and choose what works best for your current HDD setup and system.
I have a problem you might be able to give me an answer on given your use of and knowledge of lsi hba. I have a dell poweredge t310 I'm trying to add a lsi 9201-16e card to. I don't ever see a post/bios screen to press control c to enter. Is it even actually possible to use this card in the dell t310? If so how?
If your 9201-16e card doesn't have the LSI BIOS or UEFI ROM installed, then you will not see the "ctrl-c" option during POST. Alternatively, if your motherboard is configured to disable the OpROM, or "Option ROM" for the PCIe slot of the 9201-16e card, that would also result in the same effect.
@@ArtofServer a bit of mixed bag here. But, used my main windows desktop to install the card, cli update the bios and firmware to latest needed. Dell t310 far as I can tell will not ever see this on post or in the bios outside on the irq assignment list. But since I'm running unraid and it did indeed sees and loads the right drivers, uses it just fine. Also, because it happened to me, make sure the mini SAS cable is plugged all the way in. I tried using your idea.. Looked everywhere in every option. It did have the option rom under Broadcom network boot area. But had nothing to do with the add in card. Maybe someone will find this info useful. Thank you.
yes, of course it is possible. IR firmware is very simple, just erase the IT firmware, and flash the IR firmware. MegaRAID firmware is much more difficult though. You need to erase firmware and change the SBR too before flashing the MegaRAID firmware.
@DOESNTCOMPUTE ( UCLJshTJq1IRNKswaEaiz9bw ) told me to watch this video and indeed it was very good; I subscribed to the channel as several video links he sent were great. TY for the help with my Dell RAID cards.
Just received an LSI 9211 from your store. Shipping was fast and the card works as expected.
Thank you for choosing to support my store! :-)
This video was a great add-on to the "Comparing HBA IT mode SAS controllers | 2020 Edition" video. And I rewatched the "Don't Be AFRAID" video a few times more today, too. It's really one of the best. It helped me a LOT.
I shared this video and your channel with coworkers who, like me, look for great content helping us with our home labs. Hope that helps!
Glad it was helpful! Thank you for sharing my vids with your co-workers!
As always - Thank you for sharing your experiences and expertise. Your videos have helped greatly over the years.
Glad to help
Was purchased Intel X520-DA2 + HBA LSI 9201-8i Thanks for the explanations
Glad I could help. Thank you for the support! :-)
Thanks for the video Patrick, I have been running 3 LSI boards on Supermicro servers for about 6 years with no failures
I'm not Patrick, but I'm glad to hear your LSI controllers have been very reliable! Thank you for watching! :-)
@@ArtofServer My apologies, I thought your name was Patrick. Love your videos !
One small detail about the LSI not mentioned, is the 4 pin header for adding HDD activity LED’s. There’s a 3.3V and ground for each port. I know it’s mostly cosmetic, but I have a hard time seeing the multitude of board mounted LED’s, since my card is near the bottom of the MB. it just adds an easy to see diagnostic for each port. It’s the only card I’ve seen those headers on.
That's a good point. I know of some friends who use that to connect to LEDs on the front panel. Thanks for pointing that out! :-)
Unfortunately I encountered that fuse problem mentioned in point 6. Ordered and used since August 2022. My machine was down since early November 2022 and yesterday wanted to turn it on and the card gave no life. Slotted it in another PCIE, in a new machine but nothing.
Sadly I do not have the capability to fix this fuse so no other choice to get a new one. Ordered the same one simply because I knew it worked without a hitch on my Asus PRIME Z690M running Unraid. Don't want to deal with the Dell one potentially not working on it.
Keep up the good work Art of Server!
I'm sorry to hear that. The fuse is a very cheap component and is easily replaced. See if you can find a local electronics repair shop and they can probably take care of it in about 10 minutes.
Yay!!! More content! Such a good explanation. Will help many unraid and truenas users!
I hope so!
Excellent, informative video. Thanks for posting, keep the awsome videos coming!
Thanks, will do!
I chose the Fujitsu RAID Controller D2607, with the same controller, the LSI SAS2008. I found it on a website where the different cards were collected by the LSI chipset.
It's on its way to me, hope it will work in my TrueNAS Core with a Gigabyte motherboard.
I hope so too!
I also recently added another SAS controller to replace one that died and I managed to flash it to IT mode. It is working great and was a good purchase, much cheaper than many others.
Thanks, i am about to "pull the trigger" on a build. Ive have been referring to your vids for info.
Glad to know my vids have been helpful! :-)
This is a fantastic video. Thank you so much for going out of your way to explain.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks, will do!
What an excellent analysis. Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure!
Quality information as always. Thank you for sharing!! 🙏
My pleasure!
This was very helpful, thank you.
You're welcome!
This is very good information. Thank you for sharing this.
Glad it was helpful!
Much needed guide, big thanks.
Glad it helped
Linus Tech Tips needs to hire this guy!!
Thanks for watching!
Love the video. I really like the comparisons. Quick question tho, what type of card would be good for braking out to 16 or 24 drives for UnRaid?
For that many drives, either use multiple -8i cards or use a SAS expander. For SAS expander setups, watch some of the videos in this playlist:
ua-cam.com/play/PL28eVGz5vFQ-pn6eFBC6AmfbL3yPcBDV7.html
If budget is no concern, and you have limited PCIe slots, consider the 9201-16i, 9300-16i, 9305-24i, 9400-16i as alternatives. Those cards are pricey, and other than 9201-16i, run hot too.
Might want to checkout the 2020 HBA comparison video I talked about at the start of this video too.
@@ArtofServer thank you for the recommendations. I will definitely look into the videos and cards. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
I bought a 9211 but not from you - if I'd seen this video first I would have gone to your store. Noted for next time.
Thanks for making content like this. Do you think an LSI 9211 8i needs a fan attached to the card? I have an Antec P101 which has 3 front-facing fans which should blow across the entire motherboard, but I'm concerned about the hard drive cages blocking some of the air.
I'm assuming if the HBA overheats, I'll get some type of warning/error, rather than permanently damaging my card (or worse, introducing errors into my data)?
I do recommend, as per Broadcom's documenation, that at least some airflow is blowing over the heatsink of a 9211-8i card. Doesn't have to be massive airflow, even a case fan blowing on GPU and PCIe cards would do.
What I've observed in overheat situations is that the card will crash, and the driver software will attempt to restart the card. Usually it can successfully restart it, but then crash again until the cooling situation is resolved. Most of the time, it can sustain this pattern for some time, but I have heard of cases where it eventually just won't restart again.
@@ArtofServer thanks for the generosity of your time!
@@ArtofServer thanks, I slapped a 40mm fan on top of the heat sink with zipties, then plugged the fan into one of the sys fan headers and set it to run at 50%. The heatsink is cool to the touch!
😊Thanks for sharing
My pleasure 😊
I was looking at the LSI card and have a question, I notice it's pci-e 2, how would that effect the speed of 8 spinning drives, would you still get full speeds? If you do would it still potentially be an issue in the future if I go to ssd?
you should probably watch this video: ua-cam.com/video/Q4e8kmuGm6o/v-deo.html
Hello, I have an LSI 9211-8i card, and unfortunately, I'm receiving checksum errors on the drives connected to it in my TrueNAS system. I'm using it passed through as PCI passthrough in Proxmox, with TrueNAS running on a VM. Would replacing the HBA card with something like a Perc 310 potentially solve my problem? The drives have been tested and are definitely functional.
checksum errors where? like checksum errors on the SATA drives SMART attribute 199 (UDMA CRC)? or on PCIe bus? Usually, UDMA CRC errors are due to poor SAS connections (not properly inserted cables) or a bad cable. If it is PCIe bus side, there's a lot of potential reasons, one of them being damage to the PCIe lanes on the card, but could also be defective PCIe slot or motherboard.
@@ArtofServer the errors appear in the drives tab in truenas. How can I check what type of errors these are? The motherboard is definitely functional, because I tried to change the motherboard and the errors also occur on another one. the cable and socket do not appear to be damaged.
One thing I've heard repeated a few times is the H310 has a lower device limit (~32 drives), compared to the LSI card, when used with an expander.
I've read the specs a while ago and from memory it seems to only talk about the limit in raid mode.
Could you confirm if there is any difference (in IT mode), and what those limits are?
Cheers :)
The number of addressable drives is determined by the lowest common denominator between what the hardware can support and what the firmware can support. The LSI SAS2008 chip being the same in the H310 vs 9201-8i, then the difference is likely in the firmware. That said, if you put LSI IT mode firmware (from the 9201-8i) on the H310 card, I think you will have the same limit as the 9201-8i. The Dell firmware may have a different limit, because I know the Dell firmware also puts an artificial limit on the queue depth. It might have been Dell's way to differentiate the H310 from their higher end cards to justify the price differential.
I bought a 9201 to put in a Fujitsu server we use only for testing hard drives, it had a raid card and it was worse
The card works in the integrated slot too (fujitsu rx300 s7 and s8
Thanks for sharing!
Is there a huge difference in performance from the 9200 series card, which is pcie 2.0, versus the 9300 series in pcie 3.0?
I'm spec'ing out an AM4 build for the sole purpose of having a pcie 3.0 x8 slot, but it's definitely more costly than AM3 or 2 (like using an Asrock x470d4u mobo). But those previous gens only go up to pcie 2.
Sorry for all the numbers in the question, but if anyone has an answer I'd really appreciate it. It's a question of running 8 drives in zfs at a reasonable speed despite the 6gb cap in the 9200 series card.
Depends on what drives you're using. SAS2008 is usually enough for most HDD storage systems, but not SSDs. For SSDs, I would use SAS2308 or newer and depends on your SSDs? (SATA-3, SAS-2, or SAS-3)
Watch this video for more guidance: ua-cam.com/video/Q4e8kmuGm6o/v-deo.html
@@ArtofServer Awesome! Thanks for the response
Im trying to make a truenas build and what would be the Best Buy and future proof cuz I hear I have to pass my hdds? I’ve always use the connectors on a motherboard so this is completely new to me
I would not worry about "future proofing" if your NAS is mostly HDDs. The future of storage is going to be NVMe, but for large capacity storage, HDD is still king for cost per terabyte. HDD is old technology and anything you get today is mostly going to future proof that already. If you want to future proof for NVMe, you can't do that with SAS technology anyway - just get a motherboard with lots of PCIe lanes instead.
Watch this video: ua-cam.com/video/hTbKzQZk21w/v-deo.html
and choose what works best for your current HDD setup and system.
@@ArtofServer is a jab needed if I want to gym truenas everyone says it’s needed
I have a problem you might be able to give me an answer on given your use of and knowledge of lsi hba. I have a dell poweredge t310 I'm trying to add a lsi 9201-16e card to. I don't ever see a post/bios screen to press control c to enter. Is it even actually possible to use this card in the dell t310? If so how?
If your 9201-16e card doesn't have the LSI BIOS or UEFI ROM installed, then you will not see the "ctrl-c" option during POST. Alternatively, if your motherboard is configured to disable the OpROM, or "Option ROM" for the PCIe slot of the 9201-16e card, that would also result in the same effect.
@@ArtofServer a bit of mixed bag here. But, used my main windows desktop to install the card, cli update the bios and firmware to latest needed.
Dell t310 far as I can tell will not ever see this on post or in the bios outside on the irq assignment list.
But since I'm running unraid and it did indeed sees and loads the right drivers, uses it just fine.
Also, because it happened to me, make sure the mini SAS cable is plugged all the way in.
I tried using your idea.. Looked everywhere in every option. It did have the option rom under Broadcom network boot area. But had nothing to do with the add in card.
Maybe someone will find this info useful. Thank you.
How about compared to the Fujitsu?
That's a good question. Content for future video. I find the Fujitsu/Siemens design to be much simpler and elegant.
Have you ever seen a Dell H310 catch fire? Specifically from the PCIe slot power pins?
No, I have not.
Is IT mode revertable? Can i flash again raid original firmware? Is the 9211 a raid card? Or hba
yes, of course it is possible. IR firmware is very simple, just erase the IT firmware, and flash the IR firmware. MegaRAID firmware is much more difficult though. You need to erase firmware and change the SBR too before flashing the MegaRAID firmware.
Do you by any chance know what is the maximum disk size these cards can handle in IT mode? Can it handle new 18 TB HDDs for example?
There's basically no practical limit on drive size. If you want to learn more, watch this video: ua-cam.com/video/u55vIGMzzKw/v-deo.html
@@ArtofServer Thanks. Great video and explanation.
proxmox sees LSI, should I add a PCI device to the hardware?
not sure what you mean?
So it looks like Dell produce better quality cards than LSI themselves, but LSI have more flashy lights on 😂🤣
LOL! sums it up nicely! :-)
Like rgbs
@DOESNTCOMPUTE ( UCLJshTJq1IRNKswaEaiz9bw ) told me to watch this video and indeed it was very good; I subscribed to the channel as several video links he sent were great. TY for the help with my Dell RAID cards.
Ya goof! LOL
Thanks for subbing. I'm glad to hear you found this helpful. @Doesnt Compute is my hommie.
This is a workaday parade. 📘 It transpired
Both of these cards are based on the same LSI SAS2008 chipset, so the power consumption is basically the same.