Re: SAS3808 PCI-E 4.0, FreeBSD / ZFS support ?

From: Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson_at_gmx.com>
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2021 08:45:35 UTC
Hi Sreekanth,

Glad to hear from you, pretty good news, many thanks !

Do you have any feedback regarding SAS3808/SAS3816 reliability with FreeBSD ?
Especially compared to the widely approved (let's say now in some kind "bug-free") SAS2008/SAS3008.
I think we're still scared about strange bugs which could corrupt data, silent corruptions or anything like that...

Thank you again for your support,

Kind regards,

Ben


> On 4 Jun 2021, at 08:03, Sreekanth Reddy <sreekanth.reddy@broadcom.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Ben,
> 
> SAS3808 & SAS3816 HBA cards supported through mpr driver. Broadcom supports FreeBSD OS driver (i.e. mpr) only through inbox driver and hence users won't be able to find the out-of-box driver (that we used to provide earlier)  in the Broadcom's download site. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Sreekanth
> 
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 2:56 PM Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson@gmx.com> wrote:
> > On 28 May 2021, at 14:47, Gary Palmer <gpalmer@freebsd.org> wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, May 28, 2021 at 07:34:53AM +0200, Ben RUBSON wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> Looking to buy SuperMicro SSG-540P-E1CTR36L, bringing a SAS3808 based PCI-E 4.0 adapter.
> >> 
> >> Everyone knows SAS2008 (PCI-E 2.0) and SAS3008 (PCI-E 3.0) as widely advised when working with ZFS.
> >> 
> >> But what about SAS 3808 ? I did not find much experience sharing, especially about its FreeBSD support, and ZFS compatibility level.
> >> As SAS3808 has twice the PCI bus bandwidth as the SAS3008, could be useful with large JBODs.
> >> 
> >> Thank you very much !
> >> 
> >> Kind regards,
> >> 
> >> Ben
> >> 
> >> //already posted at fs@, but scsi@ is certainly more relevant here, sorry for double post
> > 
> > I don't see any driver for FreeBSD on the "HBA 9500-8i Tri-Mode Storage
> > Adapter" page on broadcom.com, which is a 3808 based card.  "mpr" man
> > page in FreeBSD 12 doesn't mention support, neither does FreeBSD 13
> > but there is some code in the driver for the 3816.  Not sure why 3816
> > is mentioned but not 3808.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > 
> > Gary
> 
> Hi Gary,
> 
> Many thanks for your inputs and feedback.
> There's at least a FreeBSD download available for this HBA, the STORCLI utility, but no driver.
> However the specifications, as well as the product brief PDF file, mention FreeBSD support...
> 
> CC'ing Sreekanth & Kashyap from Broadcom, feel free if you have any info !
> 
> Trying to decide whether or not I build my whole new 3-nodes storage infrastructure upon these PCI-E 4.0 adapters, or if I go with the already widely approved SAS3008...
> 
> Thank you again !
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Ben
>