Supermicro HBA

[Paul Pathiakis]

 I've used the LSI 3008.  I haven't had any issues with it.  It is supported by that driver.  (I haven't built a server with one lately)
Yes, avoid all the hardware RAID cards they are unnecessary and a JBOD controller with ZFS is a good choice.  Make sure it supports the SAS3 spec of 12 Gb/s.  That's where the speed is.  I found the following as an FYI.
Supermicro LSI SAS3008 HBA Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews


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Supermicro LSI SAS3008 HBA Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

The Supermicro LSI SAS3008 HBAs (which share the same controller as the LSI 9300-8i HBAs) are engineered to deli...
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I looked at it as more of a specs education.  It looks solid.  I've used Supermicro without issue in the past.  (I just decommissioned my home server which was Supermicro and has that very card in it.)
There is a lot to consider when using ZFS beyond just the hardware.  Don't get me wrong.... I want to have ZFS' baby.  :D  Just be sure of all the nuances of HDD, SSD, Hybrids, how much memory you have to dedicate to ZFS and CPU cores you have.  You have to take into consideration all the ZFS features you're planning to make use of now and in the future.
Also, are you ever planning on expanding the storage to have an additional JBOD shelf?  If so, you may want a card with some external connectors.  
Some of the people at http://www.ixsystems.com have done some serious research on application specific throughput of ZFS and I believe they also spec out SuperMicro servers too.  It comes down to IOPS, raw throughput, etc.  (I'm actually talking to them right now about some very large backup servers that can handle 0.75 PB.... The consideration I have is space and using RAIDZ2 and multiple streams from 10Gb interfaces and serious compression and deduplication.  SO,  IOPS not so much, but heavy raw I/O and RAID checksum computation and dedup.
There's also things like dedicated SSDs as ZIL and cache to be thought about.
So:  go up the theoretical OSI layer model and optimize each layer right through the application layer. :D  (I actually find it fun)
I hope this all helps.
P

    On Thursday, January 17, 2019, 4:33:38 AM CST, Julien Cigar <julien at perdition.city> wrote:  
 
 Hello,

We are planning to replace some (web) applications servers (currently
running HPE) with Supermicro and the vendor offers the following 
choices for the Hardware Raid Controller/HBA 4P part:

1) Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E, LSI 3008 8 x SATA/SAS III JBOD controller, up
to 122 hard drives via expander backplane, PCI-E, ideal for Nexenta/ZFS
+ € 205,6

2) LSI 9300-4I, SATA/SAS III JBOD controller, tot 256 harde schijven via
expander backplanes, PCI-E, ideal for Nexenta/ZFS
+ € 214,5

3) LSI MegaRAID 9341-4i bulk, 4 x SATA/SAS 12Gbs internal entry level
hardware RAID, no cache/BBU possible, PCI-e
+ € 177,97

4) LSI MegaRAID 9361-4i 1GB cache, 4 x SATA/SAS 12Gbs internal
hardware RAID, max. 240 hdd using expander backplanes
+ € 401,7

5) LSI 9300-4i4e, SATA/SAS III JBOD controller, 4 x internal, 4 x external,
up to 256 hard drives via expander backplane, Nexenta Certified, ideal
for ZFS, PCI-E
+ € 273,95

6) LSI MegaRAID 9380-4i4e bulk, 8 x SATA/SAS 12Gbs, 4 x external and 4 x
internal hardware RAID, 1024MB cache, up to 128 hard drives via expander
backplane, support for SSD CacheCade 2.0 write and read caching,
CacheVault support (advised), ideal for high en
+ € 676

As the plan is to use ZFS, I was planning to choose the 
"Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E, LSI 3008" (it looks like it is supported by
mpr) and I was wondering if anyone has any feedback on it ? Would
another option be a better choice ?

Thank you!
Julien

-- 
Julien Cigar
Belgian Biodiversity Platform (http://www.biodiversity.be)
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