Best Cheap HBA for >=3TB Drives, and 8-16ports+

[extide]

So, in the 8-port category, there seems to be several options:

IBM M1015: LSI Chipset, very common, works well. 3TB Drive support? I dont know--- does it support 3TB?

LSI 9211-8i: Very similar as above, and I know that this one does support 3TB drives. I bel9ieve this is a slightly newer chipset than the M1015 though.

Dell Perc H310: Also seems very similar to above, and I know 3TB is supported. I also spotted a 5-pack of these for $300 on ebay. I could probably buy that, sell 2, and have 3 for close to $100!

All of these can be flashed to IT mode. I am using ZFS so I do not want RAID cards.

In the 16-port arena, you have mostly the LSI 9201-16i. This seems like a great card but rather expensive. Typically about $350-375.

There are even 24-port cards, but even the cheapest one (HighPoint, which uses Marvell controllers) is still $600! And I am not too excited by the sound of a bunch of marvell controllers, to be honest.

I currently have my system in a relatively normal case, but am going to be moving to the Norco 4224 pretty soon. I also want to add some more drives. Hopefully 6-8 3 or 4TB ones, depending on the costs, but will undoubtedly be adding more drives beyond that eventually.

I can buy 1 mini sas breakout cable and use 4 of the onboard intel sata for some for the drives. Then I could get away with 2 8-port cards for the time being.

Basically I want to get as many sas/sata ports as possible, with possibility of future growth beyond the 24 drives in the 4224, using an external jbod setup.

What other cards should I be looking at? Did I miss any key ones?

 

[sybreeder]

I use M1015 - this is 9240-8i. It supports 3tb without any problem both in IT and IR mode.
From those you mentioned i'd recommend to just get M1015 and flash it to IT mode. It's the cheapest option.

 

[extide]

^^ Thats good to know.

What about the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, apparently this uses Marvell controller as well.

Depending on when my funds are available for this project, I will probably buy some used cards on ebay. That 5-pack of Perc H310's for $300 looks like a great option.

 

[Jim G]

M1015 or equivalent (9201-8i etc) are really what you're after - we have run every size up to 4TB on our ZFS box without issue. Both the ones I mentioned are the SAS2008 chipset, which is proven and works with just about anything. If you get one of those two, get it in IT mode (9201-8i only come in IT mode, iirc) - perfect for ZFS.