HBA or onboard SATA

Orddie

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am looking at attempt #2 for a home storage server using freeNAS. Will be using 10gb intel cards from vmware host direct to the freeNAS server. So i wanted to know if you would recommend an HBA card or use the SATA ports on the Motherboard. I guess what im thinking / wondering if i load the motherboard SATA ports up would my bottle neck be the SATA controller where possibly an HBA or dual HBA's could allow for higher throughput?

Thanks!
 
Using FreeNAS, it'll end up as a ZFS volume anyway and it doesn't care as long as it can see the Disks. So as long as they are all on SATA3 ports, it's all good. How many disks are we talking here?
 
Using FreeNAS, it'll end up as a ZFS volume anyway and it doesn't care as long as it can see the Disks. So as long as they are all on SATA3 ports, it's all good. How many disks are we talking here?

my concern is how much i may or may not be killing the overall pipe of the motherboard SATA ports / card. I would like to do 8-16 disks.
 
There is should be no bandwidth problem with that on Intel ports. At least I have not noticed a problem doing this at work with a combination of up to 6 motherboard ports + LSI sas ports.
 
my concern is how much i may or may not be killing the overall pipe of the motherboard SATA ports / card. I would like to do 8-16 disks.
With that many disks i'd recommend at least one HBA provided you've got the spare PCIe x8 slot, more out of cleanliness than anything else. Fewer cables to run everywhere, what with the one SAS to four SATA cable instead of four sata cables snaking around.
 
There is should be no bandwidth problem with that on Intel ports. At least I have not noticed a problem doing this at work with a combination of up to 6 motherboard ports + LSI sas ports.

what are your write speeds? im seeing some people hitting the 1gb mark with some setups but they have more disks than i will. more disks = faster write speeds?
 
I don't benchmark often anymore. I have seen 1GB /s with dual 7 disk raidz2 vdevs.
 
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