I am setting up a workstation as a home server that will be both running VM’s as well as be a NAS. If I am using something like TrueNAS with an LSI (HP rebrand or equivalent) SAS expander card do I require the controller card for a zfs software raid? I am wanting to use a 24i or 16i type expander. Also would I be able to link 2 of said card together?
Bellow are some of the options I was looking at. I am not completely sure which are expanders or controllers unless they are labeled as such…
Also any other tips or things to avoid are welcome as it is my first time setting up a NAS with enterprise SAS equipment. I will be using 4tb SAS drives and a Samsun 980Gb SAS SSD for cache. VM’s will be ran off NVME storage. Their will possibly be a few SATA SSD’s for high availability storage for the VM’s down the line since the MOBO has a few SATA ports. The SATA drives would just be individual storage drives shared or assigned to specific VM’s if that makes any sense? Also most of the SAS NAS storage will be used to store 30 days of 24/7 60fps surveillance footage until the zfs is expanded as time goes on. Not sure if that makes any difference for anything.
Other specs are 18 core Xeon, 128Gb DDR4 ECC RAM, Radeon Pro GPU for VFIO and main video output. Thx.
The wikipedia page on SAS offers a nice overview of the technology and should answer most of your questions.
A SAS controller is required to speak to SAS disks using the various SAS protocols. It’s possible to use SAS expanders as switches to connect more disks to a single controller than the controller has ports.
The technology is pretty reliable and you can mix SAS versions and brands (within reason). Check out this page for good info on SAS controllers and support for SAS generations.
Watch out for the difference between HBA and RAID cards. You want HBA cards that allow the OS accessing individual disks. Most LSI controller cards can run either an HBA and a RAID firmware but stick with the simpler cards for your purpose.
6Gb SAS HBA and expander cards are dirt cheap on eBay (SAS2008, SAS2308), 12Gb SAS is slightly more expensive but totally sufficient for connecting HDD and SATA SSDs. More modern SAS cards get expensive quickly.
I didn’t review your links in detail, but with knowledge you can assess these offerings yourself.
expanders do not get much love in homelab anymore. yes, they still require a controller. and low power controllers are available in up to 24i configurations for not much $ now. it is usually easier to design and lower cost to use multiple controllers, as apposed to 1 controller and an expander.
9305-24i is still a bit on the expensive side at just over 200$. i ended up with a 9400-16i and a 9400-8i both together for about 150$ off ebay recently. again, more bandwidth with multiple controllers, and lower cost.
unless you are running a GIANT drive chassis, just use controllers.
Yes I will be using a 16 drive chassis or maybe 2 eventually. But a basic dumb one with no backplane. I was just going to run the brake out cables out of a rear PCIE slot… LOL The drive chassis will sit above the workstation in a rack.