Recommendations of true HBA Controllers for ZFS on HP Gen8 servers

[Ralms]

Hey everyone,

I have a couple servers, an HP DL380p Gen8 and HP DL360p Gen8.

On the DL380p I’m running TrueNAS Core with a HP P822 controller running in HBA mode, which has been running great. Although people seem to not like this controller as it apparently doesn’t run in as a true HBA, would love to know of ways to validate this.

Anyway, on the other side I have the DL360p which I use for compute mostly and it has been headache, mostly because of the P420i controller.
If it’s in HBA mode, I can’t boot from the drives connected to it.
If I use it normal raid mode, the performance is horrible. (Using mostly SSDs for now)

So, I’m looking for an HBA controller that would meet the following:

• Have IT firmware so they run as a pure HBA.
• Support booting from the drives connected to it on these Proliant Gen8 servers.
• Has decent performance with SSDs.

From my research, I’ve found mentions to LSI SAS3008 based models, such as IBM/Lenovo M1215 - Has 12Gbs ports and seems to have good performance with SSDs. I can’t find it for less then around 120€. (Europe Union only)

Do you have other recommendations?
( I want Sata 3 compatibility, to be able to use consumer SSDs)

[Andre_Probst]

Could you share how you booted TrueNAS with the HP P822? I have an HP DL380e g8 and I put the P822 in HBA, I did the normal installation of Truenas, but it doesn’t boot after restarting. With the P420i same thing.

[Razor_Blade]

What are you booting from? USB drive? A single disk? An array of disks? Typically for HP controllers you select a primary boot volume or disk from the controller’s bios if you’re booting from that controller.

[Ralms]

I’m not, I boot into FreeNAS using 2 USB drives in Raid 1.

The P822 is used exclusively to grant access to the drives and is in HBA mode.

[Ralms]

Not booting from it, its acting as an HBA currently.
FreeNAS boots from 2 USB drives in Raid 1.