From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 1 00:53:55 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 444F85C9 for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2012 00:53:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dg@pki2.com) Received: from btw.pki2.com (btw.pki2.com [IPv6:2001:470:a:6fd::2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0BA5B8FC0A for ; Thu, 1 Nov 2012 00:53:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from btw.pki2.com (btw.pki2.com [192.168.23.1]) by btw.pki2.com (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id qA10rn0I095975 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT) for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:53:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dg@pki2.com) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2012 17:53:49 -0700 (PDT) From: Dennis Glatting X-X-Sender: dennisg@btw.pki2.com To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: ZFS HBAs with >8 ports? Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII X-yoursite-MailScanner-Information: Dennis Glatting X-yoursite-MailScanner-ID: qA10rn0I095975 X-yoursite-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-From: dg@pki2.com X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:53:55 -0000 I am looking for a fairly dense HBA for a ZFS system. I currently use LSI 2008 chip sets but the boards (e.g., 9211-8i) are limited to eight disks and I have twenty four disks, consuming four of my six MB slots. With two other cards, that leaves me no empty slots. I looked at the 9280-24i4e (I also need an external interface) but it appears MegaRAID+LSI-2108 /does not/ support JBOD, but that is also unclear. One of a few notes in LSI's configuration guide hints: NOTE Integrated MegaRAID displays new drives as Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD). For MegaRAID, unless the inserted drive contains valid DDF metadata, new drives display as JBOD. Rebuilds start only on Unconfigured Good drives, so you have to change the new drive state from JBOD to Unconfigured Good to start a rebuild. That's far from a decleration of useful JBOD and I've seen the term "JBOD" to mean different things. Do you know of a fairly dense card known to be useful for ZFS? Can you comment on the 9280-24i4e?