Hi, anyone could point me at an ELI5 about SAS hardware? I’d like to assemble a NAS using an old HP Z200, I want SAS because I’d get also a tape drive for backups and I cannot find SATA tape drives. For example, is a Dell Perc H310 pci-e card good for me? Can I avoid hardware RAID?
Personally, I recommend the lsi cards. Those things are tanks. The lsi 8i (8 internal) has been my friend for many years without fail. It does support jbod, so no raid, and I hooked a tape drive up to it too.
Tell me more about your tape drive though, I’m unhappy with mine and I’m looking to replace it
Sorry but I haven’t got the tape drive yet. I found an HP lto-5 ultrium 3000 on ebay but I’m not sure if it’s a good choice
Feel free to ping me if you make the jump, I learned a lot about it. Biggest thing I can recommend is double triple make sure everything supports ltfs, it will make your life 1000% easier.
Yes the Dell H310 will work, but be around 40$. Other good options:
- Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E LSI 9300-8i - should sell for around 40$
- Dell H200 IT - less expensive, like 25$
There are also other cards from less known brands, just search ebay or aliexpress for LSI 9211-8i or LSI 9207-8i.
I just found a dell h200 for 27€ shipping included on aliexpress. It should be already flashed in IT mode, right? This screen pic is in the description:
What I know: https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/A_guide_to_mdadm No need to do hardware raid, mdadm is great. I got an HBA card off of art of server on eBay, and have ungodly amounts of disk. Also, am ungodly power bill… You can stick regular SATA drives into a SAS Bay, but not SAS drives into a SATA bay. Some HP equipment is bitchy about non -HP drives, cards, etc. I saw a fair amount of “Do RAID 6!” But I found on my hardware that RAID 5 and a hot standby was moderately faster. Try not to mix drive sizes, it messes things up and wastes space. Have fun!
I would not use a RAID controller to connect a tape drive. I would use a regular HBA SAS controller, like from LSI.
You might also be able to flash a RAID controller to IT mode, which turns it into the same thing, if you can find one that can do that and is significantly cheaper.
Thanks. If I understood correctly, according to here it should be possible to flash dell h310 to IT mode.
