Thank you, I’ll take a look, for temporary use a LSI9300 will be fine, but in the long run the more efficient ones will be better. Can you tell, if I have to flash them in IT mode (deactivate integrated raid)?
on LSI9300 it is usually in IT mode alredy but old firmware.
something like 7 version, i updatet them to 16
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Does the 9305-16i LSI still need a little fan for cooling?
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They’ll be warm, but shouldn’t need their own fan. I have several 9305-24i’s that run fine with normal front-to-back cooling from the regular case fans. You can see how much more power the 9300’s used compared to all other -16 cards here.
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So you are using a server rack case? I’m using a normal ATX PC-Case, wit 3x4HDD hot swap cases (5.25"), so my airflow wouldn’t be that great.
They also reduced the size of the heat sink. So basically same situation. Cards still get very hot without good airstream through heat sink fins.
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Some LSI cards run very hot even under no or light load, others run warm until under constant load then get hot. The cards were designed for use in server chassis with very high airflow and not much space so the heatsinks are designed for that and are marginal for other use cases like non server chassis. Almost all should have their own small fan blowing on the heatsink or maybe one of those clip on fans people have 3d printed. The overheat manifests itself as data corruption in general.
Are you perhaps using 9305 or 9400 with mixed SAS/SATA drives on a single expander?
For 9300 there is an unofficial firmware somewhere on TrueNAS wiki I believe, fixing interface resets when using mixed interfaces (or perhaps only SATA) on a single expander.
Is something similiar required for 9305 or 9400, or are these cards problem free?
And can these Lenovo cards be flashed with standard Broadcom firmware, or is some modified firmware from Lenovo required? As they look to be cheaper than the LSI/Broadcom branded ones.
And is anyone here using 9305 or 9400 with fiber (active) SFF cables and if yes, do these work fine?
My setup is 9305-24i’s with whatever-the-IT-latest-firmware was, talking to internal drives and external enclosures on cheap Adaptec expanders. And yes it’s a mix of SAS+SATA, and has been bulletproof.
I’ve never had a problem flashing vendor-branded HBAs with vanilla firmware. Everyone was shipping the same core chipsets with their own logos on the boards. To me any 12G 93xx/94xx gear has turned out to be a great deal!
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Which external enclosures are you using for this?