LSI Internal SATA/SAS 9211-8i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 RAID Controller Card, Single

Comment:
I got this SAS controller based on various articles about FreeNAS and the decent support that it has out of the box.Installing was straight forward, however flashing the BIOS over to IT mode instead of the default IR (did not need the RAID features) was a rather harder process than anticipated. First attempt was via a FreeDOS USB stick, which failed as the motherboard was actually a EFI BIOS. It then took multiple attempts to get a bootable UEFI shell (not shell was provided with the DBS1200KPR firmware). In the end I was able to get an EFI shell from ArchLinux and use that to flash the card. The flashing process worked flawlessly. Note: you need the version 1 shell - the LSI EFI program wont run on the V2 EFI shell.I am running 6 WD RED HDDs from the 2 ports and my testing with RAIDZ2 ZFS is getting between 400 and 700MB/s - which I am very happy with.Couple of additional notes: it does get pretty warm when running. I was expecting that since the controller wasn't doing as much work it would run cooler, but it appears as though that is not the case and it always runs flat out. It's not excessively hot (my motherboard southbridge is MUCH hotter), but it's enough that I think an additional fan may be needed.Otherwise though, very happy with it. It worked flawlessly with FreeNAS 9.1 and I still have space for 2 more drives. Would definitely purchase again.

Comment:
So this is my first SAS raid card, feel I should share my experience. The performance is good....I havn't done any heavy benchmarking but I am currently using this card with 2 Seagate Cheetah hard drives. The read/write speeds are blistering for mechanical hard drives and they don't seem to be to loud. The heatsink on the card itself does get very warm which is somewhat to be expected, just make sure you have adiquate airflow in your case. Just as a fair warning as well this card will add at LEAST 20-30 seconds onto your startup due to the additional bios.