# Adaptec AIC-9405W



## free-and-bsd (Mar 6, 2020)

Hello 

I have this Adaptec AIC-9405W SAS controller and just don't know if it's worth installing into my spare PCI-express slot. 
I mean, I'm NOT planning to buy "a bunch of SAS disks", but maybe one single disk at most I might buy, given their price, for pure experiment's sake.

But then, is it worth it? Or would I be better off buying a SSD NVMe for about the same price *(my motherboard has 2x2.M NVMe slots*)? 
To compare, *300Gb SAS HDD Lenovo (00NA221) costs in local retail a bit more than Gigabyte NVMe SSD 256G 2.M. Both are hi-quality products. 

Simply put, the question is: where would it be more reasonable to invest my money? Into a SAS HDD and use it with my (rather outdated, I understand) Adaptec SAS card, or into a modern NVMe 2.M SSD?*


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## LVLouisCyphre (Mar 7, 2020)

This is an accounting cost v. benefit analysis issue, not a FreeBSD issue.  Which option costs less?  What do you plan on doing with the drive?  Do you plan on expansion?  If expansion beyond your motherboard capability is possible, then invest in the Adaptec option.  You have to also think about the cost of how you're going to add these drives to your system.  

This is a decision you need to make.  Both are viable options to me so it would boil down to cost/MB to me unless you have NVMe speed of PCIe 3.x and speed is part of your implementation and performance parameters.  

My boot devices on my FreeBSD servers are four or five channel M.2 SATA cards that are on PCIe 2.0 systems.  I've had some commenters tell me I'm crazy because of possible PCIe 2.0 bus saturation.  I have yet to see it.


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## free-and-bsd (Mar 7, 2020)

Thank you, that's what I was looking for -- some real experience. I bought this SAS card some years ago and it is kept there unused among my other parts. It didn't cost much either, but_ if it can be useful, why not use it _is my , rather simple, reasoning_._

What I'm looking for is some "general purpose usage" advantage in speed of reads/writes, that's all so far. Therefore my question, if put more precisely, is whether this SAS controller with 1 disk attached to it would offer any advantages over 1 NVMe card (about the same capacity) attached to the system. GIGABYTE gives a 5 year guarantee for its NVMe 2.M stick that I mentioned in my OP. Does SAS system promise more reliability in this or any other sense? Does it offer _any _when used with only 1 disk? Because when I read about SAS , it always mentions how useful it is when used with _arrays_ of disks. Well for them, I'm sure, but currently I'm not going to buy an _array_ of SAS HDDs .

Or another option is to add it to my small collection of outdated and now useless hardware: Intel i386 processor, a couple of RAM sticks for that system, a 10mbps network switch, ancient ADSL modem, a PCI hardware modem by USR (real good stuff ).


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## Phishfry (Mar 7, 2020)

Chuck it in the pile and go NVMe. With 512GB NVMe costing around $150 you will get more capacity than the 300GB hard disk you quoted at perhaps 8X faster speed. Chances are if your motherboard offers M.2 NVMe slots it is PCIe 3.x.
The only thing I worry about is some manufacturers shortchanged the slot with only x2 lanes of PCIe.
That will hamstring you.
I have been buying Samsung PM983 drives and they are fast. 2GB/sec and they do make an M.2 model called PM981.
I highly recommend them.


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## free-and-bsd (Mar 7, 2020)

Phishfry said:


> Chuck it in the pile and go NVMe. With 512GB NVMe costing around $150 you will get more capacity than the 300GB hard disk you quoted at perhaps 8X faster speed. Chances are if your motherboard offers M.2 NVMe slots it is PCIe 3.x.
> The only thing I worry about is some manufacturers shortchanged the slot with only x2 lanes of PCIe.
> That will hamstring you.
> I have been buying Samsung PM983 drives and they are fast. 2GB/sec and they do make an M.2 model called PM981.
> I highly recommend them.


Hah, they're offering Gigabyte 256G NVMe 2.M (GP-GSM2NE3256GNTD) for 58$ here. Not bad either. Samsung PM981 512G for 110$.


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## Phishfry (Mar 7, 2020)

The reason I push for the larger disk size is speed. You will find many of the lower capacity memory drives do no offer as much speed as the larger sized drives. So research the actual drive as speeds are often exaggerated citing the larger capacity drives.


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## msplsh (Mar 7, 2020)

There's no way a SAS HDD is going to outperform some nVME drive.  There's no reason to use the SAS card unless you need higher capacity drives, drives that are cheaper per gigabyte, or just more drive ports.  You could also put in an adapter and use plain old SATA drives, but that is probably going to be ridiculous, since your motherboard probably has those ports.


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## free-and-bsd (Mar 7, 2020)

msplsh said:


> There's no way a SAS HDD is going to outperform some nVME drive.  There's no reason to use the SAS card unless you need higher capacity drives, drives that are cheaper per gigabyte, or just more drive ports.  You could also put in an adapter and use plain old SATA drives, but that is probably going to be ridiculous, since your motherboard probably has those ports.


Exactly! That's what I wanted to know .


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## LVLouisCyphre (Mar 7, 2020)

Most SAS HBAs support SATA drives.    You don't have to use SAS.  I doubt Adaptec deviates from that norm.  3.5" drives have always beat NVMe with respect to capacity.  NVMe will always beat SAS/SATA with respect speed.  If you need capacity, 3.5" SAS/SATA which would be the Adaptec option.  If speed is the priority, NVMe.  The card is still usable if you need four SAS/SATA drives.


free-and-bsd said:


> Thank you, that's what I was looking for -- some real experience. I bought this SAS card some years ago and it is kept there unused among my other parts. It didn't cost much either, but_ if it can be useful, why not use it _is my , rather simple, reasoning_._
> ....
> Or another option is to add it to my small collection of outdated and now useless hardware: Intel i386 processor, a couple of RAM sticks for that system, a 10mbps network switch, ancient ADSL modem, a PCI hardware modem by USR (real good stuff ).


I had a cluster of EISA/PCI servers (ALR Revolution 2X(L)s) along with a few Abit BP6 (dual Celeron 533s) home builds several years ago that ran well with DEC FDDI NICs with AMI MegaRAID cards.  I was just starting to migrate everything from fast ethernet (fxp) based NICS to GbE Intel NICS (dual port) then had to downsize and move out of my house which had a data center/lab in it that could easily be a small to medium ISP or hosting service.  
I'm now on a HP Microserver G7 kick as they're small, easy to deploy and move if necessary.  Now the challenge is seeing what you can cram into one.  Just throw in 16 GB of RAM, four large SATA drives and a multiport M.2 SATA adapter and you're done.

Functional obsolesce happens.  If you have anything you can't at least put a few GB of RAM in (more if you're running ZFS), it's probably not worth keeping anymore. You can't order a new ATM circuit from the local telco (CenturyLink) here anymore.  They only support existing ATM customers and are probably pushing to have them migrate so they don't have to maintain their ATM switches in their COs.  Everything is going GbE or PON in most metropolitan areas.


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## free-and-bsd (Mar 8, 2020)

Well, I've just built a new machine based on Chinese Huananzhi X79 based motherboard for socket 2011 + used Intel Xeon e5-2690 8 core x 16 th. + 32 G (used) ECC RAM.  And yes, I think I can call the whole thing "my home lab", I like the sound of it. Right now I'm successfully using it as a virtualization platform, for one thing.

Those boards are cheap solution supporting server-like capacities. So now I'm checking what I can stuff into it. And since I have that card laying around, I thought why not.

But no, not going to spend money on MANY SAS disks, that are too expensive for me to play with when there is no payback in view, LOL. Sure I would rather use SATA HDDs, not even SSDs.


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## LVLouisCyphre (Mar 8, 2020)

free-and-bsd said:


> I've just built a new machine based on Chinese Huananzhi X79 based motherboard for socket 2011 + used Intel Xeon e5-2690 8 core x 16 th. + 32 G (used) ECC RAM.  And yes, I think I can call the whole thing "my home lab", I like the sound of it. Right now I'm successfully using it as a virtualization platform, for one thing.


Virtualization is a wonderful thing.  I'm not familiar with that specific system board but it sounds to me like it will serve you well.  32 GB plus the Xeon makes for great server hardware.  It should run a kernel config and make buildworld or builduniverse without a problem.  I consider running a make buildworld under time(1) as a wonderful way to benchmark and exercise your hardware.

My HP MS G7s maxed out with 16 GB handles it pretty well. I can throw jails and VMs at it.  It handles kernel configs and make buildworld or builduniverse well.


free-and-bsd said:


> Those boards are cheap solution supporting server-like capacities. So now I'm checking what I can stuff into it. And since I have that card laying around, I thought why not.


It gets addicting on what you can stuff into a server especially one you built yourself from scratch.  I use to do custom system builds.  There's nothing wrong with having a Frankenserver.  I'm sure all of us here have had a few of them at one time or another.  Now I buy older servers and hot rod them which isn't difficult to do with FreeBSD.  


free-and-bsd said:


> But no, not going to spend money on MANY SAS disks, that are too expensive for me to play with when there is no payback in view, LOL. Sure I would rather use SATA HDDs, not even SSDs.


I checked the specs on the 3405W, it will work with SATA drives.  The card can easily be purposed in your server for a hardware RAID.  You didn't make a bad deal if you got the card cheap enough.  It's supported under the aac(4) driver.  You can get four cheap SATA drives and put them to use; more if you use an expander.  It supports hardware RAID6.  Just add a RAID cage; Icydock or Thermaltake and you're good to go.  

It's not the fastest card out there as it's only SATA 2 (3 Gb/s), but it will do the job.  It's difficult to go wrong with Adaptec or LSI with FreeBSD.  My HP MS G7s only have SATA 2 ports.  I've done kernel configs and make buildworld with hard drives on them and they perform quite well for my needs.

Anything that requires raw I/O throughput, put it on your NVMe SSDs.  If you need bulk storage, get your SATA drives, hot swap RAID cage and put it on the Adaptec.  You have the best of both worlds.  Speed with the NVMe on your system board, bulk storage with the Adaptec 3405W and some SATA drives.


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