Review on 💾 Efficient Data Storage Controller: LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301 by Jontrell Fernandes

High-performance, no-frills 8-port SAS controller. LSI boards are the gold standard for FreeNAS - they are well supported and affordable. This one only supports "IT" mode (no RAID), so I didn't have to bother with flashing to a better image for ZFS. I moved it to a PCIe slot on the motherboard, attached two SAS SATA drop cables to the card (sold separately), and hooked up my new drive array. FreeNAS started and immediately recognized the controller and all 8 attached drives (they show up as /dev/sd<num>, ie normal SCSI drives). So far the performance has been excellent. I'm running my ZFS pool with encryption at rest (via GELI), so I think the current I/O bottleneck is the AES-NI performance of my Core i3 processor. However, I can handle write speeds in excess of 100MB/s with no issues, and that's more than enough for my needs.