It looks like there is another IBM ServeRAID M5014 RAID controller with BBU deal. This time $139.50 for one day on ebay. Then the price “jumps” 10% to $155. The previous deal at $130 was great. For those wondering, this appears to come with Lithium Polymer batteries, typically newer than the Li Ion BBU. Again, like the previous deal, these do not come with brackets. See below for information on that and how to flash the cards.
For those wondering, the IBM ServeRAID M5014 is a LSI SAS 2108 based RAID cards with 256MB of onboard cache, very similar to the LSI 9260-8i and IBM M5015, just with half of the cache. As with some other IBM ServeRAID cards, you only get RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and 50 but no RAID 6 and RAID 60 with the cards. If you really want, this can be added via feature key as can features such as CacheCade.
What you can see here first is no bracket. Second, there are two SFF-8087 ports. Next on the PCB is a heatsink to cool the LSI SAS 2108. The large black devices with no lead markings is the battery backup unit (BBU.) Underneath there you would see 256MB of cache onboard. This is a must for RAID 5 and RAID 6 arrays. That is what makes up the IBM ServeRAID M5014 cards. The IBM ServeRAID M5015 and LSI 9260-8i are nearly identical, but they do have additional memory packages populated and do support both RAID 6 and RAID 60.
For those wondering, the typical price of a IBM ServeRAID M5014 plus BBU is in the $250-300 range as BBUs cost around $100 each themselves. The drawback with the SAS 2108 is that you do not get the same pass-through options as with the newer LSI SAS 2208 based cards. On the other hand, getting the IBM ServeRAID M5014 for this price is great.
Flashing the IBM ServeRAID M5014
After the last deal, we also put a guide together on flashing the IBM ServeRAID M5014 to different firmware revisions.
Lots of information there and in the forums. This is done primarily to gain access to things like faster booting firmware. The stock IBM ServeRAID firmware has a very long initialization cycle.
Final Thoughts
Might be worth picking one up before they are gone. Here is the ebay link for the sale. The last time we saw these, prices shot up to over $200 once the deal was over. We mentioned this in the recent IBM ServeRAID M1015 deal post. I will again mention that a forum member, BigXor sells brackets for $11.50 each if you need one. This auction does not come with a bracket.
One word of warning the Advanced Feature key (commonly available) only adds RAID6/60 and SED (Secure Drive encryption).
There is a Performance key that can add Fastpath and Cachecade but these are very rare and very very expensive
The IBM M5xxxx series controllers can’t take trial software keys only Hardware.
But these cards at $160 still very good buying.
Does this work with HP SAS Expander?