LSI SAS 2008 RAID Controller/ HBA Information

12

One of the most popular server RAID controller chip and HBA controller chip out there is the LSI SAS 2008. The LSI SAS 2008 is a 6.0gbs SAS 2 or SATA III based controller that features eight ports and native PCIe connectivity. In the forums we have maintained a LSI Controller Mapping between LSI controllers and their OEM counterparts. This post will be updated with both information on the LSI SAS 2008, including how to flash cards between IT and IR modes for initiator-target and RAID modes, as well as the different OEM models commonly found in the marketplace. Oftentimes LSI SAS 2008 controllers are less expensive when found as OEM parts from Intel, Dell, HP, IBM, Supermicro and others, so it makes sense in many cases to purchase the OEM versions of the LSI SAS 2008 based cards such as the 9211-8i.

Quick Notes on the LSI SAS 2008

  • The RAID controller supports both SAS 2 and SATA III at 6.0gbps
  • Approximately 9w of power consumption for common cards
  • Single PowerPC core at 533MHz
  • No onboard cache
  • PCIe 2.0 x8 interface
  • Supports SAS expanders (with dual linking)
  • Uses sas2flash utility to flash to IT/IR mode (when possible).

Supported HBA Modes

  • RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 1E, RAID 10 and Passthrough (non-RAID)

Supported RAID Modes

  • RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 10, RAID 5, RAID 50 and JBOD

ServeTheHome Guides

Cards Based on the LSI SAS 2008

The following listing is for the RAID Controllers and HBAs based on the LSI SAS 2008 SAS 2 and SATA III RAID controller.

LSI SAS 9211-8i
LSI SAS 9211-8i

 

Naming Convention: i=internal port(s), e=external port(s)
LSI original SAS 2008 based controller, all cards are PCIe 2.0 x8 unless otherwise noted.

LSI Logic Cards

LSI9240 series use iMR mode (integrated MegaRaid) 

  • LSI9240-4i Supports RAIDs 0, 1, 10, 5, 50 and JBOD
  • LSI9240-8i Supports RAIDs 0, 1, 10, 5, 50 and JBOD

LSI920x/921x series are LSI HBA / Fusion MPT 2.0 all  in IR mode support RAIDs 0, 1, 1e, and 10, IT mode = passthrough only

IBM SAS HBA’s

Dell Cards

Cisco Cards

  • Cisco UCSC RAID SAS 2008M-8i

Fujitsu Cards

Oracle (Sun) Cards

Intel RAID Cards

  • Intel RS2WC080 looks identical to the LSI 9240-8i and IBM M1015, but supports RAID 5 and RAID 50 like the 9240-8i.

Intel Proprietary PCIe x4 Cards

  • Intel RMS2AF040 (Proprietary PCIe 4x)
  • Intel RMS2AF080 (Proprietary PCIe 4x) As above but 8 port

Hewlett Packard HBA’s

  • HP H220 Host Bus Adapter
  • HP H221 Host Bus Adapter (2x External SFF-8088 connectors)
  • HP H222 Host Bus Adapter
  • HP H220i Host Bus Adapter
  • HP H210i Host Bus Adapter

Supermicro Proprietary Format UIO Cards

Lenovo RAID Controllers

 

Feel free to contribute to anything here by posting in the LSI Controller Mapping post. We need community feedback to make this as useful as we can for everyone.

12 COMMENTS

  1. great resource. thanks for this. are you guys doing other LSI chips like the sas 2108 and 2308 also?

  2. Thanks for this, so many cards based on the LSI 2008 chip, could you show more detail differences of these cards besides the brands? Do they have the same performance or not?

    Thanks.

  3. I have a Dell PERC H200 LSI 2008 chip and works a corei7 “Lynnfield” (45 nm) now I have a new intel corei7 Ivy Bridge but not working.

    Somebody know if is possible works this card on my intel corei7 Ivy Bridge?

  4. Any one know how to get SATA drives connnect to this controller (9211-8i in IT mode) to show up as removable in Server 2012 R2?

  5. Asus also uses the 2008 SAS controller on the following two cards / Motherboard:
    Asus Pike 2008
    Asus Pike 2008 / IMR

    The second seems like a port of the 9240i. These cards are kind of unique though as they only fit in the Pike slot on select Asus server and worksgation motherboards. The actual SAS or SATA connectors the card uses are also built on to the motherboard and are just unusable until you add in the card. I found it to be a good way to leave room for expansion later on if you are looking for something less expensive in a server build.

    Great List by the way. It was exactly what I was looking for.

  6. Hi,

    I had found the fix for this issue. I did not need to flash it to IT mode to support this. This might help others.

    The issue was that the vm was not able to start and then after looking at the vmware.log, I found the cause of this issue.

    Issue error : PCIPassthru: 05:00.0 tried to modify MSI-X vectors number 32-32, but maximum supported vector number is 31

    KB Fix: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2032981

    Regards,

    Ravi

  7. It’s pretty important to always mention which of those have the 2TB limit.
    No mention in this article anywhere.

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