Flashed Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA to LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode for ZFS FreeNAS unRAID

This is the first HBA I've ever owned, haven't needed them before. This one installed easily with no configuration. The host operating system (TrueNAS Scale) recognized it immediately. I recommend adding a small fan unless you're putting this in a regular noisy server case with high speed air, I added a 40mm Noctua NF-A4x20, screwed into the heatsink and zip tied to the heatsink retaining clip.This will take a lifetime to boot (with 8 drives plugged in, mine takes 3-5 minutes) unless you are just using it as a JBOD and re-flash the firmware without the MPT BIOS. It's doing a lot behind the scenes, but taking its sweet time. Don't panic, it's working. Since this is server-grade hardware, it's not expected to be rebooted often.

6/22I was not fully aware of what I was purchasing so for those who don’t always pay attention the description. This card will probably not come in a new package I’m assuming because the card needed to be flashed. Besides that, I installed it in my Unraid system and it has been working without any other intervention or drivers. Plug and play at it’s best. Added bonus, the SAS to Sata cables made cable management a lot easier.

This was exactly what I needed for my TrueNAS/ZFS setup. I have other LSI cards, but didn't want to risk bricking one by flashing the wrong HBA firmware onto it, so I ordered new.The only thing problematic was that before buying it, I didn't realize there's a known "issue" with the Dell-branded cards (which the one I was sent originally was) that they do something crazy on the PCIe SMBus pins which will do various odd things with non-Dell systems. What I experienced is that it appeared I had bad RAM in my system after inserting the card. Something like half my RAM slots stopped detecting that anything was in them. I spent way too long trying different DIMMs and flashed my BIOS and other stuff before I realized it only happened when this card was installed.When I googled about it, I found this was the cause, but I also read about other people whose BIOS flash got corrupted, bricking their motherboard with various dell-branded PCIe devices.The "solution" is to cut a very narrow strip of electrical tape to fit over those two pins on the PCIe edge connector, thereby disconnecting the card from the SMBus interface on the PCIe slot. Since doing that, I have all my RAM and perfectly stable operation of the card, my drives, and ZFS and TrueNAS have been running flawlessly.After doing that, I didn't feel like pulling the card back out, but a better solution might be to take a small tip on a dremel tool and grind those two pins off the edge connector so it can never fail on you if you remove the card without remembering about the tape, causing you to have to try and diagnose the problem again until you remember.I still rate it 5 stars, because this is definitely NOT the seller's fault, nor technically a fault with the device. It's DELL's fault, because they're jerks about people using their hardware in non-DELL systems. I figured anyone considering buying something like this, which may have been a Dell OEM model, they should know about this before they pull their hair out (or worse, potentially corrupt their BIOS flash in a motherboard that doesn't have the ability to re-flash corrupted bios without removing the chip or having special hardware to handle that.)

So far it’s worked for everything I needed it for, the card was flashed in IT mode as described so my drives are detected independently in Linux as expected. The card came really well packaged in the box and was very clean.If I had to buy another HBA I would buy this one again.

The server won't finish posting when the card is installed.

I put this in an unraid server, works well and the IT mode was flashed properly as promised, booted right up with no issue. Good plug and play. The Sas interface saves a ton of messy SATA cables. As these were designed and pulled out of high airflow servers they need a ton of airflow to cool properly. If you put this in an atx case you cant get away with passive cooling. I added a 40mm fan to it and it works fine.

Works perfectly with Unraid. I didn't have to do anything to the card for it to work. My server is just running off an ASUS Prime Z590-P motherboard and it required no additional configuration for Unraid to boot and recognize my drives, so I bought a 2nd card.

Works as described. I stuck it in my old Gigabyte Z170 motherboard I use for my UnRaid server and with the two SAS to SATA cables now all my array drives are running through this. System recognized them with no issues and my server is running as expected.