Have any HBA cards ever been made in the M.2 form factor? Interested in the idea as it would enable very compact builds using the motherboards from NUC clones
If you mean M.2 → SATA, refer to this thread on Level1Tech for discussion on the topic.
Thank you, that’s exactly what I needed to know. I had read some stuff saying that only the LSI/Enterprise type cards were any good, but I’m planning to try to build a really tiny NAS (as in, put it in the same case as my main PC - separate PSU of course) and the bigger cards might not fit.
When I read your original post, I was thinking you wanted something like this M.2 to SATA.
You obviously cannot plug in a PCIe card to a NUC.
How about an M.2 to PCI-E X4 adapter? There are versions with an extension cable. I can imagine a scenario when this is your only option to get an X4 link from the CPU.
That’s what I was thinking in order to pair a proper HBA card with the smaller motherboard, I was just curious if anyone had ever shrunk the format down onto the M.2 card itself
A “true HBA” in that it would support SAS drives, no. Pretty sure there’s nothing that’s physically small enough (taking thermal considerations into account) to fit in an M.2 slot. An M.2 to PCIe x4 adapter could work, but be mindful of signal integrity - watch for PCIe error spam in your dmesg if you do this.
The M.2 SATA controllers are a mixed bag. The ASMedia ASM116x ones are generally okay under TrueNAS CE, but I’d still recommend you avoid JMicron - and definitely stay far, FAR away from anything that uses a SATA port multiplier.
It’s mostly around the manufacturing quality of the individual unit - PCB layering/thickness is a factor. Connect the cables before you put the card in the M.2 socket, and make sure that you have both a heatsink on the chip and good airflow (which is sometimes a challenge in M.2 builds)
Hi all,
I found this topic when I was searching for curiosity of there is any M.2 HBA SAS.
Just to add a new SATA controller in the list for TrueNAS with real 8 ports and M.2 Key B+M format using PCIe 3.0 x2 with 2x Mini SAS ports is RTL9101. I just install one of this in my Proxmox server with a PCIe 3.0 x16 switch to 4x NVMe M.2 Key M.
Because my case supports only mITX boards, I have only one PCIe 3.0 x16. For this reason I used this PCIe switch, because MB doesn’t know PCIe bifurcation.
Then I used PCI passthrough for this controller to TrueNAS and is working perfect.
It.is the first true 8 ports (actuality 9 ports) without SATA multiplier. Only the drawback is PCI total bandwidth. If you use 8x SSD which will requests aprox 4.4 GB/s and the PCIe 3.0 x2 is about 2 GB/s.
If you use HDDs, then is not an issue.
New here and was looking if someone tried, but after seeing a m2 to sata adapter works I decided to try a m2 Oculink to PCIe adapter. My Optiplex 3080 MFF motherboard was able to see a Dell h310 sas hba in IT mode in truenas scale. Still not yet completed, but once I can post pictures, I’ll put a page up detailing my progress.
Make sure this card has some cooling. That appears to be a problem with smaller builds.
Most lower cost, small form factor computers are not designed for heavy use. Some people think that they won’t be using their NAS heavily. Except they are wrong. Their are 2 times when it will be hit HARD. During regular ZFS Scrubs, (twice a month?), and disk replacements. Both cause the storage devices, (HDD or SSD/NVMe), to generate heat. In addition to any storage controller card. The heat has to either go somewhere or build up.