SAS Host Bus Adapters (6Gb and 12Gb HBAs)

Pass-through, not RAID

An HBA presents every disk to the host as its own device instead of building RAID volumes on the card. Dell describes its HBA355i, HBA355e and HBA350i as non-RAID solution cards, and Proxmox's ZFS documentation warns against running ZFS on a hardware RAID controller with its own cache management: ZFS needs to talk to the disks directly, and an HBA or an LSI controller flashed to IT mode is the better fit. For hardware RAID, see server RAID controllers.

Where SAS HBAs go

Dell supports the HBA355e in 14th-generation servers including the PowerEdge R640, R740, R740xd and T640, and in 15th-generation models such as the R650 and R750. Broadcom's 9207 and 9300 cards run SAS and SATA drives alike, so one card can serve a mixed shelf; check each listing's bracket, low profile or full height, against your slot. For shelf basics, read What Is JBOD?; drives for those shelves are on SAS hard drives, and SAN cards on Fibre Channel HBAs.

SAS HBAs are covered by an Enterasource warranty for the term on each listing. All adapter types are under host bus adapters.