MP 1,1-5,1 Installing a LSI SAS card on Mac Pro 4,1/5,1... is it possible?

[DoctorZoidberg]

Hi everyone! I’ve got a question concerning SAS drives on the cMP, is there a workaround to get a PCIe LSI HBA (RAID preferably) be functional on Mojave/Catalina?
I’m in the process of building my cMP, and besides I’m planning to install an NVME (as a scratch disk, it will boot from a SATA SSD on the lower optical bay), I’m curious to install a couple of SAS disk on the lower (optical bay) and experiment with ZFS.
I don’t need at all to to be boot capable, I understand Areca and ATTO cards support booting from them, but they are way out of my budget (don’t live in USA). As garden variety LSI come really cheap (even in Argentina, where I live) , I thought it would be nice to buy one for my project, instead of the pricier supported cards.
Thanks in advance to everyone!!!!!

 

[AidenShaw]

Start here: https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search

Enter: Group: Storage Adapters, Controllers, and ICs, Family: Storage Adapters, Controllers, and ICs, Product: MegaRAID SAS 9380-4i4e (Use your actual product model), then Search.

Look at the Drivers download for OSX drivers. (The 9380 has Linux, Windows, Solaris and VMware - so no go for Mojave/Catalina.)

Note that you'll also need the management utilities - but you could dual-boot Windows or Linux for setups. (The LSA utility is web-based, so that might work on OSX.)

 

[DoctorZoidberg]

Thanks a lot, AidenShaw!!

 

[zedex]

I've always just used HIGHPOINT Technologies SAS/SATA PCIe-based HBAs because ARECA and ATTO cards are priced at levels that don't make any sense to me.

I've recently been researching LSI MegaRAID and similar because OWC selectively features cards these on their website as cMP 5,1 compatible. I've noticed they're really cheap and I plan to experiment with a purchase myself..

A couple of thoughts I'll share here to reduce the chance of a time-consuming FAIL in trialling LSI cards:
Highpoint sell the "ROCKET" series and the "ROCKETRAID" series. ROCKET cards are often 'plug and play' native AHCI-based SATA expansion cards that are perfect for SoftRAID setups.
ROCKETRAID cards are built around/based on Hardware RAID controllers. Whenever one of these cards uses a hardware RAID controller it WILL need a Vendor supplied (third-party) kext installed.

Every LSI card uses a hardware RAID controller - meaning there is no "ROCKET" series equivalent.

Notice (from the attached image) just how few "Identified Developer" kernel extensions (kexts) ship alongside the 1500+ "Apple" kexts whenever a new version of macOS is released..
See any familiar names..?
SoftRAID: ex-Apple engineers with a software development commitment to Mac exceeding 15 years
OWC: Apple resellers with an aftermarket product development commitment to Mac exceeding 20 years
Highpoint, Nvidia, Promise, Caldigit, ATTO and Areca - ALL providing legacy support regardless of their current relationship with Apple.

My biggest concern with LSI/Broadcom is that they dropped out of the native kext support list somewhere between OS X 10.7 and 10.12

Lastly, with SAS/SATA RAID controllers - there is no readily available information on how to implement TRIM on SSDs. I really worry about 'garbage collection' on the SSDs connected to my Highpoint RocketRAID 2744. The usual methods DO NOT APPLY/WORK. On a more positive note however HDDs work exceptionally well. One card, one PCIe slot, 16 lanes and 16 HDDs configured in a RAID 0 array will work as reliably as a toaster. I still think it's kind of amazing

 

[DoctorZoidberg]

Zedex, thanks a lot leally for your reply. I've forgot the Highpoint's offerings. Thanks again for the explanation in "rocket" and "rocketRAID" versions of the controllers. I will investigate further, never thought of "RAIDing" SSDs but only HDs.
Really appreciate your help!