With the crap going on with VMWare + Broadcom, the most shocking thing about this video is Broadcom not only watches community videos, but actually sent out some hardware to help the community. That being said. Screw you Broadcom for killing the free/affordable ESXi tiers.
I think long-term they are shooting themselves in both feet. If they, like they have publicly stated, choose to only concentrate on their top customers (the whales) and shed a large part of everyone else, over time a very significant part of the pool of current and especially future IT professionals will have much less incentive to specialize in VMware products, because the amount of job opportunities surrounding those products will decrease dramatically after everyone else moves away from them. Over a longer time and because of the dramatic reduction in the available pool of VMware specialists, even those whales will have an increasingly difficult time finding qualified VMware-certified (or even just specialized) personnel because of this. And so at some point, one by one, they too will be forced to look elsewhere because they can't fill the VMware positions to an adequate level anymore. That's why I think this takeover is a short-term cash grab strategy and it is actually the intention that VMware will not survive it long-term. I could be wrong of course but I think that's where it's going if they keep this up and make good on their stated goals and roadmap P.S.: Yeah, screw you Broadcom. I was about to start the VCP-DCV track. Luckily this takeover happened right before I spent the money for the mandatory education
Yeah, I was really surprised when Broadcom contacted me. Someone there noticed my LSI troubleshooting videos and said they have been sharing it internally. LOL Blew my mind! Ha ha ha. It was nice of them to loan me some hardware, so I can't complain about that. I understand the frustration about the direction VMware is going. I had similar frustrations with IBM/RedHat since I've been a RHEL/CentOS user for over 2 decades. Ultimately, it comes down to business decisions. Some might say the move is short sighted, and sometimes years later that's what can be concluded, but sometimes it turns out to be the right decision for the business. Only time will tell. At least in the most recent quarterly earnings, VMware revenue is rising in double digits quarter over quarter so they are doing really well as a business.
@@BinaryBlueBull Totally agree. They are milking their existing client base for as much as they can whilst cutting off access to learning in home-lab environments. So building resentment in their existing pool of money and preventing people from learning about their products while there are free and proven alternatives out there. Whatever could go wrong? It's typical of the new way of doing business - extract as much value from a transaction and milk it for all it's worth......profits today and screw future business.
@@BinaryBlueBull I used to work for one of the large banks which has a massive investment in VmWare, MASSIVE. One thing Broadcom is going to discover is that Banks are VERY cost sensitive. They will spend money to get rid of something that is too expensive, by hook or by crook. I've seen initiatives where some company thinks their $50m software licensing per year is an infinite money glitch. Guess what happens? The bank will build the same functionality using their own internal software team and cast you adrift (yes, I worked on a project for 2 years building functionality and getting rid of a vendor that was this expensive). Any CTO at a large bank that sees this Broadcomm move and doesn't have an exit strategy needs to start looking for another job. If Microsoft is a large VmWare customers you think they're going to stick around handing you giant subscription fees after you fired most of your own staff when Microsoft is more than capable and has similar products in their internal portfolio? I wish Broadcomm all the luck in the wars to come.
The broadcom website says internal ports 16 , but it also says : Devices Supported > SAS/SATA: 240, NVMe: 32, but how? do you then add another broadcom hardware product to 1 of the 2 ports or is there a different connector on it, and if so what hardware. And do you lose raid capabilitys then? I ask because i want to do raid 6 with 24 sata ssd's.
They have PCIe switchers (for the nvme) and sas expanders for SAS/SATA. He has a video about expanders. I'm trying to find info on PCIe switch boards that are (for nvme) like this one but inverted: they offer 8 PCIe 4.0 for the nvme and 16 PCIe 3.0 for the slot - that enables PCIe 3.0 slots to take full advantage of PCIe 4.0 m.2 nvme. They are simpler than the card he's showing - they do use Broadcom ICs but those are only switches while this card has a CPU that implements the PCIe bridge to SAS/SATA/nvme.
The card has 16 SAS/SATA lanes for direct connectivity to storage devices. But if you want to connect more drives than that, you can use a SAS expander device that acts like a switch for SAS. That's how you would connect up to 240 drives, for example. I'm not sure about the NVMe side, but there PLX PCIe switches as well, so I think a similar mechanism, but using a PCIe signaling switch instead of SAS.
Definitely a weird move from Broadcom to send this controller alongside that beast of an Epyc server. I can't see a single advantage of actually running your NVMe drives through this controller, instead of straight to the CPU. But I guess your testing will showcase this, so I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, my initial instinct was that too. However, without giving away anything, if someone wanted to use NVMe drives in a HW RAID configuration, this would be the only choice in the server space.
@@ArtofServer Hardware RAID? Interesting! The concept is apparently not entirely dead. I wonder, if there's really a point in it in 2024, given the proliferation of software-based RAID solutions (e.g. ZFS, Ceph, etc.)?
The problem with the earlier revision of the 9560-16i with the smaller heat sink was that it overheated. It requires a small fan constantly blowing on the heat sink.
Greetings. I have some question about LSI SAS 9205-8i controller. I did not buy it from You ( but I wish to buy ). Making long story short - I have mounted this card to Gigabyte ( new 13th gen Intel ) and to old Asus ( 4 cores Athlon ). In both cases problem was the same - with SAS disks inserted none of operating system (TrueNas Wcale/Core, Proxmoxa, Debian, Ubuntu ) could boot up. Without disks everything was OK but after inserting disks problems occured - one of disks was invisible or made "Kernel panic". I have Supermicro 846 chassi with SAS2 EL1 backplane installed. With Supermicro motherboard everything is just fine. Do You have somekind od experience with this problem? Second - could You send HBA card to Poland? Could You recommend me any HBA for Yours shop which will be working with no problems in regular PC motherboard?
Hi! If you need help troubleshooting LSI HBA cards, you should checkout my playlist here: ruclips.net/p/PL28eVGz5vFQ9cGBGhFzCtHqQ-TtXBZV6m From your description, it sounds like maybe the SAS lanes are shorted and when connected, it closes the short and causes the card to crash. That's just a guess based on your description. I cannot know for sure without examining and testing the card myself. I do ship outside the USA using eBay's international shipping program, which is like a freight forwarder. Poland is on the list of eligible countries.
@@ArtofServer in my server are two sff8087 connectors. In server embeded card everything is fine. With new card i tried all combinations - I switched cables, tried first cable alone in both connectors, then second cable and nothing worked. Disks are working fine in server.
@@ArtofServer Hi, I have a quick question about HBAs? Mine idles between 69-75 C though it never goes higher than 75, even under load. It's in a server chassis with stock fans, so I had assumed it'd be alright, but do you think I need to add a fan?
With the crap going on with VMWare + Broadcom, the most shocking thing about this video is Broadcom not only watches community videos, but actually sent out some hardware to help the community.
That being said. Screw you Broadcom for killing the free/affordable ESXi tiers.
I think long-term they are shooting themselves in both feet. If they, like they have publicly stated, choose to only concentrate on their top customers (the whales) and shed a large part of everyone else, over time a very significant part of the pool of current and especially future IT professionals will have much less incentive to specialize in VMware products, because the amount of job opportunities surrounding those products will decrease dramatically after everyone else moves away from them. Over a longer time and because of the dramatic reduction in the available pool of VMware specialists, even those whales will have an increasingly difficult time finding qualified VMware-certified (or even just specialized) personnel because of this. And so at some point, one by one, they too will be forced to look elsewhere because they can't fill the VMware positions to an adequate level anymore. That's why I think this takeover is a short-term cash grab strategy and it is actually the intention that VMware will not survive it long-term. I could be wrong of course but I think that's where it's going if they keep this up and make good on their stated goals and roadmap
P.S.: Yeah, screw you Broadcom. I was about to start the VCP-DCV track. Luckily this takeover happened right before I spent the money for the mandatory education
Yeah, I was really surprised when Broadcom contacted me. Someone there noticed my LSI troubleshooting videos and said they have been sharing it internally. LOL Blew my mind! Ha ha ha. It was nice of them to loan me some hardware, so I can't complain about that.
I understand the frustration about the direction VMware is going. I had similar frustrations with IBM/RedHat since I've been a RHEL/CentOS user for over 2 decades. Ultimately, it comes down to business decisions. Some might say the move is short sighted, and sometimes years later that's what can be concluded, but sometimes it turns out to be the right decision for the business. Only time will tell. At least in the most recent quarterly earnings, VMware revenue is rising in double digits quarter over quarter so they are doing really well as a business.
@@BinaryBlueBull Totally agree. They are milking their existing client base for as much as they can whilst cutting off access to learning in home-lab environments. So building resentment in their existing pool of money and preventing people from learning about their products while there are free and proven alternatives out there. Whatever could go wrong?
It's typical of the new way of doing business - extract as much value from a transaction and milk it for all it's worth......profits today and screw future business.
@@BinaryBlueBull I used to work for one of the large banks which has a massive investment in VmWare, MASSIVE. One thing Broadcom is going to discover is that Banks are VERY cost sensitive. They will spend money to get rid of something that is too expensive, by hook or by crook. I've seen initiatives where some company thinks their $50m software licensing per year is an infinite money glitch. Guess what happens? The bank will build the same functionality using their own internal software team and cast you adrift (yes, I worked on a project for 2 years building functionality and getting rid of a vendor that was this expensive). Any CTO at a large bank that sees this Broadcomm move and doesn't have an exit strategy needs to start looking for another job. If Microsoft is a large VmWare customers you think they're going to stick around handing you giant subscription fees after you fired most of your own staff when Microsoft is more than capable and has similar products in their internal portfolio? I wish Broadcomm all the luck in the wars to come.
@@ArtofServerOn your last video I wanted to make a comment about Broadcom but I didn't as it didn't seem appropriate. I couldn't resist this time 😂
The broadcom website says internal ports 16 , but it also says : Devices Supported > SAS/SATA: 240, NVMe: 32, but how? do you then add another broadcom hardware product to 1 of the 2 ports or is there a different connector on it, and if so what hardware. And do you lose raid capabilitys then? I ask because i want to do raid 6 with 24 sata ssd's.
They have PCIe switchers (for the nvme) and sas expanders for SAS/SATA. He has a video about expanders. I'm trying to find info on PCIe switch boards that are (for nvme) like this one but inverted: they offer 8 PCIe 4.0 for the nvme and 16 PCIe 3.0 for the slot - that enables PCIe 3.0 slots to take full advantage of PCIe 4.0 m.2 nvme. They are simpler than the card he's showing - they do use Broadcom ICs but those are only switches while this card has a CPU that implements the PCIe bridge to SAS/SATA/nvme.
The card has 16 SAS/SATA lanes for direct connectivity to storage devices. But if you want to connect more drives than that, you can use a SAS expander device that acts like a switch for SAS. That's how you would connect up to 240 drives, for example. I'm not sure about the NVMe side, but there PLX PCIe switches as well, so I think a similar mechanism, but using a PCIe signaling switch instead of SAS.
I can't wait to see the tests!!!
Thanks for watching!
thank you for this educational lesson!! thank you.
Thank you for watching! :-)
Definitely a weird move from Broadcom to send this controller alongside that beast of an Epyc server. I can't see a single advantage of actually running your NVMe drives through this controller, instead of straight to the CPU. But I guess your testing will showcase this, so I'm looking forward to it.
Yeah, my initial instinct was that too. However, without giving away anything, if someone wanted to use NVMe drives in a HW RAID configuration, this would be the only choice in the server space.
What is the point of an additional host adapter card, whence disks could be connected directly to PCIe lanes?
The ability to setup RAID on NVMe drives.
@@ArtofServer Hardware RAID? Interesting! The concept is apparently not entirely dead. I wonder, if there's really a point in it in 2024, given the proliferation of software-based RAID solutions (e.g. ZFS, Ceph, etc.)?
The problem with the earlier revision of the 9560-16i with the smaller heat sink was that it overheated. It requires a small fan constantly blowing on the heat sink.
Oh, did you run into that problem on the earlier revision with smaller heatsink?
The card itself is a pcie 4.0 8x card. How does that translate to 16 lanes?
16 SAS/SATA lanes, not PCIe lanes. the card has 8 PCIe lanes and 16 SAS/SATA lanes.
Greetings.
I have some question about LSI SAS 9205-8i controller. I did not buy it from You ( but I wish to buy ). Making long story short - I have mounted this card to Gigabyte ( new 13th gen Intel ) and to old Asus ( 4 cores Athlon ). In both cases problem was the same - with SAS disks inserted none of operating system (TrueNas Wcale/Core, Proxmoxa, Debian, Ubuntu ) could boot up. Without disks everything was OK but after inserting disks problems occured - one of disks was invisible or made "Kernel panic". I have Supermicro 846 chassi with SAS2 EL1 backplane installed. With Supermicro motherboard everything is just fine. Do You have somekind od experience with this problem?
Second - could You send HBA card to Poland? Could You recommend me any HBA for Yours shop which will be working with no problems in regular PC motherboard?
Hi! If you need help troubleshooting LSI HBA cards, you should checkout my playlist here:
ruclips.net/p/PL28eVGz5vFQ9cGBGhFzCtHqQ-TtXBZV6m
From your description, it sounds like maybe the SAS lanes are shorted and when connected, it closes the short and causes the card to crash. That's just a guess based on your description. I cannot know for sure without examining and testing the card myself.
I do ship outside the USA using eBay's international shipping program, which is like a freight forwarder. Poland is on the list of eligible countries.
@@ArtofServer in my server are two sff8087 connectors. In server embeded card everything is fine. With new card i tried all combinations - I switched cables, tried first cable alone in both connectors, then second cable and nothing worked. Disks are working fine in server.
@@ArtofServer Hi, I have a quick question about HBAs? Mine idles between 69-75 C though it never goes higher than 75, even under load. It's in a server chassis with stock fans, so I had assumed it'd be alright, but do you think I need to add a fan?