On Tue, 10/21/2025 9:45 PM, T wrote:

On 10/21/25 6:44 PM, T wrote:

Hi All,

Any of you guys have a recommendation for a hardware
based RAID controller that takes NVMe drives?

Many thanks,
-T

That is Windows server friendly

I thought we'd addressed that in a previous discussion.

It was a RAID controller for NVMe, that did not rely
on an NVMe module being in the computer BIOS package.

For example, my ten year old 4930K machine, the BIOS
has no NVMe module support, it cannot enumerate an NVMe
if one was placed on a $10 PCIe card blank.

The solution to that, was a couple models of RAID controllers
made by a particular company, where the ROM on the RAID
controller, contained a BIOS-interval module for scanning
the NVMe for boot-able materials (UEFI boot, let's say).

There are two kinds of RAID modules:

1) Simple and cheap card where the computer software
does RAID0 or RAID1 between two NVMe module, and it is
all possible because it is a kind of "soft RAID" and
simple PCIe wiring and BIOS level modules (like maybe an
Intel thing), enable a solution to be made for pennies
for the infrastructure (the two NVMe still costs hundreds each).

2) The fancy card, with the support on board. There, you are
at least paying for the loadable module in ROM. On the more
expensive of the cards, maybe an XOR unit is available for RAID5
or the like.

The most effective card, is capable of 56GB/sec or so,
but it might not boot the computer and it might be a "data-only"
array capable of assisting an AI to load a complete model in only
a second. That would be eight modules at 7GB/sec, rather than
four modules at 14GB/sec (because the PCIe5 modules, they're
still playing with them and trying to improve the numbers).

Summary: There are boot drives and data drives, when it comes to
plugin/addon PCIe sled NVMe devices. You should state clearly
what your priorities are for the product:

1) absolute bandwidth (RAID0), boot not an issue, data only card
2) a reliable boot card for OS (not likely to be more than 2TB of protected-capacity)
3) a reliable (RAID5/RAID6) with XOR assist and wire speed
There may be more than just a PCIe switch chip on it. Heatsink likely.
Maybe 48TB of storage.

Few consumer machines have sufficient slots to build a battleship.
But some of the servers with $1000+ mobo, have seven PCIe5 x16 slots,
and are suited to high speed adventure. The CPU costs $10K, so why not.

https://www.techpowerup.com/248873/highpoint-releases-bootable-quad-m-2-nvme-raid-card-the-ssd7102

RAID0,1,10 PCIe3 sleds (slow) https://www.amazon.ca/HighPoint-SSD7104-Controller-Windows-Systems/dp/B08M11TGDV

Not seeing a lot of RAID5/RAID6/XOR-accelerated ones. https://www.servethehome.com/highpoint-ssd7540-8x-m-2-nvme-ssd-card-review-sabrent/

Driverless is nice (avoids a DKMS issue on Linux), but I still don't think much of the RAIDing options.

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/product-page/ssd6202a

Paul

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