High Point RocketStor 6328

[osxster]

Hello,

Are there any there owners of the High Point RocketStor 6328 Thunderbolt 2 RAID controller? I have one hooked up to a NetApp DS4246 SAS expander which holds 24 drives. Direct support of SAS drives and it works great. It is on a Mac mini running High Sierra. Was thinking of moving this or upgrading something, but High Point claims this RAID controller won't support higher than 10.8 although the release notes for the latest version of drives they sent me says 10.9. Has anyone gotten this RAID controller to work with Monterey or even on something like a Mac Studio (or any TB3 Mac)? I've gone back and forth with High Point, but they claim the "direct replacement" for the 6328 is the 6661A-mSAS3, but this doesn't support SAS expanders. So there is no direct replacement and it would be nice to upgrade the OS or server hardware in front of my SAS Enclosure. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Was even considering putting to use my xServe with a Thunderbolt card. Thanks!

 

[hobowankenobi]

Been years since I was around any High Point gear, can't say. Did just retire an intel Mini that was using an Areca SAS card converted to TB 2 via an older version of the Sonnet xMac mini rack case. Was rock solid for many years from about 10.8 up through OS 11 connected to a 18 drive (SATA) array. I had the lower-cost model without SAS expander support, but they do offer it on the higher-end cards.

I would go back to Areca in a heartbeat if I needed a higher-end, enterprise grade Mac-friendly RAID Controller.

Others that have been solid for Mac enterprise users over the years would be Small Tree and ATTO, though it looks like they have moved away from traditional PCI SAS cards...

 

[osxster]

Do any of those offer SAS expander support? It kind of sucks that High Point dropped all support from this card. It wasn’t a cheap card either.

o.

 

[hobowankenobi]

The Areca card supports SAS / SAS Expander. I also see that Sans Digital still has SAS controllers too.