HDD/SSD Controllers

A storage controller is a hardware device used to manage HDDs or SSDs in a server or storage array. While all motherboards include a basic storage controller built into the chipset, it is commonplace to add a third party storage controller if you need extra capacity or want to configure them in RAID to protect data.

A Host Bus Adapter (HBA) is an expansion card that plugs into a PCIe slot on the system’s motherboard and provides fast, reliable communication between the host system and the storage devices. HBAs can reliably connect hundreds or even thousands of HDDs, SSDs and even tape devices to the host system, making them ideal for cost-sensitive backup solutions or high-performance software defined storage (SDS) configurations.

A storage controller is a hardware device used to manage HDDs or SSDs in a server or storage array. While all motherboards include a basic storage controller built into the chipset, it is commonplace to add a third party storage controller if you need extra capacity or want to configure them in RAID to protect data.

A RAID controller card is similar to a Host Bus Adapter (HBA), but can also add redundancy (RAID) for the drives, help optimise performance, reduce latency, or even make smart decisions on whether to store data on an HDD or an SSD cache, depending on user needs. Since these additional tasks consume power and processing speed, RAID controllers are typically more expensive than HBAs and handle fewer devices. They are however recommended where data is critical and needs some degree of protection and in scenarios where different drive types are being used such as a single array containing SSDs for regularly accessed data and HDDs for archive purposes.