HBA (Host Bus Adapters)

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.