Dell 0T93GD SAS 12Gbps Host Bus Adapter PCI-E X8 External Controller Card T93GD

Dell 0T93GD Overview

The Dell 0T93GD (commonly known as the Dell 12Gbps SAS HBA) is a high-performance, non-RAID PCI Express (PCIe) Generation 3.0 x8 storage controller. Built on the LSI / Broadcom SAS3008 controller platform, this Host Bus Adapter (HBA) provides physical host-to-storage connectivity for external enterprise storage infrastructure.

Because it passes raw drives directly to the operating system without a hardware RAID abstraction layer (often referred to as IT Mode or Initiator-Target mode), it is an essential component for Software-Defined Storage (SDS) environments, clustered filesystems, and tape backup systems.

Technical Specifications

Key Features & Target Architectures

• 12Gbps High-Speed SAS: Delivers double the bandwidth of previous 6Gbps controllers, maximizing data throughput for high-density enterprise solid-state drive (SSD) and hard disk drive (HDD) arrays.

• External Enclosure Connectivity: Designed primarily to attach the host server to external storage vaults, such as the Dell PowerVault MD1400 and MD1420 JBODs (Just a Bunch Of Disks), or dense external tape drives (e.g., LTO-6, LTO-7, LTO-8, LTO-9).

• Software-Defined Storage (SDS) Friendly: Provides clean, direct block-level access to individual drives. This makes it a preferred choice for:

  • VMware vSAN configurations

  • Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct (S2D)

  • TrueNAS / ZFS file pools

  • Ceph storage nodes

• Dual-Port Multipathing: Enables redundant path signaling over a dual-domain architecture to eliminate single points of failure across external SAS cabling configurations.

System Compatibility

Target Dell PowerEdge Servers

Natively validated and designed for Dell PowerEdge 13th and 14th Generation server lines, including:

• Rack Servers: R430, R530, R630, R730, R730xd, R930, R440, R540, R640, R740, R740xd, R940

• Tower Servers: T430, T630, T440, T640

Operating System Support

• Microsoft Windows Server (2012 R2, 2016, 2019, 2022)

• VMware ESXi 6.5, 6.7, 7.0, 8.0, and later

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) / SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)

• Ubuntu Server / Debian Linux

Technical Note: This adapter utilizes high-density Mini-SAS HD (SFF-8644) external connections. If you are linking this adapter to legacy 6Gbps external enclosures that use older Mini-SAS (SFF-8088) receptacles, you will need a specialized hybrid SFF-8644 to SFF-8088 conversion cable to establish the data link.