JBOD freenas expansion SuperMicro

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RonnieFlink

New Member
Nov 18, 2017
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You don't have to replace the backplane if you have enough HBAs / SATA / SAS ports to connect 24 drives. In theory, that actually is the fastest way to connect your drives - expanders are always limiting bandwidth, even if that may not be really relevant in everyday use.

Another advantage of the BPN-SAS-846A backplane is that it actually supports SAS3 (12Gb/s), even if unofficially.
Neat. So since I have X10SL7-F, can I use the 8x SAS2 Ports on the mobo with 2 reverse breakout cables? And then I need to figure out which HBA I need to get for the other 2 (or 4) sff-8087 backplane connections. (Motherboard had 1x PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16), 1x PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8))
 
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Aestr

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Oct 22, 2014
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If you're just using this as a freenas server and serving data to other devices on your network the speed from an direct connect A backplane probably isn't noticeable. The SAS2 expanders while technically limiting allow for 24gbit/s on a single sff-8087 connection, so really until you get to 25gbit connectivity you shouldn't be limited. You could then save your PCI-E 3.0 8x slot for a NIC that can take advantage of those speeds.
 

RonnieFlink

New Member
Nov 18, 2017
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If you're just using this as a freenas server and serving data to other devices on your network the speed from an direct connect A backplane probably isn't noticeable. The SAS2 expanders while technically limiting allow for 24gbit/s on a single sff-8087 connection, so really until you get to 25gbit connectivity you shouldn't be limited. You could then save your PCI-E 3.0 8x slot for a NIC that can take advantage of those speeds.
That seems reasonable. I'm going to get a cheaper 8x HBA now then I could always update that to 16 and get a faster NIC someday if I want to.

I bought that Chassis and plan to move the server into it. Thanks for all of the help, this have been very insightful.
 
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