Dell PowerVault MD1220 + PERC H810

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outsider

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Jan 21, 2017
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Newbie here when it comes to disk shelves and connectivity to a server.
Looking at getting a 24 bay disk shelf (Dell PowerVault MD1220) and a Perc H810 (flashed in IT mode) to run a bunch of SSDs in TrueNas (ZFS), but know nothing about disk shelf connectivity.

How do these disk shelves work? I see that the Perc h810 card has 8 SAS lanes to connect to the disk shelf, and the disk shelf has 2 separate controllers.
1. How are the controllers in the disk shelf connected? Are 12 disks connected to one controller and the other 12 to the other?
2. If 12 disks are connected to one controller, there are only 8 SAS lanes on the H810 card. Considering that I'm connecting the TrueNas server to a 10GB lan, will the Perc H810 card be sufficient, or do I run the risk of a bottleneck accessing the SSDs since only 8 lanes feed 12 drives?
3. Does it mean that each drive only gets 2/3 of the throughput (8 lanes, 12 disks) if each disk is accessed independently?
4. Will the MD1220 work with SATA SSD? Or will I need SAS SSDs?
5. Can I mix SATA and SAS ssds?
6. Any other considerations I should be thinking of when using these disk disk shelves and controller cards?
 
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ericloewe

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Apr 24, 2017
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2. If 12 disks are connected to one controller, there are only 8 SAS lanes on the H810 card. Considering that I'm connecting the TrueNas server to a 10GB lan, will the Perc H810 card be sufficient, or do I run the risk of a bottleneck accessing the SSDs since only 8 lanes feed 12 drives?
I mean, simplistically, 4 * 6 Gb/s = 24 Gb/s > 10 Gb/s - which sounds like plenty for most situations. And that's with the simpler option of only running one cable. Running two cables for eight lanes doesn't always work cleanly, but it is theoretically well-supported in the SAS ecosystem.
3. Does it mean that each drive only gets 2/3 of the throughput (8 lanes, 12 disks) if each disk is accessed independently?
Think of SAS expanders as Ethernet switches for SAS.