I have Norco 4220 with an Areca 1880 and HP SAS Expander. I built a HTPC in a Norco 4116 chasis and I am adding a 2nd HP SAS Expander on the HTPC motherboard but connected to the Areca 1880 in the server. Because the raid drives and HP SAS Expander will be powered from the HTPC, what will happen if I reboot the HTPC while they are connected to the server? Will I also have to reboot the server or will the Areca 1880 pick the SAS Expander/Drives back up?
2 - HP SAS Expander on 1 - Areca 1880, 2nd SAS in 2nd chassis, what happens at reboot
- Thread starter bigzaj
- Start date
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Assuming you are powering the HP SAS expander from the MB of the HTPC, then bad things will happen if the SAS expander processes the PCIe reset (don't know if it will or not). If the reboot causes the power supply in your HTPC to go off, even for a short time, then very bad things will happen - especially if you do this when the drives are being written to. You probably want to ensure that this does not happen.
Suggestion: the remaining HTPC function probably doesn't require much power. Get yourself a PicoPSU to run the HTPC and use the existing PSU in the 4116 chassis to power the hard drives. Get a thin PCIe backplane to power the HP SAS expander (see the HP thread at [H] for more on this). The only tricky part is figuring out how to trigger the existing PSU to start up - easiest way is to just hard-wire it, which works well for servers since you generally don't power them off a all.
Suggestion: the remaining HTPC function probably doesn't require much power. Get yourself a PicoPSU to run the HTPC and use the existing PSU in the 4116 chassis to power the hard drives. Get a thin PCIe backplane to power the HP SAS expander (see the HP thread at [H] for more on this). The only tricky part is figuring out how to trigger the existing PSU to start up - easiest way is to just hard-wire it, which works well for servers since you generally don't power them off a all.
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I'm thinking I might just replace the mobo in the server with one that has the additional PCI-e I need (need 3) and run both SAS Expanders out off the main board and use external SAS a 4port internal/external SAS connector to go to the second case. And also do the two PSU setup for the HDDs.
PigLover is correct, that you need to control the power to the expander separately. The PicoPSU + normal PSU combination in the HTPC box is also more or less what I did on the DIY SAS Expander Iteration 2. I would shy away from locating a PCIe power source for a SAS expander that is connected to a client system.