Any good and cheap cards with 8 external SAS ports?

[zicoz]

I'm looking into how I'm going to expand my server in the future, and what I think I want to do is use SAS and external chassis, but I'm not sure what would be the best card for this.

My main chassis has the Intel expander for it's 20 internal drives, and I'm thinking of using those in the external chassis aswell (the other option is to use expander chassis with the expander built it), but what should I use in the main chassis with external ports?

I want to be able to connect 2 external chassis to the main chassis to begin with, so I'll need a 8 port card with 2 external ports SFF8088 ports.

Would that be the best solution to go with something like a Intel card with some of these?

To begin with I wanted to get one of those new Chenbro expandercards with 2 external ports, but these don't seem to be on the market.

 

[Patrick]

The HP SAS Expander has an external SFF-8088 port. If you do use those, you do not need an adapter. Then again, powering the Intel expander is much easier.

 

[zicoz]

I assume you're thinking of using that in the external enclosure? Yeah, I've been looking at that, but I don't really need all the ports of the HP SAS expander since I'm using 20 drive chassis, and as you say powering the intel one is easier.

 

[odditory]

there's no such thing as "good and cheap" that also has 2 x SFF-8088 ports on board. you'll have to use a sff-8087 to sff-8088 PCI bracket like the one in the photo you posted.

 

[zicoz]

Ok thanks, any suggestions on what card I should use? Perhaps something that has 6Gbit support?

And is this a good price for a bracket?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4-Port-SFF-...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item35ad7ef1f6

4 porter for $109.

 

[Patrick]

What OS/ RAID type are you planning to use or is a simple HBA OK?

In general, I am a bigger fan of the Areca and LSI 6.0gbps products this generation.

I think I have two of those from PC-Pitstop and they work fine although I don't use them anymore.

 

[zicoz]

I'm hoping to continue using Windows Home Server 2k11. But before I can put the machine into "production" the Stablebit and DriveBender people will have to finnish their products. But I don't need Raid, just an HBA.

 

[zicoz]

Is the Megaraid Sas 9240-8I any good?

 

[PigLover]

Is the Megaraid Sas 9240-8I any good?

Yes - its an outstanding HBA. I wouldn't use it for Raid5 (no cache, no BBU, wouldn't use Raid5 for anything with today's large hard drives - you want Raid6, etc). But as a ZFS/MD-Raid HBA or for Raid 0/1/10 it is outstanding. Plenty of throughput for spinny disks (maybe not for newer SSDs). Plays very nice with SAS expanders. Supported by just about any modern OS you can think of. Passes through non-raid disks transparently without needing a special "it mode" flash, etc.

But I wouldn't buy it labelled as "9240-8i". Too darn expensive. The IBM ServerRaid M1015 is a relabeled 9240-8i with the Raid5 function locked out unless you buy a separate key. You can find them regularly on Ebay for $60-$90 each, sometimes less (there was a site selling a bunch of them for $32 each just last week, but they are sold out). Most of the ones on ebay are brand new, unused pulls from IBM servers (seems IBM packages them with their baseline servers, but most enterprise users are pulling them out because they use network SAN infrastructure and don't need the HBA). A much better deal than buying the brand-name label.

I own/use 4 of them. The M1015 is an outstanding card.

 

[zicoz]

Thank you. I'll keep an eye out for some of them on Ebay then.