External raid card

[KarlFranz]

I can't imagine when a external raid card is useful.

For internal, you can connect more drives IN your case. But for external? How to power your external drives?

Someone can explain it to me please? Or post some pictures.

Thank you in advance.

 

[ttabbal]

They are called JBOD cases. It's basically a case, power supply, and drive bays with a port to connect the external HBA. There are special cables for this use. Not used a lot by home users, though there are a few, think cloud storage providers.

 

[KarlFranz]

So.

If I bought a 8port external card.

I need 2 cable mini sas to mini sas and another card with 8port external and 8 port internal in a "jbod case" to add 8 drives to main system?

I can't figure how it work. And why buy this versus internal card.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

Simply because I've run out of physical space inside the case and wanted to expand my NAS with additional drives. I've recently bought an external SAS JBOD shelf. It came with external SAS ports. Once wired to my main NAS pc, these (12) drives are showing up as internal drives. with 6gbps connectivity (or 12gbps on newer models) you aren't losing my performance vs internal drives.
Also, keep in mind that SAS is backward compatible with SATA drives.
One other thing is you could daisy-chain SAS shelves for even more drives.

 

[KarlFranz]

If i understand this link
https://www.servethehome.com/sas-expanders-diy-cheap-low-cost-jbod-enclosures-raid/

I can create my own external sas jbod case

Each external port can be connect to a sas expander in another case with 8, 16, 20 drives?

 

[BoredSysadmin]

Basically yes. One nuance: You do not always have to build your own JBOD case, but you could just get enterprise level SAS JBOD shelf out eBay for peanuts. I bought external SAS HBA, Sas mini cables and this shelf for a total of $175 shipped.
Xyratex JBOD Expansion Array 12 x 3.5" 6Gb/s SAS Hard Drive Bay HB-1235 Dell HP | eBay

One big catch is this shelf is quite loud, but it doesn't bother me as I don't hear it humming away in the basement.

 

[gregsachs]

Here is an example of just such a diy jbod, showing the intel sas expander and the supermicro sff8088/8087 cable hooked to it. This is a AIC industrial 2u 12x3.5" bay chassis I got for peanuts. Also what it looks like in megaraid, along with my xb-1235. Now I'll go shut the diy box back down, it is backup only...

 

[KarlFranz]

So this could be a good exemple a external case to buy?

DELL PowerVault MD3000 14x 3.5" bays with caddy 250$
DELL EqualLogic PS400 14x 3.5" bays with caddy 400$

I currently have a 4u rosewing 15x bays with 2x2tb, 11x3tb and 2x6tb.

I need to choice.

Buy 2x 10tb new drives $$$$$

Or buy a external case with a lot of space and buy many refurb 3tb drives with some 3tb drives spare if one become dead.

P.s. the 2 cade are sale at kijiji a vendor from montreal Québec.