Currently looking for ways to connect my harddrives to my motherboard, and want to understand this SAS expander thing before I buy it. So let's see if I understand this correctly:
First: Connecting 20 2TB drives to this will make 20 2TB drives show up in the OS right? I won't get 1 40GB drive? The reason I ask is the JBOD comment in the OP, I always think of alot of drives bundeled into one "pool" when I think of JBOD.
I have a Norco 4220 with a SuperMicro X8ST3-F motherboard.
- The Norco has room for 20 drives.
- The X8ST3-F has an onboard LSI 1068e chip with 8 ports
If I wanted to only have one chassis I guess I needed to do the following:
I don't know if the LSI 1068e supports the Link Aggregation, so depending on that I'd have to use either 1 or 2 cables from that to the SAS expander.
(small edit on that the 2nd external cable is supposed to be connected to the green HP card, not the pink HBA card)
Correct?
And if I want to have two chassis it would look like this:
Correct?
At this time I'd have 40 drives connected to 4 or 8 ports on the motherboard (depending on if the LSI 1068 can handle Link aggregation). Is that smart?
And what if I want to have 3 chassis? Would I install an HBA/RAID card and a 2nd expander like this?
Correct?
If the LSI 1068e does not support Link Aggregation I'd get a HBA/RAID card that does, and then connect that to the HP expander is connected to 40 drives, that I'd have 4 SATA ports per 20 drive.
Am I better off using one of the INTEL cards in my external chassis?