Intel RES3TV360

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PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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It is a single card in a box. The "5-pack" refers to the bigger box that these are pulled from. Its an Intel labeling/sku issue - the inner boxes are not separately labelled for sale. Provantage, at least, will offer a refund if you are not satisfied but i wouldn't expect to get 5 expander cards at this price.

Yes - that is a Molex for power and yes - it does power the card and work outside of an Intel chassis. I have an idea for mounting it in a SM chassis and will post pictures if it works out well (obviously no pictures if it is a fail or looks like crap :)).
 
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Patrick

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OK then. Still not a terrible price for the single expander.
 

badskater

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I made a request at a Canadian Distributor to see if it's one or 5, as they have the same item label (5 pack) and for $465. I guess it would be one, but making sure myself.

Edit: The provider confirmed that it was a "dodgy" practice by Intel, and they're trying to get it changed, so they can say that it's only one on their website. That same provider checks here often as well, as they confirmed it, and sent a link to the forum as well confirming the info put here. :)
 
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Chuckleb

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As @PigLover said, there was just one. I called home to have them open the box and check. I have an email from Provantage saying that there would be 5 so at least it'll be easy to prove them wrong and get a return.

Sorry for the lead folks.
 
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capn_pineapple

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Aug 28, 2013
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As @PigLover said, there was just one. I called home to have them open the box and check. I have an email from Provantage saying that there would be 5 so at least it'll be easy to prove them wrong and get a return.

Sorry for the lead folks.
Send them a message requesting the other 4 as per their correspondence.
 
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whitey

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IIRC, PMC Sierra has been in the game for quite a bit and I almost want to say was a 'supplier/developer' of some LSI gear or some collaboration unless my mind is playing tricks on me. I had a SAS expander from them a good while back that has been in happy operation at the co-lo for a few yrs now w/ no issues and top notch performance in a norco 4224 hybrid ZFS stg array driving a VMware Horizon VDI stack of 200+ VM's.

It's this one: Astek A33606-PCI ($425 from Astek's online store), seems like 500-600 everywhere else including ebay.

A33606-PCI - Serial Attached SCSI Expanders - Astek Corporation

LSISAS2x36 based but I SWEAR PMC Sierra was 'under the hood' somewhere again unless my mind is playing tricks on me or I am thinking of something else. Sweet lil' expander w/ unique connectivity options w/ the 2x 8088's as well IMO.
 
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cn9amt100up

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I wonder, what's the different between the "5 pack" and "normal pack" ? What's inside the box if I buy a 5 pack versions of RES3TV360?
 

Chuckleb

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You get a brown box with 1 card if you buy the 5 pack. I assume the normal pack may be the retail box with the fancy picture and marketing text. Either way, 1 card ;).
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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IIRC, PMC Sierra has been in the game for quite a bit and I almost want to say was a 'supplier/developer' of some LSI gear or some collaboration unless my mind is playing tricks on me. I had a SAS expander from them a good while back that has been in happy operation at the co-lo for a few yrs now w/ no issues and top notch performance in a norco 4224 hybrid ZFS stg array driving a VMware Horizon VDI stack of 200+ VM's.

It's this one: Astek A33606-PCI ($425 from Astek's online store), seems like 500-600 everywhere else including ebay.

A33606-PCI - Serial Attached SCSI Expanders - Astek Corporation

LSISAS2x36 based but I SWEAR PMC Sierra was 'under the hood' somewhere again unless my mind is playing tricks on me or I am thinking of something else. Sweet lil' expander w/ unique connectivity options w/ the 2x 8088's as well IMO.
PMC Sierra owns the Adaptec brand and is now licensing the HP SA brand, both are powered by PMC chips.
PMC has strong controllers and expanders and is poised to dethrone Avago/LSI shortly.
The new Samsung NVMe drive uses a PMC controller...

I don't recall them ever collaborating with LSI.
 
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Patrick

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Here is a test I am not sure if I am going to get to do anytime soon but:
1. Install SAS expander and connect to 12gbps SAS HBA
2. Install 4x RAID 0 SATA 6.0gbps SSDs and benchmark
3. Install 8x RAID 0 SATA 6.0gbps SSDs and benchmark

Compare results of 2 and 3.

LSI/ Avago has a technology to allow the back haul 4x 12gbps links to operate at 12gbps speeds even if the expander is connected to 6.0gbps drives. I would really like to see what this PMC Sierra controller does.
 
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Entz

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Apr 25, 2013
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Canada Eh?
LSI/ Avago has a technology to allow the back haul 4x 12gbps links to operate at 12gbps speeds even if the expander is connected to 6.0gbps drives. I would really like to see what this PMC Sierra controller does.
Would be fantastic if you can check that part out at least. Would let you drive 11-12 SSDs at full speed from a single card.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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If I had 8 spare SSDs lying around I'd give this a shot too. The PMC Sierra expander chip advertises this same feature, as well as dual-linking (which means it could work well with up to 16 6g SSDs). It also supports a form of buffering when mixing speeds of HBA, drives and daisy-chained backplanes/expanders. AFAIK lsi does not advertise this kind of tunnel buffering on their sas3 expander.

For more info on capabilities look at the PMC site for info on the chip capabilities and at the Adaptec expander based on this same expander chip
 

Patrick

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If I had 8 spare SSDs lying around I'd give this a shot too. The PMC Sierra expander chip advertises this same feature, as well as dual-linking (which means it could work well with up to 16 6g SSDs).
Any idea what the feature is called in PMC terms? I admit, I know the LSI version not PMC.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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No. Just recall reading it in the product descriptions. I was almost ready to order the Adaptec expander when these Intels started showing up at a good price. Problem with the Adaptec is that eight ports are external and you can't get 24 drives connected on the internal connectors if you dual link the hba. The Intel model does not have this problem.
 

Patriot

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The HP discover demo on the windows side for 1Million Iops off a single controller used SAS2 backplanes with SAS3 controller.
 
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Chuckleb

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So to close out the thread, I checked with Provantage, just to get them to correct the listing and pay for shipping back. They saw the 5 pack as well and checked upstream to their distributors, etc. It's supposed to be single pack and they'll correct things. So all is good.
 
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