looking for chasis for diy home SAN

[Allenster]

I've been googling all morning looking for a chassis that has 12 hot swap bays of SAS3. I figure I need a box that comes with motherboard and power supplies (redundant) with the mboard having a single proc and good pci so I can run an infiniband fdr card on it. I've run across a ton of supermicro boxes but they all have so much more than I need that its daunting! could really use some recommendations on the right chassis combo to run.

oh yea, needs to be rackmount as this is going into my 1/3 rack at the local co-lo.

 

[azev]

if you are set on getting one with SAS3 backplane then you are going to pay premium for them currently.
If you can live with "A" type of the backplane (They should be compatible with SAS3) then I think you can find those at a decent price on ebay.

 

[Allenster]

if you are set on getting one with SAS3 backplane then you are going to pay premium for them currently.
If you can live with "A" type of the backplane (They should be compatible with SAS3) then I think you can find those at a decent price on ebay.

so help me understand the difference? i'm going to spend $4k to $5k total on this build and i want the disk access to be lightning fast if possible.

 

[pricklypunter]

Expander backplane or Direct connect

Expander backplane - 3gbps, 6 gbps, 12Gbps (SAS-EL* Backplanes)

Direct connect - "A" type (Mini-SAS connectors 8087), "TQ" (SATA Connectors used with breakout cables)

 

[Allenster]

Expander backplane or Direct connect

Expander backplane - 3gbps, 6 gbps, 12Gbps (SAS-EL* Backplanes)

Direct connect - "A" type (Mini-SAS connectors 8087), "TQ" (SATA Connectors used with breakout cables)

gotcha, thanks for the clarification. I need the SAS backplane only insofar is it will make this easier to swap drives in and out. Your point is well taken though, I need ot make sure the backplane is as fast as the drives.

 

[azev]

if you are using "fast drive" as in SSD then SAS3 or direct connect backplane make sense, however even sas3 spinners cannot saturate sas2 backplane easily. The only issues with directconnect is that you need controller with as many ports needed for your build.

Since your budget is up there, something like this will probably do.