M1015 Maximum physical HDD capacity?

[JimPhreak]

I'm trying to find some hard data on how many physical SATA HDD's I can attach to a single M1015. Currently I have 2 SAS-t0-SATA(4) cables that allow me to do this. I'm wondering if this card is capable of handling more than this though.

 

[markarr]

Without an expander it can only handle 8 drives, as it only has 8 ports available on the two connectors.

 

[JimPhreak]

I see. So therefore since my board is Mini-ITX I'm limited to the 8 ports per the M1015 plus whatever onboard SATA ports I have.

 

[xnoodle]

Barring the use of a expander, yes. Expander doesn't necessarily require a PCI-E x8 slot.

 

[markarr]

Correct the Intel expander can be powered by a molex connector if you have room in the case to put another card. It also has mounting holes on the card for that reason.

 

[TuxDude]

Theoretically using SAS expanders, switches, etc.you can have up to 65535 devices in a SAS domain.

More realistically, if you route both ports on your card out the rear to external JBOD chassis with internal expanders, and daisy-chain a few such JBODs off each port, and have the card in IT mode, you should have no problems attaching a few hundred drives to that card.

 

[PigLover]

The LSI 2008 chip this card is built on supports a max of 256 attached devices. It is possible some other limit in the IBM board design might apply but - barring actual documentation on the M1015 - 256 is the most likely answer

One more thing: even with Documentation from IBM you might not know the answer. Their documentation will likely state the largest system configuration they actually sell using it rather than the actual limitation of the card. This is because they don't actually sell this card stand-alone, but rather they sell systems that happen to contain this card (or cards only as part of upgrade kits for those systems).