Anything with a SAS expander will do that, if you get one that supports 12G or newer it should also aggregate multiple 6G disks into a single 12G lane to the HBA. Unfortunately the backplanes tend to be pretty specific to a chassis, without which the backplane is hard to use. Fortunately there are PCIe card form factor expanders, which only use the slot for power, and often have an aux power connector so they can be used without a slot at all, but you still need the backplane and a whole lot of cables.
Suggestions on low power minimum x8, 6G HBA. Low cost is a bonus.
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@nexox actually, the thing I've done it the past was to buy bunch on backplanes, design a simple chassis and 3d printed it. Trick is to print in ABS since it has higher melting point, and this setup was perfect for me for now maybe 7 years ? (geez time flies). But I was considering an upgrade from passives to actives and was hoping for a link to something specific that I could start my search from. Unfortunately people selling backplanes don't advertise whenever it's active / passive, only P/N.
Look for a heatsink, that'll be the expander, in Supermicro part numbers you want "EL1" for a single expander, along with "SAS3" for 12G speed. Many other brands use proprietary connectors, but if you find something that has a heatsink and looks like the right size you can check around to see if anyone has managed to repurpose one.
This one would be ideal for running lots of SATA SSDs: SuperMicro BPN-SAS3-216EB 24 Bay SAS SATA Backplane BPN-SAS3-216EL1 | eBay
You can connect up to two of the 4 lane ports to the HBA (I don't recall exactly, it might support all four, but usually two are for daisy chaining more disks or expanders,) but at a full 19" wide it'll almost certainly require multiple prints to make an enclosure, kind of annoying.
You can connect up to two of the 4 lane ports to the HBA (I don't recall exactly, it might support all four, but usually two are for daisy chaining more disks or expanders,) but at a full 19" wide it'll almost certainly require multiple prints to make an enclosure, kind of annoying.
Quite
But thanks a lot for that link mate !(for any future readers that might be interested, that link was a listing for SuperMicro BPN-SAS3-216EB 24 Bay SAS SATA Backplane BPN-SAS3-216EL1)
Interesting option, but those connectors indicate it's SAS2/6G, so you lose half the bandwidth between the expander and the HBA. You may also still need to print trays.
I know, that it just an example, with better cage I could just go down the route of 8 lane 9500-8e and let the expander mux the IO internally and I'm golden
Unfortunately 8 drives is typically a small enough backplane that most of them get directly connected, no expander, since the expander chips usually start at 24 lanes (though Intel has a very odd backplane with an 8 port expander, using two uplink ports for six drives.) You can of course get a standalone expander card and build whatever you want out of passive backplanes, this one is popular: Adaptec 2283400-R AEC-82885T LENOVO 36Port 12Gb/s SAS Expander Card 82885T US | eBay