So, a couple dumb questions of the day from someone very familiar with computer hardware, but has never played around with HBAs and SAS backplanes...
I have a SuperMicro 846BA-R920B 4U server chassis with the BPN-SAS-846
A backplane that's intended for a converged NAS + Docker/VM home server build. I chose to go with the "A" backplane knowing I'd have to individually cable each drive to the HBA since I figured it would provide max performance & future proofing including ability to support SSD speeds (e.g. no multiplexing of drives going on; each drive has a dedicated connection to the HBA)... at the cost of a cabling mess. I currently have (8) WD 8TB Reds that will go into this chassis. Probably a few SSDs/NVMEs too for VM image hosting. Still working out MB/CPU/HBA for the project, but likely looking at the new E-2300 series, W-1300 series, D-1500 series, or Ryzen Zen3.
Q1: If I were to pickup one of these cards (AOC-S3008L-L8E), I assume I'd just need to flash the HBA into IT mode (JBOD mode) then cable all 8 drives using SAS-to-SATA breakout cables? I plan to run ZFS of some sort (Ubuntu, TrueNAS, etc.).
Q2: Looks like the card's miniSAS connector interface is SFF-8643? What SFF # would be on the 4x SATA breakout side of that cable? I assume it'd be something like this x2?
Amazon.com
Q3: Other than PCI slot consumption, is there any performance or power consumption differences in running (2) 8i's vs. (1) 16i? I think either can handle my 8 spinners and couple SSDs OK, but am unsure on heat and power consumption of running 2x8 vs 1x16. I could probably get by with a single 8 port for the spinners and run the SSDs off of the MB's onboard SATA ports if needed, but would be nice to have 16 ports on the HBA since the chassis supports growth to 24 drives. But if the 8 and 16 port cards draw similar power, probably would be smarter to run (1) 16 vs (2) 8s.
Edit: Looks like the published spec is 13W for the 8 port. Wierdly, the 4 port consumes 14.25W. And the 9305-16i consumes 16.2W per spec. So it does look like running one 16 port card is more power efficient than running two 8 ports, which makes sense.