WTB: Supermicro SC846

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pc-tecky

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May 1, 2013
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Those SAS cables look sharp. How much did they cost?

How much does an HBA SAS 2 (for FreeNAS) run?
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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www.glaver.org
Those SAS cables look sharp. How much did they cost?
They're between $10 and $15 each depending on length and quantity. Quantity is the problem - 3M's distributors have a minimum order of between 300 and 1000 pieces of a specific length.
How much does an HBA SAS 2 (for FreeNAS) run?
That's a 9201-16i. Around $335 from Newegg, $100-$150 used on eBay.
 

sfbayzfs

Active Member
May 6, 2015
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SF Bay area
They're between $10 and $15 each depending on length and quantity. Quantity is the problem - 3M's distributors have a minimum order of between 300 and 1000 pieces of a specific length.
Hmmm, anyone interested in a group buy? Can anyone point me to the spec sheets with connector options and lengths? (Do they offer SFF-8087, SFF-8643, and quad SATA with or without locking connectors and sideband connectors?)

That's a 9201-16i. Around $335 from Newegg, $100-$150 used on eBay.
I have never seen a used 9201-16i go for less than 180, and they don't seem to come up that often, but I might have missed all of the cheap ones :) They seem to go for $220-240 when I have seen them up for bids. I only managed to get one for ~$220, but no spare, so I sold it. The 8-port internal cards are a lot easier to find, so just use 2 if you have enough free PCIe slots. Then again, if you find a 9201-16i for $150 or less, snag it!

I think the 9201-16i cards are extra popular with people using ITX boards where they only have 1 PCIe slot, and if you don't want to use expanders, the 16i is the highest density you can get in an HBA.
 
Last edited:

izx

Active Member
Jan 17, 2016
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I think the 9201-16i cards are extra popular with people using ITX boards where they only have 1 PCIe slot, and if you don't want to use expanders, the 16i is the highest density you can get in an HBA.
Your mini-ITX NAS boards shall be barren no more! Avago has specially developed all new SAS3 HBA SOCs providing up to 24 dedicated ports! :D

SAS 9305, 12Gb/s SAS Host Bus Adapter Family (669 KB)

Get your new low-profile 9305-24i today for the low, low price of $600!
 

Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
1,140
594
113
New York City
www.glaver.org
Hmmm, anyone interested in a group buy? Can anyone point me to the spec sheets with connector options and lengths? (Do they offer SFF-8087, SFF-8643, and quad SATA with or without locking connectors and sideband connectors?)
Start here. The SFF-8087 ones are available in 175 "standard" lengths from 0.25M to 2.0M, with or without sidebands. Various connector options are available.

The attachment is the drawing for the ones I use.
 

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abq

Active Member
May 23, 2015
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Hmmm, anyone interested in a group buy? Can anyone point me to the spec sheets with connector options and lengths? (Do they offer SFF-8087, SFF-8643, and quad SATA with or without locking connectors and sideband connectors?)



I have never seen a used 9201-16i go for less than 180, and they don't seem to come up that often, but I might have missed all of the cheap ones :) They seem to go for $220-240 when I have seen them up for bids. I only managed to get one for ~$220, but no spare, so I sold it. The 8-port internal cards are a lot easier to find, so just use 2 if you have enough free PCIe slots. Then again, if you find a 9201-16i for $150 or less, snag it!

I think the 9201-16i cards are extra popular with people using ITX boards where they only have 1 PCIe slot, and if you don't want to use expanders, the 16i is the highest density you can get in an HBA.
I missed a 9201-16i @ $100, now cannot find anything under $150! ...You can get 9201-16e for $40-50 with out much effort. ...Supply and demand, I wish there were more of the 9201-16i types on the market to bring down prices. At this rate I will be better off with 12gb SAS cards! Good Luck, ABQ :)
 

sfbayzfs

Active Member
May 6, 2015
259
143
43
SF Bay area
I missed a 9201-16i @ $100, now cannot find anything under $150! ...You can get 9201-16e for $40-50 with out much effort. ...Supply and demand, I wish there were more of the 9201-16i types on the market to bring down prices. At this rate I will be better off with 12gb SAS cards! Good Luck, ABQ :)
I've seen 9200-16e/9201-16e for as low as 60, but I haven't been looking hard since I'm trying to get something back out of the ones I paid over $100 for. Even at $60, it makes it worth looping external cards back in, either nicely with short external cables plus adapter brackets, or cheaply with SFF-8088 -> 4x SASTA or SFF-8087 cables. Even at about $15 per cable from China, 60 for a card and 60 plus 4 cables is still cheaper than an internal card, and the internal card still needs $32 worth of cables (I figure $8 each on average for SFF-8087 on both ends ot breakout to quad SATA). I actually may go this route anyway since I have some extra CBL-0168L SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 adapter brackets, and it will allow me to repatch between dual uplink to internal bays or single link to several jbods without opening the case. I'm going to do this with low profile compatible 9200-8e and possibly 9206-16e cards since I have both low profile and full height chassis' I'm working with.

In any case, I have had great luck with SAS expanders, and would recommend them, either a Supermicro backplane, the rock solid Intels, or an HP. The HPs are going super cheap right now, but they require a PCIe slot for power and have known issues if they are running older firmware, and you need an actual HP RAID card to update the HP expander firmware.

Back to the SC846 in question, if you get one with a TQ or A backplane, just get 2 9201-16e cards, 6 SFF-8088 to quad SATA breakouts with these for a TQ backplane: NEW Mini SAS SFF8088 4i to 4 sata 3 6gbps HDD External Multilane SAS Cable 100CM or these for an A backplane Mini SAS 26 SFF-8088 to Mini SAS 36pin SFF-8087 1M cable and you have 2 free external ports to expand into a JBOD if you want to.
 
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izx

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Jan 17, 2016
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you need an actual HP RAID card to update the HP expander firmware.
I've had to do this in the past and have a P212 kicking around gathering dust, but something I read recently claimed that in Linux, you could update the expander's firmware so long as it was visible to the system (e.g. behind an LSI IT-mode card). I'll try to dig up the reference and also my old expander to verify this is true.

Somewhere else on STH, there was a link to a sub-$10 PCIe-x16 adapter with molex power (apparently meant for bitcoin mining graphics cards) that would work to power a standalone HP SAS expander.
 

nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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San Antonio, TX
I've had to do this in the past and have a P212 kicking around gathering dust, but something I read recently claimed that in Linux, you could update the expander's firmware so long as it was visible to the system (e.g. behind an LSI IT-mode card). I'll try to dig up the reference and also my old expander to verify this is true.

Somewhere else on STH, there was a link to a sub-$10 PCIe-x16 adapter with molex power (apparently meant for bitcoin mining graphics cards) that would work to power a standalone HP SAS expander.
Updating the HP SAS expander FW using Sg3_utils and IT mode HBA is documented in the HP expander thread. I've updated the that way and was able to attach 4TB drives fine.


Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
 

abq

Active Member
May 23, 2015
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I've seen 9200-16e/9201-16e for as low as 60, but I haven't been looking hard since I'm trying to get something back out of the ones I paid over $100 for. Even at $60, it makes it worth looping external cards back in, either nicely with short external cables plus adapter brackets, or cheaply with SFF-8088 -> 4x SASTA or SFF-8087 cables. Even at about $15 per cable from China, 60 for a card and 60 plus 4 cables is still cheaper than an internal card, and the internal card still needs $32 worth of cables (I figure $8 each on average for SFF-8087 on both ends ot breakout to quad SATA). I actually may go this route anyway since I have some extra CBL-0168L SFF-8087 to SFF-8088 adapter brackets, and it will allow me to repatch between dual uplink to internal bays or single link to several jbods without opening the case. I'm going to do this with low profile compatible 9200-8e and possibly 9206-16e cards since I have both low profile and full height chassis' I'm working with.

In any case, I have had great luck with SAS expanders, and would recommend them, either a Supermicro backplane, the rock solid Intels, or an HP. The HPs are going super cheap right now, but they require a PCIe slot for power and have known issues if they are running older firmware, and you need an actual HP RAID card to update the HP expander firmware.

Back to the SC846 in question, if you get one with a TQ or A backplane, just get 2 9201-16e cards, 6 SFF-8088 to quad SATA breakouts with these for a TQ backplane: NEW Mini SAS SFF8088 4i to 4 sata 3 6gbps HDD External Multilane SAS Cable 100CM or these for an A backplane Mini SAS 26 SFF-8088 to Mini SAS 36pin SFF-8087 1M cable and you have 2 free external ports to expand into a JBOD if you want to.
Thank You, Abq:)
 

abq

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May 23, 2015
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