Moving my NAS to a server rack and have some questions:

[will0hlep]

In a bid to expand my NAS (and move all my computers to one place), I bought a used server rack a few months back. Now, I'm finally in a position to start moving some of my machines into the rack. However, the server rack cases all use a backplane to connect the large number of drives they support and as I havn't encountered this before I have a couple of questions.

 

1) As far as I can tell, these backplanes support both SAS and SATA drives, which is important cause all my current drives are SATA. Is this correct? Male SATA connectors look like they fit into female SAS connectors.

2) I my current NAS setup, I use an LSI 9207-8i (and 4 SATA ports on the motherboard) to connect up all my drives, but if I want to fully connect up a 24 bay chassis, I'm guessing I'm going to want something like a used LSI 9305-24i. Is there anything I should be looking out for when shopping for these?

3) To connect the HBA card to the backplane do I want SFF-8643 cables?

Any other advice is also welcomed

 

[Dutch_Master]

1. Correct: SAS controllers can communicate with SATA drives, but not the other way round.

2. Depending on future upgrade plans, you may opt to spread the load from the drives over more then a single HBA. There are mixed HBA's, that have both internal and external connectors, the latter to connect to a disk shelf. Or as Linus demonstrated in an earlier video on his NetApp rack, a string of disk-shelves. For your case, a 16-drive internal and a mixed 8i8e HBA (dual external ports) might be sufficiently interesting to investigate. Buy from reputable sources or if you're shopping on Aliexpress, make sure the shop exists for over a year minimum.

3. Obviously, you need cables with connectors that suit both the HBA as well as the backplane. They might be SFF8643, but there are different standards in use so pay close attention which connectors you need.

 

HTH!

[Blue4130]

14 hours ago, will0hlep said:

2) I my current NAS setup, I use an LSI 9207-8i (and 4 SATA ports on the motherboard) to connect up all my drives, but if I want to fully connect up a 24 bay chassis, I'm guessing I'm going to want something like a used LSI 9305-24i. Is there anything I should be looking out for when shopping for these?

 

You can also use a SAS expander rather than a 24i port card or multiple cards. The 9207 can address 256 drives.

[LIGISTX]

Your backplane probably is a SAS expander… you can run a single HBA and just use two SAS cables between the HBA and the backplane (or as many cables as your HBA has) and it’ll work fine. 
 

Id recommend doing some more specific research into what parts you actually have. But typically, as I said, backplanes ARE SAS expanders. 

[will0hlep]

3 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

You can also use a SAS expander rather than a 24i port card or multiple cards. The 9207 can address 256 drives.

2 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Your backplane probably is a SAS expander… you can run a single HBA and just use two SAS cables between the HBA and the backplane (or as many cables as your HBA has) and it’ll work fine. 
 

Id recommend doing some more specific research into what parts you actually have. But typically, as I said, backplanes ARE SAS expanders. 

Was not aware of the idea of a SAS expander.

 

Most of the sites I'm finding that sell things in this category are super light on information compared to more consumer focused products.

 

The chassis I was looking at there was a XPC-424-HS.

[will0hlep]

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

But typically, as I said, backplanes ARE SAS expanders. 

"The backplane has 6 x 8643 Connections so you will need a way to control all the drives this in normally via a 24 Port HBA or Raid controller- If you have plenty of expansion slots on your motherboard you can use 3 x 8 Port cards."

 

Found this online talking about the backplane in question. Might do some more shopping about for a chassis that does have a SAS expander backplane.

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, will0hlep said:

"The backplane has 6 x 8643 Connections so you will need a way to control all the drives this in normally via a 24 Port HBA or Raid controller- If you have plenty of expansion slots on your motherboard you can use 3 x 8 Port cards."

 

Found this online talking about the backplane in question. Might do some more shopping about for a chassis that does have a SAS expander backplane.

I don’t know supermicro stuff super well, but when I need to I know enough to do the research to get my answers. But suffice it to say, most supermicro chassis with 24 bays will have this functionality. My buddies 24 bay I helped him deploy has 2 dual port SAS cards, so only 4 SAS cables are running to the backplane and he has all 24 drives working. 

[will0hlep]

Okay, so I've gone away and done some looking at SAS expanders and I came accross this:

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-727251-b21-12g-sas-expander-pcie-x8-fh-g9-g10-876907-001

 

A few google searches suggests that it should be compatiable with my LSI 9207-8i and that it should work just fine in a PCIe x1 slot as the PCIe x8 connector is only used for power draw (other options that came up were molex or sata powered PCIe risers).

In order to connect it up to the previously mentioned Chassis (I looked at chassises with inbuilt SAS expanders but they were super expensive), I'm looking at buying 6 SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cables and 2 SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 cables.

 

Anyone have any extra information for me on this subject?