Onboard SATA to sas backplane

[knibbs1325]

Hey Everyone, I am in the process of building a new server for myself and i was wondering if it is possible to use a sas breakout connector, plug the 4 sata into the onboard sata 3, then the sas connector into the backplane? or does it not work like that?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Depends, but porbably not. 

 

You can't use a a sas breakout, or use sas drives.

[knibbs1325]

its a backplane that takes the sas main and then splits it back to sata for the 8 drive sleds,

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, knibbs1325 said:

Hey Everyone, I am in the process of building a new server for myself and i was wondering if it is possible to use a sas breakout connector, plug the 4 sata into the onboard sata 3, then the sas connector into the backplane? or does it not work like that?

You want to use a SAS backplane to connect 4 SATA drives. The SAS will have the necessary bandwidth to support them. Using a port multiplier will lower performance depending on how many drives are being accessed. You can also use the SATA ports to add more drives as well.

 

As for connecting the backplane to your board's SATA ports... Good question... I don't see how it could work but I'm intrigued. I don't have SAS cards to try the hypothesis, though.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, knibbs1325 said:

its a backplane that takes the sas main and then splits it back to sata for the 8 drive sleds,

Does it have a chip?

 

It seems to have a SAS expander to make the 4 sas to 8 sas. You can get a cheap sas card like a h700 for about 60 bucks on ebay if you wan that.

 

Pics?

[knibbs1325]

5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Does it have a chip?

 

It seems to have a SAS expander to make the 4 sas to 8 sas. You can get a cheap sas card like a h700 for about 60 bucks on ebay if you wan that.

 

Pics?

here are the pics of the chassis i have for it i was thinking that if i plugged a 4way breakout into 4 sata ports on the mobo, then the sas on the other end into the backplane, it would be the same as running into a discrete HBA card.

 

the drive sleds are sata, couldnt get a good pic of that

[knibbs1325]

i would running two breakouts with that setup, one for the top connector, one for the bottom

[knibbs1325]

11 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

You want to use a SAS backplane to connect 4 SATA drives. The SAS will have the necessary bandwidth to support them. Using a port multiplier will lower performance depending on how many drives are being accessed. You can also use the SATA ports to add more drives as well.

 

As for connecting the backplane to your board's SATA ports... Good question... I don't see how it could work but I'm intrigued. I don't have SAS cards to try the hypothesis, though.

no sorry i meant the backplane has two input sas connectors, then the drive sleds are a standard sata connection.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, knibbs1325 said:

i would running two breakouts with that setup, one for the top connector, one for the bottom

Then it should work

[knibbs1325]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then it should work

ok thanks for letting me know, ill be trying it in a couple days when the mobo gets here

 

[scottyseng]

8 hours ago, knibbs1325 said:

ok thanks for letting me know, ill be trying it in a couple days when the mobo gets here

 

Please note to do what you want, you need a reverse breakout cable, not a normal breakout cable. They are different.

 

Also, if you have a SAS expander chip on the backplane, it won't work. I can't tell because for some reason your photos aren't showing for me.

[Guest]

On 27/08/2016 at 2:37 PM, knibbs1325 said:

Hey Everyone, I am in the process of building a new server for myself and i was wondering if it is possible to use a sas breakout connector, plug the 4 sata into the onboard sata 3, then the sas connector into the backplane? or does it not work like that?

 

On 27/08/2016 at 2:59 PM, knibbs1325 said:

ok thanks for letting me know, ill be trying it in a couple days when the mobo gets here

 

Those images don't load however if it's a standard design backplane without expander, there's no reason for it not to.

[WigglesTheHoly]

What were the results on this, I ask because I have a free to me used server, however it is a sas backplane as well and I'd like to run a few large disks. Also, does this have any effect on the ability to raid the drives? I understand that multiple drives per sas port would cause a bottleneck.