backplane with controller

[Konrni]

Hi there, I'm thinking about building my own little storage server.

and here comes the problem, i want it as small as possible so i would like too connect the Backplane directly too a pci(e) slot.

Yeah SATA/SAS (RAID) Controllers are nice, but they take space.

Are there Backplanes with a build in controller out there and what would be the name of such a combo?

 

 

[mariushm]

How many hard drives do you plan to have ?

 

There's a couple of FM2 motherboards which have eight SATA 3 ports and they're in mATX format, for example Asrock ASRock FM2A88M Pro3+ : https://www.amazon.de/Asrock-FM2A88M-Mainboard-Sockel-Speicher/dp/B00O1WETUK

or ASRock A88M-G/3.1 : https://www.amazon.de/ASRock-90-MXB100-A0UAYZ-Mainboard/dp/B01AIZW928/

 

If you only want up to 8 drives, it would be a good choice. Add 2 GB DDR3, add a cheap FM2+ cpu and you have a storage server.  And of course, you can add more sata ports through controllers you can plug cards in the pci-e ports.

 

For more ports, you could buy ITX boards with embedded processors and use pci-e riser cables to lay the sata controller cards flat besides the motherboard to save vertical space. Or just use the above cards with pci-e riser cables.

 

 

[Konrni]

this was my first thought, but got interested "if" there is such a thing and without the SPOF concept i see there no reason why there wouldn't.

 

[iJarda]

If you can go with server hardware, there are few motherboards with integrated "RAID/HBA" controllers like ASRock Rack E3C224D4I-14S or some another from SuperMicro - I have that one from ASRock and if you don't plan to have multiple RAID/HBA controllers or multiple 10G cards, it is great choise.