6 SAS drives on a pcie 2.0 8x controller

[Sauron]

Hello,

 

I just bought a used HP Proliant DL360e server that came with a lot more than I originally ordered (not that I'm complaining). In particular, it came with 6 SAS drives I didn't order; unfortunately, the server doesn't have a SAS controller installed and the embedded controller only supports SATA. I don't have any other system that supports the SAS drives, so I figured I might as well buy the SAS controller pcie card for the server. The card is about 70€ for me, so it's not a huge investment considering each of the drives is worth about the same.

 

My question is about whether or not the bandwidth in a pcie 2.0 8x slot is sufficient for this card to work properly with 6 drives; the server does have a 3.0 slot but it's taken by a dedicated NIC. The service manual for the server does mention the possibility of having that card in the 2.0 slot but I thought I'd ask here to get an answer from someone more experienced than myself.

 

Thank you for any input!

[FloRolf]

Well the manual say 6gbps/port so 36gbps. That's roughly 4GBps

Pcie 2.0 8x can do 8.000MB/s so you'll have plenty spare bandwidth.. 

For me it looks good. 

 

Edit: I might add that I have no experience whatsoever with neither SAS nor pcie controllers

[Jarsky]

You could easily saturate a 10Gbps network with the card...not that 6 SAS drives will reach that speed.