baldmosher
n00b
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2012
- Messages
- 17
First I've seen of these devices, it looks great on paper but I can't imagine how you would get the same speed of throughput from one of these controllers compared to a direct SATA-SATA connection, given that SATA is by design a point-to-point connection. Also the mobo-device SATA cable must be a limiting factor. Surely there are bandwidth limitations here? If you're looking at SSD drives, one of which will easily max out the bandwidth in the N36L on each SATA connection, you might not perceive any slowdown though. EDIT: SATA is 3Gbit limit, mini-SAS is 10GbitI'm looking for a way to use the onboard SATA port or the external eSATA to connect roughly 4 drives (SSDs). I used both of the PCI-E slots so it can't be an add-in card. I also have no room for any bay devices either. I have been looking for cheaper methods and have come across a few backplanes/port multipliers.
http://www.buy.com/prod/addonics-ad...oller-5-x-7-pin-serial-ata-300/213272437.html
As I understand it, the mini-SAS connection is the only way HP have managed to connect 4 drives to the motherboard with full bandwidth. I would think that splitting the mini-SAS into two sets of four somehow would yield much better results than splitting one SATA into four, but I don't know if that's possible. EDIT: it is possible with e-SATA, see post below this one
Depends what PCI cards you need in your system of course but these little Microservers aren't designed to take a lot of expansion so you have to accept there are limits to what you can do. If you're seriously looking at paying the cost of 4xSSDs, why not just buy 3 and get another Microserver?
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