Chenbro SAS Expanders

S

shabazkilla

Lurker
Joined
Jan 4, 2004
Messages
439
Anyone know if these have been discontinued? I cannot find any retailers that can get them. Anyone have a source for a CK13601?
 
Damn it, that sucks. I haven't found any other Sas expanders besides the Chenbro.
 
jtg1993 said:
Damn it, that sucks. I haven't found any other Sas expanders besides the Chenbro.
Click to expand...

Supermicro makes cases with SAS expander backplanes. Look for the E1 and E2 cases. Be warned, the cases are still like $750 and up start with the 826E1 (2U).
 
I haven't been able to find a single place that has them in stock unfortunately. I planned on ordering one next week too. So I guess you called provantage and they said that they won't be able to get one in?
 
Blue Fox said:
I haven't been able to find a single place that has them in stock unfortunately. I planned on ordering one next week too. So I guess you called provantage and they said that they won't be able to get one in?
Click to expand...

I ordered one and a week later they canceled the order saying that the part had been discontinued.
 
thebeephaha said:
Order direct from Chenbro?

Maybe [H] members who want em could do a bulk order?
Click to expand...
Chenbro doesn't sell things directly. I've been calling vendors (and Chenbro) for the past couple hours and if I find one that will order one for me, I'm definitely up for a group buy. I'm after the UEK-13601 and not just the card alone too (so it has been even harder to find). I have managed to find the CK12803 in stock, but it only has 16 ports for drives. If I get any results, I'll definitely let everyone know.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, that model I've been able to find in many places, but it's the least desirable one of the lot. Also, just because they have it listed on eBay, doesn't mean that they actually have it in stock...
 
There better be someplace that has them in stock even if we have to order it from across the pond. I planned out how much it would cost me to buy 2x norco's loaded with WD 1TB GP drives running off an arc1680ix-24 and a Chenbro expander and its alot of money already. Im not looking to spend an extra $1500+ for another card, mobo, cpu and ram. Id then be out $3000 just for raid cards that id rather spend on 30 more drives.
 
Last edited:
i got lucky and found a kickass sas expander with 16 bays and redundant 450w psu's for $750 shipped on ebay. hooks right up to my 1680ix-24. just takes patience :)
 
Just about every sas expander is based on an lsi chip. While lsi has had sas expander chips out for a few years, they just put out new versions of those expander chips in Feb or March 2009.

Chenbro released their sas expander cards in Nov - Dec 2008, based on the older chips. Bad timing I guess.

I spoke with the Chenbro people today.
They said that the sas expander cards are "not discontinued". But they are not making any more based on the old chip. They have sold down their stock of cards based on the old chip, and will be releasing a refresh version of the cards "in the begining of Q3". But they might not even change the card model numbers.

I'm not sure if there are any "new" features in the new lsi chips, beyond the support for sas2
 
They also told me that they were not discontinued, but that was it. I could barely understand their phone support, so I didn't bother trying to get much info out of them (their looping phone menus are awesome btw). Since we are in Q3 now, I hope it is any day now.
 
I think that they have a hard time understanding us too.

Last week, I was told that the 36 port are sold out, but some of the 28 port expanders are still available through some distributors. I don't see any reason not to use them, unless your whole infrastructure is already sas2, end to end.

They deal with three distributors (bell micro, asi, and can't remember), who then supply the retail channel. One of those distributors lists all of the chenbro sas expanders as discontinued, the other two list them as available. I guess it just depends on which distributor your favorite store buys through.

Today I was told that the refresh would be available in "just a few weeks", so I take that as 2-3 months.

Anyway, I'm glad to see that that they will be back. I want to try one out. I was worried that lsi might have made them stop selling them outside of an enclosure. I was happy to find that was not the issue.
 
Ah, that explains a lot. I've been looking for the 36 port one and have had absolutely no luck finding it. The 28 port one was available in a few places though. I just want one by August...
 
Im looking for a UEK model with at least 24 ports.
Hopefully I can find one by October 1.
 
The "28 port" with external connectors has 16 internal hd ports.
The "28 port" without external connectors has 24 internal hd ports.
The "36 port" has 24 internal hd ports.

Does anyone here actually have one?
 
I have a UEK13601 which uses the 36 port card with the micro-itx? mount. Wish I could find another (or preferably a CK13601 so it has the faceplate. I'm trying out the new(I'm assuming) HP SAS expander instead.
 
mike938 said:
I have a UEK13601 which uses the 36 port card with the micro-itx? mount. Wish I could find another (or preferably a CK13601 so it has the faceplate. I'm trying out the new(I'm assuming) HP SAS expander instead.
Click to expand...
Sent you a PM about that in case you miss it.
 
A person on ebay claims to have 10 of the HP ones at $330. But those look like they get power from the pci-e slot. Also, the HP site said that the external port was for connecting to a tape array, and the card was for use with a specific HP raid adapter.

Mike938 - If you get one of the HP ones, let us know if it is compatible with generic raid cards. I would also like to know if you can hook a raid adapter up to the external port and address the disks that way, rather than from an internal card.

Mike938 - Do you know if the chenbro expander works when the raid adapter is hooked to an external port, rather than the internal raid adapter port? I think that a perc6e or lsi 8888elp should be able to address the disks from one of the external ports, but I want to make sure.

Thanks
 
That person on ebay is probably buy.com's ebay seller I think?
Buy.com has them at the same price on the website with free shipping instead and a 30day return instead of the 14 on the auction.
It does appear that it is powered via the PCI-E bus unfortunately.
I'm currently waiting on my order of the HP one to ship, once I have it and my other hardware together I'm going to test it with my 3ware 9690SA and hopefully it will work. If that works, I'm going to disconnect my SAS expander DAS from my desktop and try it on the external port of the HP expander.
And you're next question, Yes, the chenbro expander works fine if the raid adapter is hooked up to an external port. They have both an input and output port (I think the RAID adapter goes to the input? it always confuses me when I have to plug it back in.)
My DAS unit is just a norco 4020 with a UEK13601 connected to my 3ware 9690SA-4I4E on the external 4x port.
 
The cabling throws me off too, because it is counter intuitive. "Input" goes to the raid card (usually). My mind always tries to tell me that "input" should be an "in" from a daisy chained disk chassis.

I already own a 16 disk chenbro enclosure. So I want to get one of their sas expanders to try it out.
Mike938 - Are you pretty happy with the performance of the chenbro sas expander?

I have a dell md1120. I want to get a chenbro rm2324 to compare it against. But that seems like an expensive test. I figure I can test a stand alone expander in my existing chassis instead, if I could ever get one.

The thing I hate about chenbro is, you need to do all of your own research. They have many configs, and the text descriptions at the stores suck. When I bought the 16 bay chassis, I had found a few posts where people had bought cases without a backplane on mistake, and wound up spending much more to get it right.

Anyway, during my expander search in early June, I exchanged emails with chenbro about the rm2324. This might interest you guys too.

Me:
I see the RM23424ML-lp listed at a few stores.
Does the RM23424ML-lp include the dual 12x UEK?
What model does include the UEK module?

Chenbro:
Dear Customer,

Thanks for inquiry.
Yes, RM23424ML-LP does include 1x CK12804 (24-port SAS expander card).

Thanks
-------------------

I've seen the model above for around $900. That doesn't sound too bad for 24 2.5" slots + an expander.
But I'd really like to be able to test a stand alone expander first.
 
The performance is seemingly okay although I think it should be better. And it might be once I update the firmware on my controller. Once I finally feel like rebooting I'll rerun some performance tests on it.
 
Wish I could borrow yours to try it with a high end controller (Areca 1680x). I'll definitely post results when I get my hands on one.
 
I think I'll force myself to wait for the expanders with the newest lsi chips, or test results on the HP cards. If I don't, I'd just wonder if the new chips are better.
Wikipedia says sas2 drops the distinction between fanout and edge expanders. While this may not affect sas drives or raid cards, it may be significant for sas expanders, and compatibility between mixing sas1 and sas2 expanders.

It sounds like the HP card is the newer chip. The link below mentions support for 6Gbps with a future firmware update. h18006.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13232_na/13232_na.html

Maybe dual ported? It has two internal 4x raid card ports.

I guess I could always use a converter adapter to make the internal ports into external ports. But having to use a pci-e slot to power it, sucks. From what I've seen, this kind of card only takes 8-12 watts. They could power these from a floppy drive power connector.
Hopefully the firmware doesn't limit the drives that it can see.
 
Subscribed for interest. I was planning to buy one from Provantage, but if they're out I guess I'll have to wait for the next generation.
 
shabazkilla said:
I've got CDW trying to get one of the CK13601s for me.
Click to expand...
I saw that they had them as well. If they can get one, see if they can get two (as I want one too). I haven't managed to call them yet today. They also seem to have the UEK-12803.
 
Last edited:
For anyone who's interested and not reading the other thread. the HP expander cards work with non-HP cards. Only problem compared to a UEK is the power requirement, though I thought I'd seen an adapter to supply pci-e bus power yesterday. (and am unable to find it again)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top