• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Looking for suggestions for SAS expander

R

Ramaddil

n00b
Joined
Mar 30, 2009
Messages
60
So I have two computers both have LSI 8708 EM2 raid Cards (Full Specs: http://www.newegg.co...N82E16816118117)

I currently on one raid card have 8 x 2TB Red drives and I am not quite out of space yet, but i know it will need to be expanded. I have thought about replacing each drive with 3 or 4TB drives but that is a very expensive route, and would prefer just to buy a SAS expander so I can add more drives to the array. My Array is a Raid 6, and i am looking for any suggestions regarding this or perhaps if there are no compatible expanders for this card, a new combo of Raid Card and expander which i think would still be much cheaper than replacing all the drives.


My PC that i am looking for it to go in has the following components:

PSU: Corsair TX850
MB: Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 @3.2Ghz
RAM: 16GB DDR3 1600 GSkill Ram
RAID CARD: LSI Megaraid 8708EM2

Thanks for any suggestions/help
 
It's too bad that your mainboard only has 2 usable PCIe slots (PCIe x1 is spectacularly useless).

BTW, I'm guessing you are not using the onboard GFX card...

The cheapest and best option is always to add more HBA's rather then expanders.
 
Dunno why Newegg seems to be used as a the bible for info around here....
If you want to link specs, link to the manufacturers site.
https://store.lsi.com/index.cfm/Clearance/8708-Controllers/LSI00187/

As for the question, they are LSI chip-sets and work with LSI based expanders.

rsq said:
It's too bad that your mainboard only has 2 usable PCIe slots (PCIe x1 is spectacularly useless).

BTW, I'm guessing you are not using the onboard GFX card...

The cheapest and best option is always to add more HBA's rather then expanders.
Click to expand...

  1. x1 slots are good for dual-port 1GbE adapters or video cards.
  2. I am guessing he is using on-board video, no card mentioned.
  3. Correct but as he is using an old H/W RAID card already along with some very desktop based gear, another H/W RAID card is not going to be cheap if done correctly.
The x16 slots on the board are not x16 each, the first slot designed for graphics is x16 but will drop to x8 when second slot is filled (lane switches sitting on the board is a giveaway).
Upgrading to a newer H/W card to hold more drives and also yield SAS-II / SATA-III is a better option.
 
I actually have GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3 motherboard I was confused for some reason. Thing is most of the HBAs that I see are mostly two ports which only gives me 8 drives I would prefer to expand my array to 12-16 drives on a raid 6.

This is a file server and I am using on board video so the other port is open. I do realize there are HBAs with more than two sas ports but they are very expensive.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
What OS and config are you using?
Maybe its better, similar in price and much faster to switch to a up to date server mainboard with newer HBAs.

Example
A storage server build on ZFS and softwareraid, based on current Intel 1150 serverchipsets gives you a much better performance, better expandability and a much better data security than a traditional raid-6 without possible expander problems with your raidcard or with Sata disks

Ex.
http://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/xeon/c220/x10sl7-f.cfm costs a little more than 200 Euro (suppose 300$) with 6 Sata + 8 SAS ports. You can add another IBM M1015 to have 16 SAS ports when needed - not much more than to buy an expander.

Add at least 8 GB ECC Ram (sell your board completely) and an i3 and you have a perfect ZFS storage server with many of the advanced features of a highend storage server like a netapp (snaps, checksums and copy on write). If you add a Xeon, you can also virtualize everything (Storage + other systems like BSD, OSX, Linux, Windows, Solaris) -> see my napp-in-one config

And: this config supports disk > 2TB unlike the old SAS 8708
 
running windows 7.. I want to expand the raid 6 array i currently have. I have extra drives that I can easily put into the slots in my case to add the extra storage. I am fairly new with raid cards and expanders. I have picked up a little here and there. I have backups so if it doesnt work to add a sas expander its no big deal. With SAS expander you just run a sas cable from the Raid card to the expander and then use SAS to four sata port cables on all open slots on both cards correct?
 
Stanza the SASexpander you mentioned will it support my raid 6 array. Reading on the eBay description it mentions only raid 0/1/10?
 
Ramaddil said:
Stanza the SASexpander you mentioned will it support my raid 6 array. Reading on the eBay description it mentions only raid 0/1/10?
Click to expand...

Expanders don't care for the RAID type, they just pass the data and requests for the data where they are told to.

You need to look for an expander that packs an LSI chip-set. Common ones are the Intel and HP badged Expanders than if you want newer and faster, the Chenbro Expanders work well. Also be careful as to how the Expanders is to be mounted and powered. A lot need to sit in a PCI-E slot to draw power making them a pain in the arse. The Chenbro's take power from a Molex plug so can be very handy in any chassis.
 
Ramaddil said:
Stanza the SASexpander you mentioned will it support my raid 6 array. Reading on the eBay description it mentions only raid 0/1/10?
Click to expand...

The only supporting 0/1/10 is just a manufacturers statement.... as they state it's only for a M1015 card. (which only supports those raid configs.)

Attach it to another card and it will use whatever raid configs it can use.

The ONLY problem you MIGHT come across is the numbering of ports......

eg instead of numbering ports 1,2,3,4 it might end up 4,3,2,1 or something.

which could confuse you 1st off as you will end up with

SAS controller Port 1

Drives are 1,2,3,4

SAS Controller Port 2 to SAS Expander

SAS Expander Port 1
Drives go 8,7,6,5

SAS Expander Port 2
Drives go 12,11,10,9

or something like that....

never know until you try

.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top