Need recommendations

[gasu]

Hi, i have a 30 drive server but thinking of upgrading, anyway my current motherboard is a rampage iii extreme i had left over and came in handy due to the pci express slots etc, anyhow a lot of the boards i see amd and intel don't have 4 pci-e x8 so would it be best to get a sas expander and use one m1015 to control it?

Which one would be recommended? the hp or the Chenbro?

Hopefully it's easy to setup as what sort of connection do i need from the ibm m1015 to the expander? Never quite got the expander system.

Are both of those compatible with esxi 5.5?

Thanks in advance.

 

[malcolmputer]

I would just search for a motherboard that has more PCIe x 8 slots.

Any time you use an ex pander like that you will lose throughput to/from the disks (as you have more drives per x8 slot).

As far as the M1015 goes, check out the hardware forum on FreeNAS.org, a lot of the guys there are in love with that controller card.