RAID Card & SAS Expander In One Card?

D

Ducs_Of_Hazzard

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Oct 22, 2012
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Hi There!

Just wondering if there is such a card that combines a RAID Card and a SAS Expander in one card? It seems like everyone here is pairing up a Raid Card & SAS Expander so I'm guessing there isn't such a thing. Seems like it wouldn't be that hard to accomplish and would save a slot or two in the Motherboard.

MD
 
Not that I know of, but you can sometimes buy (very expensive) RAID cards that have 6 or maybe more SAS8087 ports. The reason everyone buys first the card, then the expander is it allows you to expand down the road and its relatively cost effective.
 
Hi There!

Thanks for the reply! I noticed that the Areca Raid Cards seem to have the SAS Ports on them as well but they do not seem to have a In & Out port externally for Daisy Chaining. At least not on their 24 port cards. So those cards seem to be more of a standalone card.

Am I correct in saying that the only SAS Expander Card with a In & Out External Port is the Chenbro CK23601. The HP SAS Expander appears to have on 1 External Port which I assume would allow you to Daisy Chain one more array. Are there any other SAS Expander Cards worth looking at? (HP & Chenbro Seem To Be The Most Popular Here)

I want to make sure before I invest… That I invest in hardware that will allow me to grow past what a RPC-4224 can hold if needed (i.e. Daisy Chain Another RPC-4224 Array If Needed).

Thanks
MD
 
I would say that the areca card could be either a "stand-alone" card, or I'd like to think you could hook any of the six internal SAS8087 ports to a SAS expander, either a single port to a single expander, or two ports to any expander, giving you the potential to expand to many, many disks.

Keep in mind there is a lot of model compatibility (AKA you would probably want an areca expander with an areca card) as well as cable length estimations we're not covering here that you would want to take into consideration as you build your storage.

I'll admit that I'm far from an expert on this stuff so take that with a grain of salt.

Maybe you should go more in depth of what you're trying to accomplish? What do you have now, and what do you want to get too?
 
Well I currently have a Crestron ADMS-G2 Media System pointed to a HP MediaSmart running WHS V1…

I’m am basically at the limit that the 4 drive bays can handle for Media Storage (Mainly Blu-Ray’s Ripped To Folder / File Structure). I find that the HP MediaSmart can exhibit some Freezing / Blockiness while trying to stream content and I’ve always attributed this to the kicking in of the drive extender functionality of WHS V1 because it doesn’t happen all the time or at the same spots in the movies (I’m Cat6 Throughout).

So I’m going to use the HP MediaSmart as a Document Server Only and build a new Server / NAS (Whatever You Want To Call It) for my Media Only.

I’m pretty set on the RPC-4224 chassis and I’d like to be able to daisy chain additional chassis’ down the road if need be since storing Blu-Ray’s natively can take up some serious room.

It seems like the way to go is with a SAS Expander in the RPC-4224 Chassis but I’m not sure which brand to go with and which Raid or HBA Card to pair it up with. I don’t need back-up since I have all the content in physical form. But I do want something that can REALLY PUSH this content. I don’t mind spending the money up front as when I do things I like to do it right the first time and be done with it.

Basically I’m at a loss for which SAS Expander and compatible (Same Chipset) RAID / HBA Card to go with and which Mobo / Processor to run with. I know I need a Server Mobo if I’m going to be using a SAS Expander(s).

I’m thinking I want to be in the LGA 1155 or LGA1366 Socket Type, but that’s about it for now.

Based on my reading here it seems like there is arguments for or against any combination.

MD
 
LSI 9280-24i4e is a RAID + expander all-in-one. Expensive as hell, too.
 
The backstory is useful.

So you're planning on going for something like 48/72/96TB and then more down the road?

You need to provide 6xSAS8087 connectors to your backplanes in the norco case if you want to use all the drive bays from the get-go.

Something as cheap as the Intel SASUC8i can talk to all these drives no problem with an expander.
The traffic for the drives hooked into the expander all travel over a single 600mbps SAS lane, so you might have some weird bottleneck stuff, but I imagine if you're bottlenecked at gigabit ethernet that this solution should be suitable for 24 drives as is.

A single SAS 8087 to 8087 cable from the HW RAID card into the Intel RES2SV240 expander and five more 8087 cables from the expander to the back planes, and one more cable from the RAID card to the backplane. A total of seven SAS 8087 <-> SAS 8087 cables.

Note that this card doesn't support any parity RAID levels so you would have to buy a better card if you want RAID6 (example).
In any case, I would expect the rebranded LSI cards from Intel should be compatible with any expander. Note that the price differences often have speed differences or features associated with them.

There is likely even less expensive ways to go about this.

Are you still considering using WHS or another Microsoft server product?
Have you looked at ZFS? Its sort of designed to do this kind of thing, and I'm pretty happy with it so far in my experiences.... much cheaper than buying a spendy RAID card.
I know the HP expanders on ebay are very inexpensive but again, I would recommend sticking with whatever is compatible with each other.
A lot of the time people end up just buying multiple IBM M1015 cards since they can be had for $1XX each on ebay, flash them to IT mode and go the ZFS route.

As for the motherboard, I'd suggest something that supports ECC memory. You can find boards that support ECC as well as use certain chips. Do you have anything on hand that you want to recycle, or are you buying this all new?

What kind of drives are you using with this? I would recommend SAS drives, but they are often costly enough that people consider SATA drives.
You should note that the signal strengths between SAS and SATA, in particular going with expanders and back planes may lead to issues with the drives and or cards.

I can't help but ask; how do you plan to back all of this up, if at all?
 
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If you have the expansion slot room then lack of external SFF-8088 ports is usually not a problem because you can buy things like this which hook up to the internal ports and give you more external:

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=CA-CBL167L

The downside is it takes up another expansion slot. Not a problem for most but with a creative xi-fi, nvidia geforce gtx 470 (takes two slots), ARC-1280ML (with fan), ARC-1880x and two BBU's I have a complete/utter lack of expansion slots. Supermicro also makes something just like that which has two ports on it instead of one so you can even have more SFF-8088 ports.
 
@Ducs
Areca controllers, at least the 12/16/24-port cards use a built-in expander. That external port you have mentioned is used exactly what you would need it for - for daisy chaining a bunch of external enclosures. I still do not get it as to why you need an In/Out port on a controller.
 
Does someone know how the integrated expander chip is connected to the controller on the LSI and newer Areca cards? The 1680 series Areca cards routed 4 lanes to the expander and 4 lanes to the external port. I'm still waiting for a 24i4e-type PCIe 3.0 card.
 
omniscence said:
Does someone know how the integrated expander chip is connected to the controller on the LSI and newer Areca cards? The 1680 series Areca cards routed 4 lanes to the expander and 4 lanes to the external port. I'm still waiting for a 24i4e-type PCIe 3.0 card.
Click to expand...

Usually, anything above 8th port is routed through the expander.

I have been selling Areca PCIe 3.0 cards for several months already. Could get you one unless you always shop Newegg. :)
 
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