ZCR Card must match motherboard?

[Medieval]

I am looking at a high end motherboard by Asus, its the "ASUS DSEB-D16/SAS" motherboard. There is a ZCR (Zero Channel RAID) slot that can be used to bump it to hardware RAID. Now, it lists the LSI MegaRAID 8300XLP card as a compatible card. Can you use any other card or do you have to match the exact card they have in the motherboard manual? The manual states:

"The optional ZCR card for DSEB-D16/SAS onboard LSI 1068 SAS Controller is LSI MegaRAID SAS 8300 XLP card."

That would seem to infer that it needs a specifica card for the chipset on the motherboard. The other question is, with this card, can it do hardware RAID for my SATA drives? I am mixed on this, because the card can do SATA/SAS RAID, there are cables that can connect SATA drives to SAS ports, so what is someone to do? Has anyone ventured this path before? I just want to get a few items straight before I plunk down $500 on the board and another $150 on a ZCR card (used). Thanks.



Medieval

 

[mavalpha]

Yes, you can use SATA drives with a SAS controller. The Dell Perc5/i has a lot of threads discussing just such a use.

I would guess the two must be mated, because the controller has to be able to communicate directly with the SAS controller, bypassing a lot of other logic along the way. I'm not aware of any standards to do this, meaning it's likely implemented differently in each case.