A silly yet unanswered question

[billyboy]

I have read and searched a lot of posts and checked youtube to no avail. Please help. I get a mother board and a compatible controller card. The card has two ports on it. How do I connect all of the drives to the ports on the card? Please explain so I can understand and maybe a few options. What is a backplane?

Thank you so much you really are a great community.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

What motherboard exactly? What controller card exactly? What case are you planning to use? How many drives of which type are you going to connect? We really need all that information to help.

A backplane is a piece of electronics that is mounted in your case behind the slots in which you put the disk drives. It needs to match the controller, the drives, and of course - mechanically - the case. Regularly it comes with the case, already. You connect the controller to the backplane, mount the disks in the trays that come with the case, push in the disks against the backplane.

See the picture for an example. This is from a certain Fujitsu server and it will fit only the case of that particular server and nothing else.

HTH,
Patrick

 

[Etorix]

You probably have a HBA with either SFF-8087 or SFF-8643 connectors, but how are we supposed to answer your question if you don't even name your motherboard and controller card and/or provide links or pictures?

 

[billyboy]

I am sorry I must not have explained the question clearly. I am asking in general, If I have a controller card that has two ports on it, how do those two ports connect my 6 or 8 drives. For example on a standard motherboard I would plug each hard drive into a sata port until I was done or they were all gone.

When building the server how are multiple hard drives hooked up to the two ports on the card. Is there a cable that splits off for 3 or 4 disks? Do those ports on the card plug into something else , (the backolane) that then connects to drives. It is a silly question but I cant seem to find out what is needed.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

THIS DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON THE SPECIFIC MODEL OF YOUR CARD!

If you don't tell, we cannot help you.

 

[Ericloewe]

If only someone had already written about this extensively...

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

@Ericloewe you must admit that is quite a mouthful. Especially when one is not the technical type.

But dear @billyboy - tell us the friggin' model of your hardware and you will get a shorter and easier to digest answer. If not, the guide Eric linked is perfectly correct, but you will have to read and understand it on your own without anyone holding hands.

 

[Etorix]

If the question is purely theoretical, the short answer is that it can be both. There are "breakout cables" from one SFF-8087/SFF-8643 to four SATA/SAS for consumer-style cases where drives are wired individually. There are SFF-8xxx to SFF-8xxx cables for server-style cases where (lots of) drives are attached to a backplane, which then attaches to a SAS controller.
For the long answer, follow @Ericloewe above.

 

[billyboy]

If the question is purely theoretical, the short answer is that it can be both. There are "breakout cables" from one SFF-8087/SFF-8643 to four SATA/SAS for consumer-style cases where drives are wired individually. There are SFF-8xxx to SFF-8xxx cables for server-style cases where (lots of) drives are attached to a backplane, which then attaches to a SAS controller.
For the long answer, follow @Ericloewe above.

OMG thank you. Exactly what I needed to hear. I am sorry I confused so many of you, I did not think that it was that difficult of a question.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Why don't you just post the model of your controller?

 

[rogerh]

Why don't you just post the model of your controller?

Perhaps he hasn't decided which one to buy yet? The question makes sense to me! And has been answered with a couple of common examples.

 

[danb35]

Perhaps he hasn't decided which one to buy yet?

If that's the case, then the question really is meaningless. "A compatible controller card" that "has two ports on it" could be just about anything. Even if we assume that it's a disk controller card (OP didn't even bother to say that much), that still really doesn't tell us anything. It could just be a two-port SATA controller, in which case the answer is, "it's possible, but a really bad idea." It could be any of dozens of SAS HBAs, and in most cases (other than the recommended LSI/Avago/Broadcom), the answer would be the same. It could be a RAID controller with SAS ports, in which case the answer would definitely be the same. Or it could be a LSI/Avago/Broadcom SAS HBA, in which case the answer is "use SAS breakout cables, or a compatible backplane."

 

[jgreco]

When building the server how are multiple hard drives hooked up to the two ports on the card. Is there a cable that splits off for 3 or 4 disks? Do those ports on the card plug into something else , (the backolane) that then connects to drives. It is a silly question but I cant seem to find out what is needed.

I spend a lot of time discussing these topics in the post that @Ericloewe links to above, which covers breakout cables, backplanes, and SAS expanders that would allow you to attach, for example, a HUNDRED drives to just ONE of those two ports on a controller card.

Very few questions of this type do not have comprehensive answers already available on the forum. It would be to your benefit to avail yourself of the resources that you're pointed at. I haven't written these words for my own benefit. They're for your benefit. If you come back and are still confused, there are people who will straighten you out, and I usually try to incorporate that failure back into the posted material in the form of new revisions.

 

[ThreeDee]

I spend a lot of time discussing these topics in the post that @Ericloewe links to above, which covers breakout cables, backplanes, and SAS expanders that would allow you to attach, for example, a HUNDRED drives to just ONE of those two ports on a controller card.

Very few questions of this type do not have comprehensive answers already available on the forum. It would be to your benefit to avail yourself of the resources that you're pointed at. I haven't written these words for my own benefit. They're for your benefit. If you come back and are still confused, there are people who will straighten you out, and I usually try to incorporate that failure back into the posted material in the form of new revisions.

but .. but .. that would require people to actually read stuff .. and stuff

 

[jgreco]

but .. but .. that would require people to actually read stuff .. and stuff

But this is jgreco's stuff you're talking about, so it would require people to read stuff.. and stuff... and more stuff... and even more stuff.

Get it right damnit. Hehe.