I've had a mid tower FreeNAS server built about 3 years ago based on the MB in the title that's been humming along just great, but the data pool has been way over the recommended capacity levels for optimal zfs performance for quite some time. So I decided to upgrade the drives. Just finished upgrading six 2TB SATA hdds in one raidz2 vdev of the pool with six 6TB sata drives, and have access to low cost (basically free) 4TB SAS drives, that I wanted to use to upgrade the 6 2TB SATA drives of the 2nd raidz2 vdev of the pool. The 2nd vdev sata disks were all plugged into the SAS ports of the MB.
The only minor issue was finding the correct breakout cable (SAS2sata) that could be used to connect to the SAS disks to the 6 SAS ports used by the 2nd vdev hdds. There are a few relatively old threads on this forum (and others) describing cables used, but all of the cables listed aren't available anymore.
Just wanted to let anyone who might be thinking of using SAS disks directly connected into the X10SL7-F motherboard SAS ports, these cables weren't too expensive and worked perfectly for me. The SAS drives I used were HGST HUS724040ALS640's and worked fine with the linked to cable without having to add any other adapters for power.
The only minor issue was finding the correct breakout cable (SAS2sata) that could be used to connect to the SAS disks to the 6 SAS ports used by the 2nd vdev hdds. There are a few relatively old threads on this forum (and others) describing cables used, but all of the cables listed aren't available anymore.
Just wanted to let anyone who might be thinking of using SAS disks directly connected into the X10SL7-F motherboard SAS ports, these cables weren't too expensive and worked perfectly for me. The SAS drives I used were HGST HUS724040ALS640's and worked fine with the linked to cable without having to add any other adapters for power.
