Anyone have experience with these DELL SAS Expanders?

[southwow]

Picked up another supermicro 846 case and another power board. Contemplating trying one of these as I can't find a reasonably-priced intel 36-port expander (they were plentiful just a few months ago)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/2526194397...I252619439765.N101.S1.R1.TR3&autorefresh=true


I just want to have some room for expansion in the future.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Chris Moore]

Picked up another supermicro 846 case and another power board. Contemplating trying one of these as I can't find a reasonably-priced intel 36-port expander (they were plentiful just a few months ago)

I have not used one of these, but based on my experience with other Dell hardware, I would expect it to have an LSI chipset and present you with no problems. SAS expanders are virtually transparent from the user perspective.

 

[southwow]

it's based on the SAS2x36 LSI/Broadcom chip, I'm pulling the trigger and will report back. After this, I'll have room for about 72 drives at 6G. Should allow me to recreate without waiting another month for cloud backup to finish at slow upstream speeds.

I paid $100 for my last intel sas2 360 expander and it has been fairly incredible. This is based on the same silicon for less than half that price, so it looks like a good option.

 

[Chris Moore]

I paid $100 for my last intel sas2 360 expander and it has been fairly incredible. This is based on the same silicon for less than half that price, so it looks like a good option.

I have considered getting one of them myself, but I was concerned about the power connector. I couldn't find good documentation telling what the input power needed to be.

 

[southwow]

supermicro power board.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5EM2M71947

I'm currently using one in an older startech case with my 3x5 drive backplanes. I had to drill 2 holes and tap threads for standoffs, but it was a piece of cake.

There is also a 3rd version of this with IPMI targeted at 846 with EL backplane and the huge 847D case that holds 72 drives.

 

[southwow]

You'll need something similar to this as well if you want it to look like an OEM jbod enclosure.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA5EM2MV4605

and these
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAEKB6JE0271

and some of these
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAEKB6JG9566

 

[southwow]

I have considered getting one of them myself, but I was concerned about the power connector. I couldn't find good documentation telling what the input power needed to be.

It's a standard 2x2 4-pin molex connector like VGA. It only uses one 12v and one ground. The intel cards actually come with a 2-wire adapter cable that goes to regular 1x4 molex from a 2x2 since rack-mount systems have little need for those extra plugs for high-end VGA (in most cases, anyway).

 

[southwow]

May as well post findings: It works!