backplane, controller, expander: do I need one?

[tyjgHoVeqqNeAJUr]

Hello,

On consumer PCs, the motherboard has on it SATA ports. I plug drives into those ports and they appear as devices within FreeNAS.
Based on jgreco's hardware suggestions, I plan to purchase this chassis/motherboard combination:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6047/SSG-6047R-E1R24L.cfm

On this system, I will not find 24 SATA ports on the motherboard. Instead I have no use "backplanes", "controllers", and "expanders".

Does the mobo/chassis combo I linked to above include all the backplanes, controllers, and expanders I need so that I can 1) plug drives into the computer and 2) see those drives from within FreeNAS? I'm also open to documentation/reading suggestions so that I can learn more about this.

Thank you,

Chris

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

You have 24 drive bays and 14 sata / sas Ports onboard. So you ned either an sas expander or additional Controllers

 

[tyjgHoVeqqNeAJUr]

Hello,

Just to follow up. I bought this system and put it together and it runs fine with 11 drives. For the record, I did not purchase a SAS Expander, controllers, backplanes, etc. I still to this day have no idea what any of those terms mean. Somehow when the machine arrived I was able to just plug in drives and FreeNAS saw them.

Perhaps as Drake said, if I were to add a few more drives so that I had 15 or more installed I would need either a SAS Expander or an additional controller.

Chris

 

[crumbz]

if I were to add a few more drives so that I had 15 or more installed I would need either a SAS Expander or an additional controller.

I don't think so. If you bought the server you linked to in the first post, that already has one or more SAS expanders built-in ("SAS2 / SATA3 single expander per backplane").