Hello, I've currently got a 4 bay NAS setup much like the old FreeNAS mini's, I'm looking to expand the number of drives I can have in this server with an external bay, I'm looking to use a RocketStor 6438SC, with hopefully an HBA that has support for 8 drives externally (SFF-8644) and 4 to 8 drives internally. I would like to have a SAS12 card so I can in the future upgrade to SSD/nVMEs, or use an expanders for more max drives then w/ a SAS6 (unless that's not how it works with expanders, feel free to let me know) I've found a few HBA's that meet that, but they're all for PCIE4, but my mobo is only 3.1. ( MBD-X10SDV-TLN4F-O ) Does anyone know if there are any PCIE3 HBAs out there that meet those requirements? Or reasoning why doing a card w/ internal/external drives is a bad idea. (I only have 1 PCIE slot, and 1 slot in the case, so I can't do the internal to external adapter i've seen people talk about).
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External closure and HBA questions
- Thread starter SiCwan
- Start date
- Joined
- May 17, 2014
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- 3,611
The RocketStor 6438SC is a hardware RAID device, not really suitable for ZFS. Look at the RocketStor 6418SC, which is just a JBOD and should work with ZFS just fine. Just make sure you engineer this correctly. If the disk chassis does not have an expander, then you NEED both 4 lane SAS cables to access all 8 disks.
PCIe version 4 cards should be backward compatible with PCIe version 3.x.
Using SAS version 3, (12Gbps), to get more disks using a SAS expander, does sort of suggest a SAS v3 expander. The expander can use 4 or 8, 12Gbps ports to the SAS controller card. And then use 3, 6 or 12Gbps to SAS disks / SSDs. Or 3/6Gbps to SATA disks / SSDs.
Only certain SAS controllers support NVMe devices, known as tri-mode. All SAS controllers are supposed to be dual mode, SAS or SATA. Further, to get the most out of your tri-mode controller, you would want a tri-mode expander too. That way you can have SATA or SAS disks / SSDs, plus NVMe drives with 4 lanes. Of course, using a tri-mode controller still is a funnel. Real speed to NVMe drives is accomplished with lots of CPU connected PCIe lanes, like an AMD Epyc can supply, (128 PCIe lanes...).
PCIe version 4 cards should be backward compatible with PCIe version 3.x.
Using SAS version 3, (12Gbps), to get more disks using a SAS expander, does sort of suggest a SAS v3 expander. The expander can use 4 or 8, 12Gbps ports to the SAS controller card. And then use 3, 6 or 12Gbps to SAS disks / SSDs. Or 3/6Gbps to SATA disks / SSDs.
Only certain SAS controllers support NVMe devices, known as tri-mode. All SAS controllers are supposed to be dual mode, SAS or SATA. Further, to get the most out of your tri-mode controller, you would want a tri-mode expander too. That way you can have SATA or SAS disks / SSDs, plus NVMe drives with 4 lanes. Of course, using a tri-mode controller still is a funnel. Real speed to NVMe drives is accomplished with lots of CPU connected PCIe lanes, like an AMD Epyc can supply, (128 PCIe lanes...).
I didn't catch that about the enclosure, so I'll take that one off the list. I was doing some more research last night, and I think I'll have to put off going to nVME drives till my next server. Also decided on not going with an 8i8e card, and just going with a LSI 9300-8E 12GB/S or similar card, the prices on the 8i8e's are a little high for me right now, and I cant seem to find anything on the 2nd hard market.
Thanks for the info and tips!
Thanks for the info and tips!
