IronWolf/WD Red 8-bay limit

[sour]

...8TB Red 5400 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal NAS HDD Retail Kit from WD is well-suited for NAS environments with up to eight 3.5" drive bays...

Designed for use in 1-8 bay NAS environments..., the 8TB IronWolf 7200 rpm SATA III 3.5" Internal NAS HDD...

does this 8-bay limit mean that vdevs are limited to 8 drives, or that you can literally only put them in 8-drive bays? For example if I have a 12-bay Xyratex HB-1235, is it fine if I have 2 vdevs with 6 drives or 1x 8-drive vdev and 1x 4-drive vdev?

 

[Snow]

I am not sure why they have that as Limiting number, But I can say I have had 12 reds working on the same pool in 2 Vdev's
My main system has a mix of WD Reds and Seagate IronWolfs 8 in a Vdev And 8 in another Vdev.,3Tb disks in one and 4Tb disks in another.

does this 8-bay limit mean that vdevs are limited to 8 drives, or that you can literally only put them in 8-drive bays? For example if I have a 12-bay Xyratex HB-1235, is it fine if I have 2 vdevs with 6 drives or 1x 8-drive vdev and 1x 4-drive vdev?

Yes it is Fine, I am pretty sure they have design the Firmware to work with up to 8 disks in the Vdev together For best performance.

 

[Linkman]

It has nothing to do with the width of the VDEV, it's mostly marketing to differentiate Reds from Red Pros. There might be a differences in the firmware for dealing with vibration, that's the only thing I can think of that might be different between running eight drives and twelve drives.

My case only holds eight drives, but if I could stuff more drives in there, I wouldn't hesitate to use regular old Reds.