Max number of drives on an lsi9211?

[valvolainen]

Hi all,
I'm running lsi 9211-8i software on my lsi based 2 port controller.
I've attached a couple of drives in a shelf and they work as planned.
Today I went rummaging under the stairs, behind the shoerack, in the closet, up in the attic and so on, and found some more shelves.
So, now I've got 6 shelves with a total of 111 drives. Is it a bit too much? What's the max number of drives I can attach pr port? (I've got two ports on my card).

 

[cyberjock]

I believe the limit is 256 drives.

 

[valvolainen]

Nice! Excited to hook up the shelves in the shed tomorrow!

 

[HoneyBadger]

Limit is 256 per card, not per port.

But if you're at the point of owning more than that many drives and shelves, I imagine you can splash out the relatively small amount to get a second card. ;)

 

[valvolainen]

I use one port internally and one externally, so if I can hook up 128 drives externally, excellent:)

 

[ChriZ]

I would love to see a picture of this 100+ drive build!

 

[valvolainen]

I'll remember to take a snap tomorrow:)

 

[tvsjr]

Today I went rummaging under the stairs, behind the shoerack, in the closet, up in the attic and so on, and found some more shelves.
So, now I've got 6 shelves with a total of 111 drives. Is it a bit too much? What's the max number of drives I can attach pr port? (I've got two ports on my card).

Only on this forum would I find this statement to be nothing out of the ordinary!

And, to echo the above... pics or it didn't happen.

 

[cyberjock]

Only on this forum would I find this statement to be nothing out of the ordinary!

And, to echo the above... pics or it didn't happen.

I know.. right! I was thinking the same thing. I want to be able to rummage through some boxes and find 100+ drives, and a couple of JBOD chassis that I can plug in! Shiz!

 

[Mr_N]

surely there would be some performance impact having 128 drives on each port?

 

[SirMaster]

surely there would be some performance impact having 128 drives on each port?

Yes, each port on that card is 4x6Gbit channels, so that's 24Gbit/s per port. Then after the 8/10b encoding overhead that's down to 19.2Gbit usable for the data signals.

Divide this by 128 disks on 1 port and you have 150Mbit/s (18.75MB/s) per disk.

Better keep it to like 24 disks per port so you can get at least 800Mbit/s (100MB/s) per disk.

 

[valvolainen]

Well, Under one of my hiking boots I found another shelf.
This is an FC one, but with SATA drives. It's an ibm type with fc connectors in and sas out. Guess the other ibm shelves have been sas attached to the fc shelf and then 'uplinked' via fc to a server. I need another backplane on the fc shelf if I'm to use it. For now it's just sitting there.

I don't worry about the performance, performance is not what I need.

Anyway, I did promise a pic.
Bad picture, as there is no light in the shed, and power is not yet on.

 

[Darren Myers]

what model HP shelves are they? MSA60's or similar?

 

[valvolainen]

Yeah, the 2.5 equivalent - msa70. (25 drives, sas)

 

[Darren Myers]

Oh if only you werent in Norway, i'd say i would take any extra's off your hands :P

 

[valvolainen]

'Extras'? There are no such things:=)