Safe to use breakout cables on supermicro boards?

[Toydoll]

Hi

This is something that most definitely has been asked before but since I don't really know what I should search for I haven't found an answer.

I'm planning to upgrade my server next year and would like to continue using Supermicro motherboards. I've noticed that some allows you to use sata breakout cables (if that is the correct term) on some boards to allow 12+ HDs without a hba or similar.

I know that truenas doesn't play well with some solutions like these where "these" means putting a breakout cable in a connection that fits and then just press the power button. How is it with Supermicro boards, is it as simple as getting a breakout cable, plug it in an attach the drives and then act as if I had used a regular sata port?

Does it differ from different motherboards? What in the manual should I look for to know that it's a goo solution or not? I did do a quick look at a random motherboard but couldn't find anything relevant. But again, I don't really know what to look for, unfortunately there was no big red letters that told me what I needed to know.

X11SPM-F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

The link above is an example of a board i mean. (No idea if that particular board is any good, i picked it at random for the sake of this thread.)

 

[HoneyBadger]

I know that truenas doesn't play well with some solutions like these where "these" means putting a breakout cable in a connection that fits and then just press the power button.

How's that? Assuming the components on the ends are correct (a SAS HBA, a series of drives) and the cables are good quality and the correct direction ("forward breakout" is generally what's needed) there's no issue with this happening.

The SuperMicro there looks like a fine candidate, with the caveat that it's not actually a SAS HBA but rather a SATA controller using the SFF-8087 connectors. Can't use SAS expanders or SAS drives, but chaining up twelve SATA drives will be just fine.

 

[Toydoll]

How's that? Assuming the components on the ends are correct (a SAS HBA, a series of drives) and the cables are good quality and the correct direction ("forward breakout" is generally what's needed) there's no issue with this happening.

The SuperMicro there looks like a fine candidate, with the caveat that it's not actually a SAS HBA but rather a SATA controller using the SFF-8087 connectors. Can't use SAS expanders or SAS drives, but chaining up twelve SATA drives will be just fine.

Thanks.

What I meant was basically that I, as an uninformed customer, couldn't just google "sata expansion card" and get one from the closest store since a lot of them have some kind of hardware raid built in. I don't know what I'm talking about...

Reading the MB-manual i see that I can choose between ahci and raid for that controller that uses the sff-8087 connector. I'm guessing that I should make sure that ahci is chosen in bios, or doesn't it matter?

 

[HoneyBadger]

What I meant was basically that I, as an uninformed customer, couldn't just google "sata expansion card" and get one from the closest store since a lot of them have some kind of hardware raid built in. I don't know what I'm talking about...

Ah. Yes, there's a bit of research that needs to happen beforehand, along with the "Will it FreeNAS?" section of the forum. But thankfully, OEM HBAs like the Dell PERC H200 and similar SAS2008-based non-RAID add-in cards are still very inexpensive, and work great.