• Storage & Archiving

  16 disk RAID – what kind of controller?

  Posted by Laco Gaal on January 3, 2013 at 7:08 pm

  so if I have a 16 disk enclosure with 4 Mini-SAS ports, should I buy two Areca 1882x, or is there a card with 4 external mini-SAS ports?

  thank you

  Alex Gerulaitis replied 13 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Alex Gerulaitis

  January 3, 2013 at 7:33 pm

  Not with four external “wide” 4-lane ports, to my knowledge. You could get a ARC-1882-ix-16 or a -24 (with one external 4-lane “wide” port and four or six external ones) and re-route the internal ones to the outside with SFF-8087-to-SFF-8088 adapter brackets.

  There’s a good possibility though that your enclosure is “expander” type and only needs one port to handle all drives. What make / model enclosure is it?

  Alex Gerulaitis
  Systems Engineer
  DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
• 

  Laco Gaal

  January 3, 2013 at 7:39 pm

  Thanks for the fast reply Alex.
  It’s simply an enclosure only, without any RAID capability, so I’ll look into SSF-8087 to SFF-8088 adapters (didn’t know they exist)

  Thank you!
• 

  Alex Gerulaitis

  January 3, 2013 at 9:30 pm

  “Expander” is not RAID, it’s a way for SAS controllers to “see” more than one drive per lane. The capability is a part of SAS spec, but both the controller and the box must have the circuitry to support it.

  If your box does have that “expander” brain, wiring it to four (or more than one) MiniSAS ports won’t work.

  That said, most expander boxes have three MiniSAS ports, one “in”, two “out” – for daisy chaining. So the fact that your box has four of them means, most likely, it’s a “direct-wired” SAS box, and you do need four MiniSAS ports to handle it.

  Check with Areca, they might have a recommendation (or even a part they’d sell you) for such an adapter.

  Alex Gerulaitis
  Systems Engineer
  DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
• 

  Alex Gerulaitis

  January 3, 2013 at 9:42 pm

  [Laco Gaal] ” I’ll look into SSF-8087 to SFF-8088 adapters (didn’t know they exist)”

  Here is the perfect one, although it might be a challenge finding it in the US:

  NetStor NS970S Quad internal miniSAS to external miniSAS Adapter

  

  Also: Dual Mini SAS SFF-8088 to Mini SAS SFF-8087 adapter in PCI bracket

  You could also ask Areca for recommendations – I am sure they ran into this already.

  Alex Gerulaitis
  Systems Engineer
  DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

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