On 9/21/2023 at 3:32 PM, JorgeB said:

Intel or HP SAS3 expanders would be a good option.

Thanks for your answers so far I just wanted to check if you had any idea what expanders work for nvme drives as I can’t find the required info in the documentation 

I'm afraid I don't know for sure, but I suspect none will, I think that for that you will need to connect the NVME devices directly to the HBA, note that you can have one HBA port connected to NVME and the other one going to the expander for SATA/SAS devices. 

On 9/21/2023 at 3:32 PM, JorgeB said:

Intel or HP SAS3 expanders would be a good option.

thanks for the advice, im about to order one. are there any wires I should look out to be able to connect this to my hba card?

23 minutes ago, Myriad Studios LDN said:

thanks for the advice, im about to order one. are there any wires I should look out to be able to connect this to my hba card?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N0MHODJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

This is what i used to connect my LSI 9500 to my SAS3 expander.... what motherboard do u have? 

I have a SAS 3 expander backplane (Supermicro CSE 846 with SAS3-846EL1), will a single cable from a 9500 8i to the backplane work with 24 spinning disks attached to the backplane? OR do I need a cable with 𝐒𝐅𝐅-𝟖𝟔𝟓𝟒 to two 𝐒𝐅𝐅-𝟖𝟔𝟒𝟑 connectors on the backplane?

3 hours ago, crowdx42 said:

OR do I need a cable with 𝐒𝐅𝐅-𝟖𝟔𝟓𝟒 to two 𝐒𝐅𝐅-𝟖𝟔𝟒𝟑 connectors

You do want a cable with two connectors, so an SFF-8654 8i cable. They make a SFF-8654 4i cable too, but the pinout is different, and it is much smaller so that won't fit. However, you should only connect one of the two connectors to the expander.

 

Many expanders do have two connections, but those are for redundancy so you can connect it to another SAS controller, but unraid doesn't support that.

On 1/7/2025 at 7:39 AM, Wody said:

Many expanders do have two connections, but those are for redundancy so you can connect it to another SAS controller, but unraid doesn't support that.

 

Just two small corrections/additions.

 

I think you mean two expanders on the backplane, these are for redundancy, correct. These Supermicro backplanes are called *EL2 instead of *EL1.

 

The two ports (I think you mean that with connections) on a previously mentioned SAS3-846EL1 can be used as input or output. You can even use two ports as input ports from one single HBA. These expanders will handle that. We use SAS2-846EL1 with 3 ports each. You can mix the ports as you like. Had them running with two input ports and one output port to another SC846 on Unraid. You can even output with breakout cables. Limitless possibilities.

 

Cascading is no problem with Unraid. The only thing you need to figure out is how to use more than one backplane (48 disks, 72 disks, ...). Theres only one Array possible currently, so you need to use Unassigned Devices, ZFS pools, etc on top of one Array of a fully occupied SC846 case.

 

Edited January 16, 20251 yr by hawihoney

Hi everyone I have Broadcom 9400-8i card currently connected 8 drives in my system but I've seen this card HighPoint Rocket 720L 12G SAS/ 6G SATA PCIe 3.0 HBA Controller

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/highpoint-rocket-720l-hba-controller-pcie-30-x8-16x-12gb-s-sas-6gb-s-sata-channels-4x-sff-8643-ports

I feel like it fits the direction that I'd like to take my build more. For instance I would like to put that into a x4 slot that I have on my motherboard (x16 physical slot) to push most of my hdds to the x4 slot and focus my x8 slots on the fastest network card I can get and also putting a nvme card in the other one

this is the nvme controller I want to use and the

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/8-port-highpoint-rocket-1108a-nvme-card-8x-m2-nvme-ports-pcie-30-x16-2x-fans-intelligent-switch-chip