Connecting Dell PV MD1400 to R730 for Unraid

[H0pefulWanderer]

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! 

I am very new to SAS, HBA, Raid etc. I just recently purchased a Dell PV MD1400 with 12 drives that I need to connect to my Dell R730. I am trying to figure out what type of card and cable I need for connecting my Dell R730 over to the new MD1400.

 

I keep finding mixed answers to the question I have:

 

Can someone please provide some suggestions on what type of SAS card I should buy, along with the type of cable I should get to connect these two utilizing my Unraid server? 

 

 

Thank you so much!

 

[Wody]

The manual says 'sas cable' so that isn't very useful, googling 'Dell PV MD1400 cable' (without the quotes) brings up cables like the Dell GYK61 which is a 12Gb HD-Mini sas cable, in other words, an SFF8644 cable. Wikipedia has a picture of it.

 

Since the R730 can have multiple different controller cards, from your post it is not easy to guess which it is, however, you have multiple options. If you already have a SAS controller, you can buy cables with SFF8644 on one end, and whatever you have on the other end that you can connect directly (SFF8644, 8643, 8087 etc.).

 

If you want to keep things neat, you'll need a card with the same SFF8644 connector, so something like a Broadcom/LSI 9300-8e or newer.

As an alternative, you can also use any internal SAS controller with a SAS expander, such as the Adaptec AEC 82885T which has both external and internal ports, and they are very cheap used.