May 31, 20251 yr I've just finished my first build and confirmed that everything works, now getting ready add the missing part to make it ready for 24/7 use: A second NVMe for a mirrored cache. Even though I got my first computer already in '94, this is my first endeavour into server territory and all the LLM bots fail to give me advice I can trust on this topic. So keeping fingers crossed for the wisdom of the forum! :) What I currently have is a SuperMicro A2SDi-4C-HLN4F with a 1 TB WD Red SN 700 NVMe as cache and 2 x 4 TB Ironwolfs as the array. The motherboard has only one NVMe slot, and one PCI-e x4 expansion slot. There are 8 SATA ports, but as they share lanes with the PCI-e expansion slot, as soon as I put a card there I'm down to 4 of the motherboard's SATA slots. I think I'l manage with 4 HDD's for a while, adding 2 x 8 TB and use one of the for parity would give me 16 TB of effective storage which I guess will be sufficient for my needs for a long time. But I also remember the huge storage capacity of my first computer...So, looking for a good future-proof way to add a second NVMe port that wouldn't limit my HDDs to max out at four drives.My initial thought was to try and find a PCI-e x4-card that have both some extra SATA ports as well as a NVMe slot but that doesn't seem to be an option. At least I can't find any. I had accepted that I would have to do with a PCI-e card that only give me an extra NVMe port and hope a 16 TB array would be enough for a long time.But browsing the forums for recommendations on such a card, I realised that another option would to get a m.2 expansion card for extra SATA port, like this one, and a PCI-e x4 card with room for two or more NVMe drives. But I can't find any cards like that either.What I do find are cards like this, with one NVMe slot and one for m.2 SATA. Could that m.2 slot be used with a m.2 expansion card for extra SATA ports?Any suggestions/recommendations appreciated!
May 31, 20251 yr 7 minutes ago, thoresson said:Could that m.2 slot be used with a m.2 expansion card for extra SATA ports?If you mean the m.2 SATA slot no, only for one SATA m.2 device, and it needs to connect to an existing SATA port to be used.
May 31, 20251 yr Author 4 hours ago, JorgeB said:If you mean the m.2 SATA slot no, only for one SATA m.2 device, and it needs to connect to an existing SATA port to be used.Thanks! This world of expansion cards is more confusing than I had expected. :)
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