I am planning to build an Atlas-like server.  I am going to have 3 LSI M1015's in the system because I have 21 drives for unRAID.  The problem is the Norco 4224 uses a single SF-8087 connector per backplane and if I connect all six cables that will make every drive bay connected to the M1015's.  Being that I am planning to virtualize with ESXi and will be using passthrough to make the M1015's available to unRAID, I need to have a drive or two connected to the motherboard for my datastores.  How do I make one or two of the drive bays in the 4224 connect to the motherboard SATA controller?

 

I also see that each backplane has two power connections.  I've read that the second is for redundancy, but I see a lot of builds where people are using a single desktop power supply, but power both connectors.  Is this necessary?  If not, is it somehow beneficial?

Perhaps consider mounting a couple of 2.5" hard drives in something like the Star Tech PCI brackets from my build for your datastores (click the link in my sig).  Doesn't have to be SSD like I did, I'm sure a 500Gb 7200rpm laptop drive would do ok.  That way you can reserve all the front bays for unRaid.

 

There is no way to do what you want to do unless you want to dedicate a full backplane to the motherboard SATA ports, in which case you need a set of REVERSE breakout cables (SAS to SATA).

 

Re: powering both molex - I don't see any point to it.  It's there for redundancy.  Unless you have a 2nd PSU for that 2nd connector...

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll look into the PCI bracket bays. 

 

What about using a breakout cable on one of the Norco backplanes, a breakout cable on one of the M1015's ports and connecting two ends of each together with a couple SATA male to SATA male adapters.  Then connect the two remaining ends from the Norco backplane and connect them to the motherboard ports?  Would that work?

I don't believe so as the pinouts wouldn't match up (forward breakout cables are NOT the same as reverse breakout cables, even though they physically look similar).  Never heard of anyone attempting that to be perfectly honest.

I'd rather not do it myself as it seems like a pretty jury rigged solution, but hey it would be another option if you get down to needing another solution.