Wondering which one to go with for an external DAS case:

• The Chenbro is definitely a 6Gbps card, the HP "can be firmware upgraded to 6Gbps" according to HP specs (whatever that means?)
  
• The Chenbro has also two SFF-8088 connections to the host, whereas the HP would need a two SFF 8088 adapter plate which adds to the overall cost.
  
• With a dual host connection the Chenbro is 20 drives only (4220 only) and the HP 468406-B21 is 24 drives (fit perfectly a Norco 4224). Whereas the Chenbro CK23601 might solve that problem with a total of 7 internal SAS connectors (same price as the HP). Also, the CK23601 might be mounted into an UEK which is then mounted on motherboard mounting holes and fit the motherboard I/O window, really nice. http://usa.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?sku=76
  
• The HP would need an additional Orbit Micro PE-2SD1-R10-1 PICMG 1U Backplane to power, whereas the Chenbro is powered directly from the case' PSU.
  

 

The expander should be connected to the server by dual SFF-8088 connection either to an AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 or M1015 controller.

The SAS2LP-MV8 is confirmed to work with the HP also in dual link mode, don't know about the M1015?

 

I know unRAID would probably not be able to saturate the available bandwidth, this is for a virtualized server.

 

What do you think?

Thanks for any feedback.

No one?

 

I think that probably the Chenbro expanders would offer better compatibility and peformance to the LSI based M1015 because of the build in LSI chip than the HP expander which is based on the PMC Sierra chip.

 

Also a performance consideration might be that an LSISAS2x36 based expander as the Chenbro will negotiate linkspeed with SATA-III disks at 6G whereas HP Expander only does SATA-III at 3G (but SAS-II disks at 6G).

 

 

I think I am more inclined to go the Chenbro route, getting the CK23601 with the Chenbro 84H323210-017 to put in the mainboard opening on the DAS chassis.