tortufo Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 I've been runninng a T30 with 4 disks, parity and an SSD for about ~18 months and I'm already feeling the expansion itch. I picked up two 12TB Western Digital EasyStore drives over the weekend and before I shuck them I'm trying to figure out the logistics to get them all hooked up. Currently everything but the parity is on an LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA (9201-8i) in IT mode. I've already exceeded the limits of the case, the current drive arrangement is far from smart, so I'm wondering whether I can turn my 8087 internal connections into 8088 by means of a plate/card and hook up a separate spare case via a pair of 8088 cables with all my drives inside. Am I better off going this route, or should I be considering an expander like the RES2SV240NC? Throughput is definitely a consideration, we're watching a lot of 4K now so I'm trying not to slash bandwidth here, just connect the drives in a way which is more practical for power, space and heat. 1 Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted December 1, 2019 Share Posted December 1, 2019 Either way will work, without the expander don't forget you're limited to SATA cables max length, 1m total from the HBA to the disks, you can use the expander on the 2nd case and connect that to the HBA, then the HBA -> Expander link can be much longer (10m max), expander to disks is the same 1m, but since the expander is in the case it won't be a problem, I use a similar setup for my two widest servers: Bandwidth wise you'll have around 2200MB/s with single link and around 3000MB/s usable with dual link for all disks after the expander, which is enough for a reasonable number of disks. Quote Link to comment
tortufo Posted December 1, 2019 Author Share Posted December 1, 2019 Silly question, but what's the bandwidth across my current HBA without the expander? Is there a specific expander I should be looking out for? Will I also need something like the Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB3 to run the second PSU? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted December 2, 2019 Share Posted December 2, 2019 HBA bandwidth is around the same 3000MB/s, limited by the PCIe slot, assuming it's on a x8 PCIe 2.0 slot. You can power up the power supply with a clip, that's what I use on the other server. Quote Link to comment
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