Hi
I work as a server manager in a large company
And we have been using Unraid for a while, 
We have been upgrading our servers constantly
But we were wondering if there is some kind of Expansion Card, wich can be used with double purpose
We need a card wich has several SATA ports, in order to be able to add more drives constantly

So, we wanna get this one, it has 16 SATA ports

And then, we need 10 Gbit connection, so we wanna get this one

So, my question here is, is there an Expansion card wich can have both in the same card?, We really dont care about the size, or the pci connector lenght, as long as it fits in the same PCI-E port, we will be happy. After all, if you add the number of lanes that each card uses, its about X8, and we prefer to use a X8 port, than two X4 ports
And if there is not, would you buy it if some manufacturer sells it?

Highly unlikely. However if you really are running out of space on the board it might be time to look at true server mainboards. A lot of them have these options built in. 

 

Another thing to keep in mind if you are expecting unRaid to hit 10 G speeds from the array, that is never going to happen. Even the cache would not get up to that speeds, unless you have an array of NVMe drives for cache to pull from. No offence to the Limetech team, but unRaid is just not really built for speed. I'd be looking at a different solution that does a true raid setup (hardware or something like ZFS) that strips across a lot of spindles if you need that level of performance. 

That sata card you posted is a IO Crest SI-PEX40097

 

Couple of problems

 

#1 - Its a PCIe2.0 x2 card.  You will most likely run into bandwidth issues with it during parity checks / rebuilds etc when it starts getting full of drives

#2 - Its a Marvel based controller.  These are problematic at the best of times, and aren't particularly recommended.  You're always better off with an LSI based card 

#3 - The Marvel 9215 only supports 4 sata ports.  I'd surmise that the board also has 4 port expanders on it, so you're into a double whammy on bandwidth and reliability / compatibility

#4 - I wouldn't particularly consider IO Crest to be anything but a bottom of the line manufacturer.  Even if everything else above wasn't a factor, their products would still be considered very low end

 

Don't cheap out on this.   You're only going to wind up having to buy a real card soon after buying this one.

I know the alternatives man
I know what we need to do to achieve the same result
I know that the speeds are not enough, but the Cache pool we have installed is nvme and the write speeds are bottlenecked by the network interface
I wanna know whether it exists or we better start the development of it

4 minutes ago, Squid said:

That sata card you posted is a IO Crest SI-PEX40097

 

Couple of problems

 

#1 - Its a PCIe2.0 x2 card.  You will most likely run into bandwidth issues with it during parity checks / rebuilds etc when it starts getting full of drives

#2 - Its a Marvel based controller.  These are problematic at the best of times, and aren't particularly recommended.  You're always better off with an LSI based card 

#3 - The Marvel 9215 only supports 4 sata ports.  I'd surmise that the board also has 4 port expanders on it, so you're into a double whammy on bandwidth and reliability / compatibility

#4 - I wouldn't particularly consider IO Crest to be anything but a bottom of the line manufacturer.  Even if everything else above wasn't a factor, their products would still be considered very low end

 

Don't cheap out on this.   You're only going to wind up having to buy a real card soon after buying this one.

I did not ask if this was a good option
I am asking if exist something with both things in the same card
So i can use just one X16 port
I know about the Marvel compatibility Issue

Then don't post

2 hours ago, midguet12 said:

So, we wanna get this one, it has 16 SATA ports

 

 

20 minutes ago, midguet12 said:

I know the alternatives man
I know what we need to do to achieve the same result
I know that the speeds are not enough, but the Cache pool we have installed is nvme and the write speeds are bottlenecked by the network interface
I wanna know whether it exists or we better start the development of it

@Squid is right. Don't cheap out on this. 

 

Lets start out with what you have for hardware to start, then we can give you better assistance and where to go from there. That being said if this is for a real business I'd not be buying parts from a microcenter (or MemoryExpress here in Canada) and trying to make it work. I'd go right to a Dell/HP/Lenovo and start with them. They have the proper support and hardware to do this right.

 

If this is a small business (and I have supported a number of small business in my area) I'd still go that route, unless I had no other choice. 

 

You are not going to get a card that does both. They don't exist, and even if they did I'd not want to have to hunt one down during an emergency.

 

Getting back to 10 GB networking... you need to decide between fiber or copper. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses, I prefer fiber for 10 GB.

 

Copper

https://www.newegg.com/intel-x540t2/p/N82E16833106083?Description=10gb ethernet&cm_re=10gb_ethernet-_-33-106-083-_-Product&quicklink=true

 

Fiber

https://www.newegg.com/p/14U-0036-00165?Description=10gb ethernet fiber&cm_re=10gb_ethernet_fiber-_-14U-0036-00165-_-Product&quicklink=true

 

You also need the infrastructure to accept 10 GB. Switches, etc.

 

For the SAS card... LSI. End of story. For your situation, two of them. 

 

Edited February 21, 20206 yr by Chess
Spelling

2 hours ago, midguet12 said:

So, we wanna get this one, it has 16 SATA ports

If you want a 16-port card that will actually work trouble-free with unRAID something like this is a much better option. It's x8 PCIe. 

 

As to your original query about 16-port SATA and 10G network on the same card, I highly doubt such a thing exists.  It would have to be an x16 PCIe card.  I have personally never heard of or seen such a beast in existence.   That does not mean someone is not hiding one somewhere in captivity. 😀

2 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

If you want a 16-port card that will actually work trouble-free with unRAID something like this is a much better option. It's x8 PCIe. 

Thats not a bad option. A little pricey for me, but it would let me get rid of my SAS expander. I'll have to add it to my wish list. 

Welcome to the future, you called me crazy

https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/E10M20-T1