How to drive 120 HDDs with a single 2-port HBA IT mode SAS controller

In this video, I'm going to show you a setup with one LSI 9240-8i HBA card and 7 SAS expanders (IBM SAS2 46M0997) that can drive 120 HDDs! This came about because some people had asked the question of whether or not SAS expanders can be daisy chained and the answer is yes. Although the setup in this video isn't something I would normally recommend, due to the bottleneck and potential for catastrophic disk disconnects, it is a possibility to do this and perhaps might suit some very specific scenarios.
Products mentioned in this video that I sell:
Lenovo 9240-8i - ebay.to/3evjMRW
IBM SAS2 Expander - ebay.to/3viIFWL
or, as an alternative to the IBM, the Lenovo 03X3834: ebay.to/2OMoLTg
If you'd like to buy a pre-flashed ready-to-go LSI IT mode SAS HBA card from me, checkout my eBay store: ebay.to/3l4xlch
eBay Partner Affiliate disclosure:
The eBay links in this video description are eBay partner affiliate links. By using these links to shop on eBay, you support my channel, at no additional cost to you. Even if you do not buy from the ART OF SERVER eBay store, any purchases you make on eBay via these links, will help support my channel. Please consider using them for your eBay shopping. Thank you for all your support! :-)

[@tjhana]

Thanks for explaining the relation ship between the hba card and the expander card so clearly.

[@ArtofServer]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Felix-ve9hs]

"Science isn't about why - it's about why not"

[@AdvayaWorx]

Seriously in love with this setup! I wanted a virtually infinite HDD controller! This is definitely giving me ideas!

[@CrazyLogic]

well it's limited to 65,535 devices per SAS domain

[@guillepunx]

@@CrazyLogic That sounds infinite for me

[@ur3an0]

@@CrazyLogic helll yeaaa!

[@HellTriX]

i like this. Works good if you just need lots of online storage, but don't really need it blistering fast.

[@Michael-bf4ud]

Just wanted to say... this guy is legit... I am a happy customer from Canada!

[@ArtofServer]

Thank you for your support! :-)

[@ZerdN]

You could make two separate daisy-chains to increase bandwidth and reduce chance of a single cable failing taking out all drives. But could you dual-path with these as well (connect the second port on the HBA to the last expander)?

[@michaelgleason4791]

I'd love to be in a position where the 256 drive limit mattered to me.

[@ArtofServer]

I'm not sure I would... that's a lot of power consumption!

[@rabbitcreative]

11 PCI-E slots sounds juicy. :)

[@ArtofServer]

juicy indeed! LOL

[@chrismoore9997]

I love this video. It does a nice job of explaining how a SAS expander can be used. Do you mind if I post a link to it on the FreeNAS forum?

[@ArtofServer]

Thanks Chris! Of course, please share this video! Good to see you back! Haven't seen you comment in a while...

[@chrismoore9997]

@@ArtofServer - I had a change of jobs that has disrupted my routine

[@ArtofServer]

@@chrismoore9997 congrats on the new job! moving on up!!! :-)

[@chrismoore9997]

@@ArtofServer - Senior System Administrator for a cluster of RHEL servers

[@UnsungHeroist]

Chris Moore sounds RHEL fun!

[@easyronny]

Many many thanks for this youtube. I going to use this with my xpenology just to start with 24 🤔 Ronny

[@ArtofServer]

Glad my content has been useful to you. Note that in xpenology, you need to modify the config file for it to recognize more HDDs than the original disk station model.

[@colonelangus7535]

The old pcie2.0 lsi cards can control 500 or so drives in a SAN.

[@ArtofServer]

Indeed! Thanks for watching!

[@benjaminc.m.9873]

Hey man! Recently discovered your channel and eBay store. I will be getting into this server grade stuff for the first time soon, and you are becoming my very helpful source. Question: is the software RAID function built into Windows 10 a reliable and safe thing to use? Just need to do some general archival storage of a ton of files on my two WD Red 3TB drives in my personal build until I get a PowerEdge going later this year. Thanks in advance

[@ArtofServer]

Welcome to the channel! Unfortunately, I really don't know much about Windows and haven't used Windows in over 10 years. So I can't really comment on that question, but maybe someone else watching my channel can chime in?

[@clarkkent1521]

I want 120 hard drives! I currently have 18 that took me 8 years to accumulate.

[@SpazHeadSlotVideos]

geeking off!

[@BrooksyTech]

Now if I could only afford 120 hard drives! #Lifegoals! ha kidding but good to know.

[@fenderbunty]

its cool that you can hot wire the HDDs

[@snowdog993]

LOL. That is a bit extreme but shows it can be done!

[@ArtofServer]

Indeed

[@trumanhw]

Is this what's required for an LSI Disk Shelf ?? I thought you could attach one controller (in which it used it's "LUN addressing") to control up to 98 drives with one card .. ? I'm NOT "pretending" to ask; I'm really asking ... but thought that was what those IOM cards supported to a SAS-2 16e card..? (thanks)

[@ArtofServer]

The internal logic of those IOM is basically similar to what I'm building here. If you're using a prebuilt disk shelf, you just need an external HBA or RAID SAS controller for it. If you're building one from parts, you need SAS expanders like in this video.

[@ezramiller8296]

Ok so I know this is a 4 year old video. Just getting into servers. How do you supply power to your additional HDDs?

[@ArtofServer]

Depends on your setup and type of HDDs. If you have a backplane of some sort, usually you have to supply power to it. If using bare drives, SATA drives just take SATA power plugs. SAS drives usually use a SFF-8482 connector and you supply power to the cable to power the SAS drives.

[@ezramiller8296]

@@ArtofServer so I was watching some other videos of yours and everything finally started to click 😆😆.

[@alex71833]

With the chia crash I'm assuming these SAS expanders came back down in price. How do they compare today to say another 2008 HBA in terms of price and in power consumption?

[@ArtofServer]

yeah, finally calming down. at one point, a had a supplier quote me $700 for a SAS expander! I hope that doesn't mean some silly chia miner was willing to pay that price! I think another SAS2008 HBA is a bit more affordable if you're going from 8 -> 16 drives. but if you need to go beyond that, it makes more sense to use a SAS expander with high port count. Another scenario is if you don't have the PCIe slot for the SAS expander/2nd HBA, then you can still use SAS expanders by powering them externally.

[@alex71833]

@@ArtofServer any idea on power consumption for those of us trying to keep operating costs low? I agree that if you’re going for a big step up in drives it likely makes the most sense on all fronts to go with the expander that can accommodate many ports. I’m only trying to go to 20 drives which is why I ask.

[@turkeyphant]

If a PCI e hba is 6 Gb and a drive typically can do 200 MB/s, should 30 HDD per HBA be okay?

[@ArtofServer]

watch this video that might help with that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h2XIaZ6jqqygbNE

[@sharik_rahat]

Do expander cards communicate data with the cpu or os or sba card through the pci slots? Or do they only draw power through the slots? As you said, they only need power from the slots, then how does the expanders get identified in the bios as we can see in your videos?

[@srmvel]

I have a confusion on sas controller single and dual links? Could you please clarify?

[@ArtofServer]

Controllers are usually single port per SAS lane. However, drives are often dual port and can be connected for redundancy and higher throughput.

[@ArmChairPlum]

Hmm, with an hba that has external ports, could you use a sas expander externally on a 3d printed enclosure to have an external sas array? I assume the pci fingers are merely for power on the expander? Course I have no idea what the maximum length of a sas cable is.

[@ewenchan1239]

So let me check and see and to make sure that I understand this correctly: If the SAS expanders aren't really PCIe devices and that it only uses the PCIe slot for power, and you were saying that all of the I/O actually routes through the 9240-8i, does that mean that you don't increase the total bandwidth available, just total capacity? I just want to make sure that I understand all of the pros and cons in regards to a setup like this. Thank you.

[@ArtofServer]

Yes, that's correct. All the I/o traffic will route through the PCIe bus of the HBA card so bandwidth is not increased, but capacity is.

[@ewenchan1239]

@@ArtofServer It would also be my understand then, that the single HBA would become a single point of failure such that if that HBA fails, it will take down the entire array along with all of the JBOD/expansion units down along with it. Is that correct?

[@ArtofServer]

@@ewenchan1239 Well, yes, there are a lot of single points of failures (SPOF) here. If the SAS expander chip died, the entire array would go down too. As well as the motherboard, CPU, etc. If you used only a single cable between HBA and SAS expander, that too would be SPOF. You can build for redundancy if that's important using multiple systems, HBAs, SAS paths, etc.

[@ewenchan1239]

@@ArtofServer Good point. Another stupid question -- if one of the hard drives were to fail or die on you - with such a setup - how would you be able to quickly find out which drive it is that died?

[@ArtofServer]

@@ewenchan1239 that depends on the failure mode, and whether or not you have a backplane where you can send signal via sideband or not. Most rudimentary would be to keep track of serial numbers, and label the drives so you can see the serial number without removing them

[@garkoi5907]

Can I connect a sas expander to each port and daisy chain them ? So if I had a 2 port hba and I connect and daisy chain 4 expanders to each port will that work ?

[@ArtofServer]

yes, that's essentially what was demonstrating in this video.

[@holouis2439]

looks like can connect hundreds of hard drives but the PCI Throughput may only be 3GB/s; 256*200MB=51200MB/s(Soft RAID6) bad idea

[@AceBoy2099]

I'm not sure if this would be the right place to ask but would you happen to know how to passthrough select hard drive spots (not all, regardless of the drive in the slot) to a vm (for example Truenas) on one of these sas2 boards in unraid?

[@ArtofServer]

You should checkout SpaceInvader One's video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5Klanuepcd3d6s

[@JoeyLeonPhoto]

I was watching your "Comparing HBA IT mode SAS controllers | 2020 Edition" video and trying to come up with a solution to my setup. I'm thinking I need a SAS2308 controller and two expanders. I want to do a mixed HDD/SSD setup with up to 20 HDDs and 9 2.5" SSDs. Could I connect one expander to each HBA port and put all the HDDs on one expander and all SSDs on the other expander? Am I calculating the bandwidth properly? 20 HDDs = about 2GB/s and 9 SSDs at 600MBps each = 5.4GB/s is 7.4GB/s total throughput which comes in under the PCIe 3.0 x8 limit of 7.8GB/s?

[@ArtofServer]

These are the numbers I typically use... 2Gbps max for HDDs, and 6Gbps max for SAS2/SATA3 SSDs (high performance varieties can reach that). The SFF8087 cable you use to connect the HBA to the SAS expander is 4x SAS lanes, which is 24Gbps. - 20x HDDs RAID0 max ~ 40Gbps (this isn't realistic to sustain and also for reliability) - 9x SSDs RAID0 max ~ 54Gbps (again, just theoretical, but not good for reliability) Both of those will exceed the 24Gbps between the SAS expander and the HBA. I think that'll be your bottleneck. You can alleviate it if you use 2x SFF8087 cables for about 48Gbps bandwidth, but you'd need more HBA to drive the 2 SAS expanders.

[@JoeyLeonPhoto]

@@ArtofServer Thanks so much for the reply. This helps a lot and makes sense. I'm going to be using the HDDs mostly for Plex and archived media through an Unraid array and the SSD's as pass through for VM's and network storage. Would the throughput on the HDDs matter so much for this use? I'm not streaming to more than 3 or 4 devices at a time and the archived media is rarely accessed. Does this mean in theory that a 2308 could support 24 HDD's using expanders or a disk shelf with no bandwidth bottlenecks? Does this also mean a 2308 can only support up to 8 SSDs with no bottlenecks? Obviously if the drives aren't accessed at the same time this would matter less, correct? I think I'll need a 2308 + expander dedicated to the HDDs and another 2308 without expander for 8 SSD's (I can connect the 9th to the motherboard if I need to)

[@Saturn2888]

Is a SAS expander different from an HBA card? Why do they plug into PCIe? Is it that they don't have a SAS controller chip? I'm missing something; why do you need to plug one into another if it's not an external card? I'm wondering if I can use this method with my ITX motherboard with 1 PCIe card to get more SAS ports.

[@Saturn2888]

I think I get it now. Those SAS expanders don't have a controller, so they're dumb and less complex and way cheaper than buying a controller running its own software even in IT mode right? And any external SAS or eSATA enclosures are also SAS expanders right? I'm not sure the difference because all of them have heatsinks, and they still take up an 8x PCIe slot. Why? Can't they take up card slots but not plug into PCIe? I have the LSI SAS 9305-24i which can control up to 1024 drives from 6 Mini-SAS HD ports. There's something in there about SAS cores. Not sure how that's related though.

[@ArtofServer]

if you want to learn more about SAS expanders, watch the videos in this playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PL28eVGz5vFQ-pn6eFBC6AmfbL3yPcBDV7

[@anerder976]

thanks

[@ArtofServer]

You're welcome!

[@angelivancastellrovira9563]

I have never used this SAS ports, thank you for sharing this video, this is very interesting. Could you please explain how the PSU can power all this bunch of hard disk drivers, and how are they connected to the PSU? Thank you!

[@ArtofServer]

This video was just a proof of concept demonstration. If I were to setup a 120x HDD setup in real life, I would probably use multiple chassis. There are 4U server chassis that can hold 60 drives each with the PSUs that can handle that. Probably 2 such machines and I can have 120 HDDs.

[@angelivancastellrovira9563]

@@ArtofServer Each SATA HDD has a SATA data cable and a SATA power connector. AFAIK, you need 120 power cables and I don't think a single server PSU has so amount of SATA power cables. Is this requirement managed by the chasis backplate in some way?

[@AllanMusk]

This controller works with 14Tb disk?

[@ArtofServer]

yes. you might want to watch this: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q2aYp3x9gt-tgdk

[@turkeyphant]

Can you share the script?

[@ravenvg]

The controller is cheaper per port as the expander. So what could be a reason to use Expanders over justmore of the Controllers?

[@ArtofServer]

In today's post-Chia mining craze, the price of SAS expanders don't make much sense. At the time this video was made, before chia mining, these SAS expanders sold at my store for about $40-45.

[@ravenvg]

@@ArtofServer Thank you for the Answer. Once again Crypto currencys are bad :(. Yes for 45$ It would totally make sense to use those.

[@gorillaau]

Perhaps I have been living under a rock, but how does crypto currency require massive disk arrays?

[@ravenvg]

@@gorillaau Mining for Coins like Burstcoin, Sia, Chia,.... work by plotting gigantic files on Harddrives. Then the one with the "right" block wins. If you have more blocks stored on your HDD - the chance of having a right one is higher. Therefore the more space you have, the more you earn with this coins. It is a way of combining "proof of work" with lower energy costs. This is also the reason why all those "Flatrate File storage hosts" have now limits, because they got bombed with Petabytes of Chia blocks ^^. But that was a 2021 thing, dont think any of those coins is any longer relevant.

[@iamtemo]

So I have a HP 468406-B21 SAS expander. What else will i need to run 24 drives? I have 6 mini sas cable and a SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable to pluging on the outside of the SAS expander. Or should I just buy standard HBA cards

[@PainBlame]

I have this same HBA controller and i am having trouble with it not recognizing all my sas drives. I am able to run 4 sas drives through each port but not 8 at the same time. Anyone know how to get 8 sas drives to work on 1 LSI HBA controller?

[@XxTWMLxX]

I'm running 2 h330 raid cards. Both have 2 8643 ports both cards capible of handling 128 drives each. Running in to 2 expanders each so 4 total expanders with 4 port on each expander x4 drives per port. 64 drives total. 16 linked per expander... Total across 4 expanders. I'm using 2 32 bay jbod 6u chassis with 8644 connectors on backs. Off each expander 8643 to 8644 cables. Running linux vm on server 2019 hyperv with hardware passthrough of the cards to run nas software on my linux vm. Basically both 32 drive chassis are in raid 5 so I can lose 1 drive in the 32 drive array. Then the 2 arrays since on 2 cards are stripped together making 1 large array capable of losing 2 drives. 1 per array of 32 drives keeping all data.

[@XxTWMLxX]

Using 4TB Seagate ironwolf pro drives in all slots. 256TB. -8tb for parity data. 248TB raw storage. 225.5TB after ntfs overhead and partition table allocation goodness. So 225.5TB of usable space.

[@adawi1234]

Can this configuration work on HP dL380 g8 server ?

[@johnschmitt2172]

I am considering (a less extreme version of) this, so will you still get lanes to all 16 drives on each board with just 1 cable for each?

[@ArtofServer]

Yes.

[@joeyjojojr.shabadoo915]

I have 2x Intel 2U 12drive servers that only require a single internal 4 lane/sff-8087 input each that I connect using a single 4i/4e card in the first unit, using the external connection routed to the second server's backplane, making the 2nd essentially a slave with a single point of storage management for both on server#1. I would like to expand my storage capabilities with the use of an Expander, but keep using a single RAID card for ease of management (Windows/RAID6). Would the use of an expander in my case cause me more problems than it's worth, as each backplane already has it's own Expander built in ? I see that your example is connecting each port of the daisy chained expanders to a single 4 drive backplane, whereas I am proposing that each of my Expander 4 lane connections would THEN be sent to a 12 drive backplane with it's own onboard Expander..... if that makes sense. Will my case still work ?

[@ArtofServer]

I'm not sure, you'll have to try it out. It sounds like it should work.

[@XiCKwY]

Hi! I need a quick answer. I found info about the H310, that those are an 9211-8i (That i've crossflashed to IT). The specs shows a 32 maximum devices connected. You know if this controller can connect more than 32 drives? Sometimes the specifications are relative and are upgraded by a firmware. Thanks in advance!

[@ArtofServer]

y

[@XiCKwY]

@@ArtofServer Thanks a lot! Now i need to wait to collect my salary and purchase 8087-sata cables and a extender

[@georgewang7770]

Can I use Unraid on this set up?

[@ArtofServer]

Indeed chi-chan!

[@Saturn2888]

Each of these goes 1 Mini-SAS to 4 drives at 12Gb/s. If I only have SATA drives, can't I split those up without a SAS expander? What's weird to me is I can't get eight 6Gb drives for one Mini-SAS connector. Seems like the only way to spread out that bandwidth is with SAS expanders like you showed in the video. :(

[@ArtofServer]

I'm not sure where you're getting 12Gbps? are you talking about SAS-3 drives? a mini-SAS connection (aka SFF8087) carries only 4 SAS lanes. there are only physically enough wires to communicate with 4 devices, so there's no way to split that up further as that's a physical limitation and we're talking about a serial protocol not a shared bus.

[@ArtofServer]

you might want to checkout this old video about SAS cables: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hYiXYmx-rLpqqck

[@Saturn2888]

@@ArtofServer So it's a physical limitation. But if is it possible to have a SAS expander that's small enough to effectively look like a splitter that takes 4 SAS and convert it to 8 SATA? I thought SAS expanders take SAS and expand it out to whatever (SAS or SATA). So you could make a small enough SAS expander to take a 4-wide connection and output 8 SATA ports right?

[@CrazyLegsFE]

I'm running a Netapp DS2446 disk shelf with 2x IOM6 to a LSI 2008 2 port card will I have issues running 24 drives with this setup without getting an expander?

[@johnmadsen37]

No. Use Silicon caulking to keep them together.

[@bechti44]

question: How to provide power for such many drives?

[@kraio-sfu]

Probably some sort of disk shelf

[@JLOHARIA]

WHAT SOUGHT OF HARD DRIVE IS BEEN CONNECTED TO THIS SETUP IS THAT SAS/NAS HARD DRIVE OR SATA INTERFACE HARD DRIVE

[@ArtofServer]

You can use any SAS or SATA (2/3) HDDs.

[@wrenzero]

Hello, this is what I want to do with my current setup, I currently running 3x Supermicro AOC-S3008L-L8E, I have 8x 8TB WD Red on all 3 controllers giving me 24 drives in total, but I wish to go beyond this, as I only have 1 PCI-E left, and I want to add another 48x 8TB, people think I might be crazy and why, my reason is because I’m a virtual hoarder, I collect anything and everything, no to mention that it is also my Plex server too, anyways I tried to ask supermicro if I could add a expander to my current controller and they said no because it only suppers backplanes, but since my setup is inside a thermaltake core w200, I can’t use the backplane, but this expander your running with, can I use that with my current controller and daisy chain it too? Or can I use any expander and daisy chain it? If so, I’ll be buying right away, just don’t want to go ahead and waste money if I can’t, anyways thanks in advance and great video

[@ArtofServer]

Most of the SAS expanders that are LSI based can be daisy chained like I show in this video. However, due to Chia mining, SAS expander prices have gone up 400-900%, so I can no longer sell them.

[@Build_the_Future]

Can you use a SAS expander by itself and communicate with it over PCIE without having an HBA card?

[@ArtofServer]

No, it is not a PCIe device.

[@Build_the_Future]

@@ArtofServer so the PCIe is just for power?

[@ArtofServer]

@@Build_the_Future yes

[@84Actionjack]

Are there potential problems running software JBOD with LSI HBA cards not flashed to IT mode? I'm running two LSI100244 cards in a 24 bay supermicro case using Stablebit JBOD on a Windows 2012 server. Never had a problem but I'm wondering after watching some of your videos.

[@ArtofServer]

I'm not familiar with LSI100244 card? Which one is that? The answer to your question really depends on the software you are using. I would recommend sticking with whatever the software requirements state.

[@84Actionjack]

@@ArtofServer It's the 9201-16i model. Maybe there's no reason for concern.

[@ArtofServer]

@@84Actionjack So, you have IR firmware on that card? Does stablebit (I'm not familiar with it) specify IT mode firmware as requirement?

[@84Actionjack]

@@ArtofServer Looked thru the documentation and it doesn't mention controller cards at all. Maybe since it's software controlled it doesn't matter. Thanks for you help. Recently bought two of your IBM ServerRaid Expansion adapters after watching your video. Great work.

[@maksymbelzetskyi6618]

hi, i have a troubles with that. first i have lsi 9400-16i . i have 10 adaptec 82885t expanders. the case is i can cascade only on one port. if im connecting 2 or more expanders in line on any another port, all expanders are not working. also i even cant cascade more then 4 expanders on first port. so i can connect only 7 expanders. 4 in line (cascade) one any 1 port and only 1 for each 3 other ports. dmesg gives me errors with mpt3sas if i connecting anything more ( 5th expander in cascade or 2nd on any other port) . any thoughts?

[@ArtofServer]

Sorry, not familiar with that Adaptec expander.

[@maksymbelzetskyi6618]

@@ArtofServer unfortunately (

[@jianiversace9787]

Would u need 120 pcie lines

[@ArtofServer]

No. That's the point of this video.

[@johnmadsen37]

How much is the bandwidth limited on this? 2x12gbs / 120 hdds?

[@ArtofServer]

Worst case is 4x6Gbps=24Gbps, or about 3GB/s.

[@johnmadsen37]

@@ArtofServer cool, so that is enough for an hdd. for most case. maybe it slightly affects sustained red or write.... I just got a 12gb lsi 8i card and i could only seem to find 6gb expander cards. 2x6gb connections, then 4x4 out. I guess i will just see. I have no idea if it is the max through all ports or always evenly distributed. Seems to be a lot of mystery with these. or just tribal knowledge. I want to run extensive tests with these and also compare to satas on same controller. should be an intersting set of videos. my take on alot of home nas i(like for plex) is it is still better to go with used enterprise sas drives which are actually less than new satas -- and the used drives will still last longer, have lower energy costs (i dont care about that), and are cheaper to deal with in case of a disk failure. (using refurbished disks) .

[@jakeleo1857]

Sir please help me I have lsi 9400-16i for chia mining how to install this card and drivers?

[@ArtofServer]

no need for drivers.

[@jakeleo1857]

@@ArtofServer Thanks sir

[@playdoh1975]

Lolz... if you buy one from my store.. nice plug!!

[@86ortega]

Can this play minecraft?

[@ArtofServer]

oh yes, yes it can... LOL

[@86ortega]

@@ArtofServer Quick question. I am data noob and I've got my hands on 7x 10TB Harddrives that I want to use in storage spaces dual parity. I have 4 drives connected on my mobo in a 2 way mirror but I'm rebuilding the pool with 7x dual parity. I got the LSI LSI00301 SAS 9207-8i for the expanded sata. Should I run my entire pool through that card or keep 4 on the mobo and the rest on the controller as I keep adding drives?

[@ArtofServer]

@@86ortega you should donate those drives to me and not think about it too much. :-P

[@Hands-onNow]

I have a dell r610. I want to use the built in drive bays and add an additional disk array, what hba controller will allow this? I have a lsi 9210-8i.

[@ArtofServer]

You should use a H200 for the internal drives, and an external HBA for the external drives, something like 9200-8e or 9207-8e, or 9201-16e.

[@Hands-onNow]

@@ArtofServer damn I got a 9210-8i for the internal drives, replacing the perc 6i.

[@ArtofServer]

Did you buy it from my store?

[@Hands-onNow]

@@ArtofServer I didn't. Auction...

[@Hands-onNow]

I have a question, maybe a stupid one, forgive me. The lsi card 9210-8i says pci-e2 8x can I plug this into pci g2 8x?

[@artlessknave]

is there a particular reason you daisy chained instead cascading (controller>expander 1>other epanders) other than maybe just convenience?

[@ArtofServer]

This was mostly just an exercise to illustrate that it is possible to do something like this, but like I said in the video, it's not necessarily a topology I would recommend.

[@lakerampersaud2014]

cool.

[@McCuneWindandSolar]

what mother board is that.

[@ArtofServer]

X9DRX+-F. It's a proprietary form factor, so don't recommend it unless you have the case that goes with it.

[@McCuneWindandSolar]

@@ArtofServer I was wondering I have a large case. But would love it for a massive freenas system.

[@ArtofServer]

@@McCuneWindandSolar you don't need a motherboard like this to build a massive freenas/ZFS system. i used this because I have this around, but those SAS expanders don't need to be powered in a PCIe slot. i have another video showing how to power them with adapters. So, as long as your case has the space, you can mount them anywhere.

[@McCuneWindandSolar]

@@ArtofServer I just pursed and expander and a pci-e crypto adapter like you had in one of your videos. I have an LSI card flash ro IT mode and ordered and HP was expander, will use current mother board to see if it works.

[@TheSasquatchjones]

In....sane

[@ArtofServer]

Lol

[@democratssuckcritic1030]

i come here looking for a way to add more hard drive to my GIGABYTE GA-H61M-D2P-B3 what kind of hardware would you recommend