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I would like to rely on a RAID-on-chip solution to control 24 SAS hard drives in a direct-attached environment. How would you approach this to get best bandwidth given that I'd like to spend less than $10,000 on the interconnect.

I've read that LSI 2208 chip can easily handle 8-drive SSD RAID6 in hardware. I'd like to harness its power to control 24 SAS hard drives over an expander in an external enclosure.

Currently I use an Infortrend S24S-G2240 external enclosure. It provides its own controller and expander. I'd like to use LSI 2208 controller for RAID6 somehow instead of the mystery controller in the enclosure.

P.S. I tried to create SAS-expander as a tag, but my rep on this site is low.

GregC
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1 Answers1

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We're missing the obvious information... What type of external enclosure do you have, and what are its available connections?

Typically, external SAS controllers use 4-lane SAS SFF-8088 connectors to interface with the host-based adapter in the server.

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Given that, the enclosure should have a SAS expander embedded on its backplane. That's how you'd be able to address the number of disks inside of the enclosure. Pretty standard.

I use HP D2700 enclosures, for instance. They have 25 x 2.5" disk bays and feature two chassis controllers that each take an SFF-8088 connection to the host system. I control them with either 1-port or 2-port LSI controllers. The expander is built into the external drive enclosure.

--Edit

Looking at the rear of the device you have, try connecting one port from your LSI HBA to P1 of the enclosure. Start there. I don't know if this device has multipath/MPIO capabilities, so you may need to contact support for that. But otherwise, this looks like any standard external JBOD unit... although, reading the specifications, it may be a SAS-attached SAN unit. You're better off using its embedded controller and logic rather than going the LSI approach.

enter image description here

ewwhite
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