OT-ish SATA port replicators vs. SAS "expanders"

[Mike Tancsa]

On 11/15/2014 5:42 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
>
> The problem with the LSI 2008 is that it doesn't support SATA port
> replicators (while it does support SAS expanders).
>
> What is the real difference?  Is it possible to hack the driver to support
> (obviously not booting from) SATA port replicators on the LSI?

I cant speak to your expanders question, but we too have had too many 
issues with sata port multipliers.  We are using a pair of LSI 9240-8i 
with the disks just in JBOD mode for ZFS and its been FAR more clean and 
easy to manage.  Performance is excellent too. The cards can be had for 
~$100 and expander cards about $150. Quite good performance too.

# camcontrol devlist
<ATA WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80>        at scbus0 target 8 lun 0 (pass0,da0)
<ATA WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A82>        at scbus0 target 9 lun 0 (pass1,da1)
<ATA WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80>        at scbus0 target 10 lun 0 (pass2,da2)
<ATA WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80>        at scbus0 target 11 lun 0 (pass3,da3)
<ATA WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A82>        at scbus0 target 13 lun 0 (pass4,da4)
<ATA WDC WD40EFRX-68W 0A80>        at scbus0 target 15 lun 0 (pass5,da5)
<ATA WDC WD2002FAEX-0 1L01>        at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass6,da6)
<ATA WDC WD2002FAEX-0 1D05>        at scbus1 target 1 lun 0 (pass7,da7)
<ATA WDC WD2002FAEX-0 1D05>        at scbus1 target 2 lun 0 (pass8,da8)
<ATA WDC WD2001FASS-0 0101>        at scbus1 target 3 lun 0 (pass9,da9)
<ATA WDC WD2001FASS-0 0101>        at scbus1 target 4 lun 0 (pass10,da10)
<ATA WDC WD2001FASS-0 0101>        at scbus1 target 5 lun 0 (pass11,da11)


	---Mike



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Mike Tancsa, tel +1 519 651 3400
Sentex Communications, mike at sentex.net
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