Reddit reviews CableCreation Mini SAS 36Pin (SFF-8087) Male to 4 SATA 7Pin Female Cable, Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane, 1.0M
We found 12 Reddit comments about CableCreation Mini SAS 36Pin (SFF-8087) Male to 4 SATA 7Pin Female Cable, Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane, 1.0M. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Mini SAS 36 (SFF-8087) Male Connect to the Controller, 4 x SATA Connect to the backplane.Mini SAS 36 (SFF-8087) Male is Host, 4 x SATA female is targetMini SAS 36 (SFF-8087) connect to the Controller, 4 Sata connect to 4 HDD.Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a high-speed data storage interface designed for high-throughput and fast data accessCable Length 1.0M
I'm not sure what kind of RAID card you're going to end up with but if it's the norm around here you'll likely want one of these and then 3 of these little guys.
You could probably find those cheaper somewhere else but that would work fine. Then you'd just need one SATA power connector from your PSU and it looks like it would power all 3.
He’s using RAID cards in the PCI slots that have mini SAS ports, then uses mini SAS to SATA breakout cables like this: CableCreation Mini SAS 36Pin (SFF-8087) Male to 4 SATA 7Pin Female Cable, Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane, 1.0M https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013G4EOEY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ap3XCbWQEG8PP
Built my plex server over the last week. Bought the Dell T7500 from this thread.
For those contemplating doing the same there were a few pieces I had to buy along with it:
I thought the PC had a VGA port when looking at images, but it wasn't, so I bought a cheap graphics card just to get the UNRAID install working. I'm running it headless.
The server couldn't recognize drives over 2TB, so I bought the LSI card. You could save about half the price and buy it unflashed and the flash it to IT mode yourself. I bout the flashed version to safe myself some time.
The case came with 2 caddys, but I had an SSD and two HDDs. I ordered these. Unless you plan on taking some things apart in the case, you can't really mount harddrives using screws.
Just wanted to post my lessons learned just in case anyone was thinking about buying the Dell t7500.
In saying all of this, I am really happy with the server so far. Just finished setting up most of my dockers in UNRAID this weekend. Have only streamed a couple of things on the local network. Soon I will have someone sharing the library at a different location.
Ok yeah they looked fine just wanted to make sure they were the right connectors https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8087-Female-Controller-Backplane/dp/B013G4EOEY/ref=mp_s_a_1_20?keywords=sata%2Bto%2Bsas&qid=1555191162&s=gateway&sr=8-20&th=1&psc=1
Do both! It takes some modding, but it's not too difficult.
You don't need to flash the H200, just put it in the storage slot and pass this through to whatever VM is running ZFS. I happen to use freeNAS for this in a VM and it works great. Connect the backplane to the H200, giving ZFS exclusive control of these drives.
The H700 can be put in another PCIe slot, and you can connect your SSDs to that. I have my H700 running my two 500GB SSDs in RAID1 for VM storage. The three issues to solve are mounting, SATA connection, and power.
MiniSATASlimline to SATA like this one and just use a splitter on the power side.Here's a pic of my setup Hey, it's ugly but it works! H700 on top on the right, H200 (not flashed) below that in the storage slot. And actually 3 SSDs stacked up, velcro'd together with one of those PCIe slot brackets.
I've very very rarely seen or read about dmraid working or being worth the complications using dmraid offers.
There's always just better more equipped solutions than dmraid.
This is why I usually just tell people asking why their hard disks don't show up in "Linux Installers" that motherboard provided software raid is generally not supported in Linux.
Have you considered upgrading to full hardware raid? you would only need a capable raid controller, breakout cables and minimum two more matching hard disks if you wanted to upgrade to raid 5.
The raid disk controllers i use are also extremely affordable, reliable and supported natively with Linux.
If you do buy one of these raid controllers you will need the proper cables to connect sata hard disks.
The overall benefit of using a physical hardware raid controller is the raid volume and array being operating system and hardware agnostic meaning if your motherboard dies or your os install implodes you don't loose your raid array contents.
Your raid solution is a good one but it employs hardware dependency and design flaws.
I should also mention that specific model of LSI raid controller only uses pci express version 2 but it will work with pcie 3.0 with a firmware update. If you wanted to just use a pcie 3.0 raid controller the 9271-8i model is newer and somewhat faster due to newer dram on the raid controller but the cost increases somewhat.
I've been using the 9260 models for perhaps 8 years and so far haven't lost a single raid volume or filesystem to a hard disk failure.
Sure:
The raid raid is a Dell H200 (same as an LSI-9211 8i, but I could get the dell cheaper) I found it on eBay for ~ $30 shipped.
I used something like these sas breakout cables. I have two because it made the internal cable management much easier. Note that the T20 (probably the T30 too) needs to have the 90 degree version so that the two cables attached to the bottom drive cage don't need to be bent really tight to put the case lid back on. But if you use the 90 on the top drives, then the connector angles up towards the top of the case and needs to be looped back down. I found it much cleaner looking to just use separate cables and leave 2 sata breakout connectors unused and tuck them away.
I have a server motherboard with SAS -> SATA ports so I can plug in one of these and get 4x SATA ports from one port. For power, I use these power splitters that allow me to neatly add power to a column of HDDs. I run one of the splitters per power line from the PSU. Before I had a server motherboard, I used this PCIE SATA card.
FWIW, it totally depends on how budget sensitive you are. Based on the hardware you're talking about, it sounds like budget matters quite a bit.
In the USA, you can pick up a Dell H200 or H310 PERC card for ~$30, get the appropriate SAS to 4 SATA breakout cables for under $10 each, and flash the card into IT mode. If you want to get fancy, you can point a fan at the chipset heatsink to account for lower airflow in most cases in that area (I used a PCI slot cover-type fan adapter slow shipped from china and a single 92mm fan I had around). It's an extremely popular way to get a few more ports into your datahorder build and the card is well supported by most software. I operate it in pass-through, so I have no idea if you should use it for RAID or not.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/47MCV-047MCV-342-0663-DELL-PERC-H200-6Gb-s-PCI-e-SAS-SATA-Raid-Controller/253307058926
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PERC-H310-8-Port-6Gb-s-SAS-Adapter-RAID-Controller-HV52W-Replaces-Perc-H200/192120843762
https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/updated-sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/
https://tylermade.net/2017/06/27/how-to-crossflash-perc-h310-to-it-mode-lsi-9211-8i-firmware-hba-for-freenas-unraid/
https://www.amazon.com/CableCreation-SFF-8087-Female-Controller-Backplane/dp/B013G4EOEY/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N3T1GJP
I've just built a FreeNAS box on a Dell T310. Xeon 2.4Ghz x3430, 8GB. 4x3.5" bays, with 2x5.25" bays you can do what you like with. I put two of these to give me 6x3.5" and 4x2.5" bays. There are 6 onboard SATA ports, so I'm using a Dell H200 card for the 3.5" drives and my 2 SSDs with 8087 to 4xSATA cables. It runs idle at about 80w, and kicks up to 120w when it's transcoding a Plex 1080p stream.
You could use whatever hypervisor you like on it.
It doesn't take just any mishmash of RAM though, so either find one with 16+ installed already, or be ready to shell out a bit more to get yourself to the maximum of 32GB.
The Dell T320 is a great looking box too, and newer, with 8x3.5" bays, bigger RAM capacity, etc.
And just grab a couple of these and I should be good?
It has 2 mini SAS ports, but you can use a breakout cable to connect it to 8 SATA drives.
This is one example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013G4EOEY/