Home Media Server Expansion

[Allan74]

I am currently running a combination of RAID5 SATA Constellations and RAID5 SAS Constellations on 2 identical LSi Megaraid 6GB/s SAS RAID5/6 capable PCIe Cards and need to expand.

Both cards have twin 8087 Mini-Sas Ports and up till now, I was using them in their most basic config, 1 cable per port, 4 drives per cable in a home built custom setup.

I have come to the point now where I need to decide carefully how to move forward, as I don't have enough spare non-RAID HDD storage to back everything up before I break the arrays and upgrade to a new RAID card with more ports, so I am looking at putting a SAS Expander into the mix, essentially to turn each single port into 4.

My choices on the used marketplace are fairly common, simple and basic, as I am sure that many have done the same.

The current choices are (in the $20 market that is) the HP "24 port" or the IBM "16 Port".

Question#1: Which card would YOU (or have you) used to expand your controller ?

Question#2: With simply throwing the Expander in between the current arrays and RAID card(s), will I be able to keep all of my data without losing the array into ?

I am leaning towards picking up the IBM branded "16 port" as it is advertised as being a 6GB card, where as the HP is advertised as a 3GB solution.
I see neither the additional ports or the drop in speed as a positive or negative either way, only compatibility.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out with this one.
Allan

[sum_guy]

This is what I have, scalable (cascade) not cheap but, you get what you pay for. It's going to depend on your raid card.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAAEE4U63394&Description=sas%20expa...3394-_-Product

[aedipuss]

have you considered adding nas boxes? i have 3 now and add to them as space is needed. the oldest has over 47,000 hours up time currently with no un-correctable errors.

[sum_guy]

That's impressive uptime, I prefer to keep my RAID off the lan, I get what you're saying a plausible alternative.

[Allan74]

have you considered adding nas boxes? i have 3 now and add to them as space is needed. the oldest has over 47,000 hours up time currently with no un-correctable errors.

I have THE WORST luck with 'consumer' SATA desktop and/or 'NAS' drives, which still leaves me needing port expansion for decommissioned enterprise SAS drives....I also don't want to add Network upgrades to the task list for NAS box(es) and multiple things to worry about.

I don't want my media server to become a 'hobby' in it's maintenance/repair. I want to set it and forget it....within reason of course.

[Allan74]

This is what I have, scalable (cascade) not cheap but, you get what you pay for. It's going to depend on your raid card.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAAEE4U63394&Description=sas%20expa...3394-_-Product

I am currently running a pair of LSi 9621-8i 6GB cards. If I were building new, from scratch, I would consider a single card and expensive expander, but what I am proposing is a simple means to an end and not shelling out for 12GB capable hardware when my cards aren't even capable of that. The HP 24 port seems to be the way to go.