From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andreas Klauer Subject: Re: Looking to pick PCIe x4/x8 4+ SATA expansion card recommendation. Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 21:35:41 +0200 Message-ID: <20160328193541.GA9502@EIS> References: <56F97B91.4070302@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <56F97B91.4070302@gmail.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Ram Ramesh Cc: Linux Raid List-Id: linux-raid.ids On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 01:44:33PM -0500, Ram Ramesh wrote: > The recommendations typically go for PCIe x1-2port type cards Well, an 8 port card (like HP H220 or similar) is a bit too expensive if all you need is two more slots, and it's not like mdadm is picky - anything goes, well, as long as it meets minimum requirements (no I/O errors etc)... If you're looking for something on an even larger scale, maybe have a look at the Backblaze Storage Pod blog posts. Although the hardware they use seems to be hard to get, it might give you some ideas. They actually use port multipliers, I actually wish they were as widespread (and as cheap) as USB hubs, so we all could simply put three or four disks to a single SATA port, but alas... Maybe next time. Regards Andreas Klauer