From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Robinson Subject: Re: [Slightly OT] Cheap 4-port PCI-E SATA card? Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:29:20 +0000 Message-ID: <4D21EB50.7060301@anonymous.org.uk> References: <4D20E9F7.2080800@anonymous.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Matt Garman Cc: Linux RAID List-Id: linux-raid.ids On 02/01/2011 23:04, Matt Garman wrote: > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 3:11 PM, John Robinson > wrote: >> Please could someone suggest a cheap PCI-E SATA card with 4 internal= ports? >> >> I currently have 6 motherboard SATA ports and a 5-drive hot-swap cha= ssis, I >> am thinking of adding a second 5-drive hot-swap chassis to my case a= nd would >> need another 4 SATA ports to drive it. >> >> Other requirements: known to work with RHEL/CentOS 5 kernels, even i= f it >> means installing a driver with DKMS or whatever. > > You can also get a SAS card, and an overpriced mini-SAS to SATA cable= =2E > The LSI SAS 1068e chip is quite common and well supported by Linux. > You can buy LSI-branded cards, or from another OEM that uses the same > chip. Intel makes such a card, and I just read that IBM does as well= , > the ServeRAID BR10i LSI SAS3082E-R. Covered in detail here: > > http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-serveraid-br10i-lsi-sas3082e-r-p= ciexpress-sas-raid-controller/ > > Such a card will actually give you a total of eight SATA ports, but > you obviously don't have to use them all; you can get away with only > buying one of the SAS to 4-SATA port fanout cables. > > I grabbed two of those IBM BR10i cards off of ebay for about $50. > Unfortunately, I didn't pay close attention to the listing, and mine > came without PCI brackets. But so far I've tested one, and it works > just fine. I've just had a look on eBay and the few there are don't have brackets=20 in their pictures. But still, this is definitely an option, looks like = I=20 might be able to pick one up for about =A350, which was pretty much the= =20 most I really wanted to spend. More like =A360 by the time I've got the= =20 cable, but I would have another 4 spare SATA ports :-) >> Doesn't have to be PCI-E x1 because I've a spare x8 (logical)/x16 (p= hysical) >> slot, but I don't know if anything cheap's going to be anything othe= r than >> PCI-E x1. v2.0 (5GT/s) would be nice though. > > If you're using a typical consumer-grade motherboard, watch out that > the PCIe slot supports things other than video cards. For whatever > reason, particularly on micro-ATX boards, the PCIe x8/x16 slots often > won't work with anything other than video cards. Trying to use > something else (e.g. a RAID card) will, at best, prohibit the machine > from booting, or at worst, cause very subtle random problems. It's an Asus P5Q Pro, Intel P45+ICH10R, a fairly boring basic=20 workstation grade (not gaming) full ATX motherboard, and if it doesn't=20 like having something other than a video card in its second x16 slot=20 I'll start screaming at Asus. Thanks for your advice! Cheers, John. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" i= n the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html