Question How can I connect a SAS drive to SilverStone DS380 backplane?

[shanecallanan]

Hey guys,

I recently bought this case which supports 8x hot-swappable SAS drives. https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452

The problem is that the backplane has 2 sata connections per drive (1 labelled SATA, the 2nd labelled SAS).

This is obviously a non-standard SAS connection, so I'm not sure how to go about connecting 8 SAS drives to this backplane.

If it's useful, I also bought this RAID controller: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08JZDBXSS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Any help greatly appreciated

 

[LinuxDevice]

There is a lack of enough photos to be certain, but this looks promising:

• Mini-SAS HD (SFF8643) to SATA 7 pin cable and 12 Gbit/s SAS HD card required for 12 Gbit/s performance (i.e. SilverStone CPS05 & ECS05)

There are no photos to be certain, but look closely at the cables from this Newegg URL:

• https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=mini+sas+cable&N=100168401

Look closely at the word "mini". This might not have enough cables (it is sort of a splitter), but is likely the correct connector type:

• https://www.newegg.com/p/238-00A4-00003?Description=mini sas cable&cm_re=mini_sas cable--9SIACJF7BC9148--Product&quicklink=true

I am also not certain if there might be other reasons why that specific cable would work or fail. Obviously you'd need some sort of cable which supports as many SAS drives as you might use (but the PCIe card might have more than one mini-SAS, e.g., if cables have 4 connectors, and there are two cable sets on the PCIe card itself, then two cables could be used for 8 drives).

 

[shanecallanan]

Hey, thanks!
We're getting closer.

Firstly, on further inspection, it appears that the RAID controller I bought is only compatible with certain IBM systems.
So it looks like I may need to buy a new RAID controller (dang it! 🙁 - can someone please confirm if this is really the case?)

I had a look at the SilverStone ECS05 controller that you linked, but it appears to cost €400-€500.
I couldn't justify this for a small home server build.

Alternatively I have found the following RAID controllers:
Broadcom SAS-9300i (€200)
Broadcom SAS-9341-8i (€250)

They're still costly, but I can just about afford them (albeit reluctantly).

So the final issue is the cable, to which the CPS05 looks to do the trick.
But to be doubly-sure, here's a picture of the HDD backplane:
(Note that I don't see any indication of the need for a SGPIO sideband cable on the backplane - what's this used for?)

EDIT (raid controllers):

I don't necessarily require full 12Gb/s speeds. My main reason for choosing SAS over SATA is for its reduced hard error rate (as outlined in this article). The article states that consumer SATA drives generate a hard error every 10TB (or less). SAS drives on the other hand generate a hard error every 110TB (or less). This effectively limits the size of my RAID group to 10TB for SATA drives, but my plan is to eventually expand my RAID group to 80-96TB.

For this reason, I am happy to also go for the following RAID controllers:
Broadcom 9211-8i - €108
SilverStone ECS01 - €165
Broadcom 9207-8i - €105