SAS Backplane to Motherboard SATA Connection

[criddell]

Hey guys,
I've got a question about connecting a SAS backplane to my motherboard. So I've been playing around with putting my old server into a rack-mount chassis. The chassis I have is a NORCO PRC-2008 2U. It has a SAS backplane for its hot-swap drive bay. The hard drives I have are all SATA (which I read shouldn't be a problem connecting to SAS). I bought a miniSAS to SATA breakout cable like this: https://goo.gl/ohT3Fg.

The motherboard is an old MSI Z68MA-ED55, and I'm booting from a SSD connected directly to a SATA port, which works.

The problem arises when I turn the machine on, it doesn't see any of the drives. In the BIOS, under those SATA ports it just says "Not Present." I think I'm a tad out of my depth so I thought I'd come to some of the experts.

Do I need a controller card or am I missing something??

Thanks!

 

[bignastyid]

Even though the drives are sata the onboard sata ports will not support that backplane. You need either a SAS controller or a Sata controller that supports an 8087 backplane.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4M540J4468
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA0T56P2425

 

[criddell]

Even though the drives are sata the onboard sata ports will not support that backplane. You need either a SAS controller or a Sata controller that supports an 8087 backplane.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4M540J4468
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA0T56P2425

Okay! That's what I kinda thought. I think I'm gonna go with that HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 SGL.

Two last (newbie) questions:
Do I just connect the miniSAS backplane to the controller then all the data flows through the PCIe port?
If so, does that bottleneck the data flow at all?

 

[bignastyid]

The card will use the pci-e bus and a PCI-e port will not be a bottleneck, especially with sata drives.

 

[criddell]

The card will use the pci-e bus and a PCI-e port will not be a bottleneck, especially with sata drives.

Great! Thank you so much for your help!

 

[thundervore]

The solution post is not quite accurate. What you need is a REVERSE break out cable. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033

Trust me, I went through the same setup when I connected my motherboard to the SAS backplane on my NORCO 4224 and brought the correct REVERSE cables. Expensive but it was the solution until I was able to purchase a proper 24 port SAS card and 8087 cables. Most people do not know this but those breakout cables are single direction only and does not work in reverse. They have both FORWARD and REVERSE cables.

Also I recommend you do not go with a Highpoint Rocket RAID card. I went out and got a 2760a card for my NORCO 4224 and it drops entire channels if there is too much IO throughput in the card such as when the system defragments with high CPU usage. Save yourself the trouble and get a LSI card.

 

[criddell]

The solution post is not quite accurate. What you need is a REVERSE break out cable. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033

Trust me, I went through the same setup when I connected my motherboard to the SAS backplane on my NORCO 4224 and brought the correct REVERSE cables. Expensive but it was the solution until I was able to purchase a proper 24 port SAS card and 8087 cables. Most people do not know this but those breakout cables are single direction only and does not work in reverse. They have both FORWARD and REVERSE cables.

Also I recommend you do not go with a Highpoint Rocket RAID card. I went out and got a 2760a card for my NORCO 4224 and it drops entire channels if there is too much IO throughput in the card such as when the system defragments with high CPU usage. Save yourself the trouble and get a LSI card.

So if I get the reverse breakout cable, the SAS backplane can connect to the motherboard via SATA? That's a nuance I wish I knew when I was buying cables...

 

[bignastyid]

Didn't know those were a thing, last I played with SAS there was no way to connect a SAS backplane to a Sata controller.

 

[thundervore]

The solution post is not quite accurate. What you need is a REVERSE break out cable. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033

Trust me, I went through the same setup when I connected my motherboard to the SAS backplane on my NORCO 4224 and brought the correct REVERSE cables. Expensive but it was the solution until I was able to purchase a proper 24 port SAS card and 8087 cables. Most people do not know this but those breakout cables are single direction only and does not work in reverse. They have both FORWARD and REVERSE cables.

Also I recommend you do not go with a Highpoint Rocket RAID card. I went out and got a 2760a card for my NORCO 4224 and it drops entire channels if there is too much IO throughput in the card such as when the system defragments with high CPU usage. Save yourself the trouble and get a LSI card.

So if I get the reverse breakout cable, the SAS backplane can connect to the motherboard via SATA? That's a nuance I wish I knew when I was buying cables...

Yes. That is correct. A reverse break out cable will allow you to connect 4 SATA ports on the motherboard to a single SAS backplane in the server. The FORWARD breakout cable allows you to connect 1 SAS port on a controller card to 4 individual drives.

Didn't know those were a thing, last I played with SAS there was no way to connect a SAS backplane to a Sata controller.

These are a thing, and its something that many NORCO owners learn the hard way after spending about $10 a cable then discover the cables do not work after troubleshooting everything else lol

 

[criddell]

The solution post is not quite accurate. What you need is a REVERSE break out cable. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033

Trust me, I went through the same setup when I connected my motherboard to the SAS backplane on my NORCO 4224 and brought the correct REVERSE cables. Expensive but it was the solution until I was able to purchase a proper 24 port SAS card and 8087 cables. Most people do not know this but those breakout cables are single direction only and does not work in reverse. They have both FORWARD and REVERSE cables.

Also I recommend you do not go with a Highpoint Rocket RAID card. I went out and got a 2760a card for my NORCO 4224 and it drops entire channels if there is too much IO throughput in the card such as when the system defragments with high CPU usage. Save yourself the trouble and get a LSI card.

So if I get the reverse breakout cable, the SAS backplane can connect to the motherboard via SATA? That's a nuance I wish I knew when I was buying cables...

Yes. That is correct. A reverse break out cable will allow you to connect 4 SATA ports on the motherboard to a single SAS backplane in the server. The FORWARD breakout cable allows you to connect 1 SAS port on a controller card to 4 individual drives.

Didn't know those were a thing, last I played with SAS there was no way to connect a SAS backplane to a Sata controller.

These are a thing, and its something that many NORCO owners learn the hard way after spending about $10 a cable then discover the cables do not work after troubleshooting everything else lol

Thanks for all your help! I have just one last question: Is this something that I'll only see with NORCO chassis or is it something to be aware of for other rack mount chassis?

 

[thundervore]

The solution post is not quite accurate. What you need is a REVERSE break out cable. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033

Trust me, I went through the same setup when I connected my motherboard to the SAS backplane on my NORCO 4224 and brought the correct REVERSE cables. Expensive but it was the solution until I was able to purchase a proper 24 port SAS card and 8087 cables. Most people do not know this but those breakout cables are single direction only and does not work in reverse. They have both FORWARD and REVERSE cables.

Also I recommend you do not go with a Highpoint Rocket RAID card. I went out and got a 2760a card for my NORCO 4224 and it drops entire channels if there is too much IO throughput in the card such as when the system defragments with high CPU usage. Save yourself the trouble and get a LSI card.

So if I get the reverse breakout cable, the SAS backplane can connect to the motherboard via SATA? That's a nuance I wish I knew when I was buying cables...

Yes. That is correct. A reverse break out cable will allow you to connect 4 SATA ports on the motherboard to a single SAS backplane in the server. The FORWARD breakout cable allows you to connect 1 SAS port on a controller card to 4 individual drives.

Didn't know those were a thing, last I played with SAS there was no way to connect a SAS backplane to a Sata controller.

These are a thing, and its something that many NORCO owners learn the hard way after spending about $10 a cable then discover the cables do not work after troubleshooting everything else lol

Thanks for all your help! I have just one last question: Is this something that I'll only see with NORCO chassis or is it something to be aware of for other rack mount chassis?

It is not NORCO specific but its what NORCO is famous for since it is the cheapest way to build a homemade server. If someone was to spend the extra $$$$ and get a SuperMicro or other alternative expensive server chassis there is a high probability they will also spend at minimum $600 on a proper HBA card with SAS ports and avoid the reverse breakout cables.


TLDR:
Using a NORCO case with reverse breakout cables is just the cheap solution, it works with any SAS backplane.

 

[criddell]

Hey I just wanted to thank you guys for all the help! I just received my reverse breakout cable today, and it worked great! No problems whatsoever.