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Intel-RAID-Expander-Card RES2SV240

Good evening I am purchasing this sas expander because I have read where I can attach up to 24 hard drives to this drive. My knowledge of this storage is limited here and have a few questions.

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-RAID-Expander-Card-RES2SV240/dp/B0042NLUVE

For cable management is it possible to purchase some sort of sff8087 cables to both supply power and a data connection from this expander. If so what kind of cables do I purchase to make this happen.

If I cannot combine the both and only DATA what type of SFF8087 cables to attach to SATA drives do I purchase. I have SATA 3 DRIVES.

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tailoreddigital

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agonza07

You will need fan out cables.
http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Mini-SAS-Forward-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC

Also, just making sure, you have a RAID card already purchased right?

tailoreddigital

agonza07 asks a great question.

FYI, this is the RAID card i use with the Expander,

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002RL8I7M?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s01

techdrive

ASKER

Thank you guys for your answers. I forgot to mention I intend to use the RAID on the OS/software RAID.

tailoreddigital

I setup my card a while back, but i think it has to plug into a RAID card with a SAS cable. You might double-check this before you purchase.

Gerald Connolly

Tech drive, you intend to use software RAID.

I hope you mean RAID via the OS and not via a onboard Fake-RAID Chip on you motherboard.

only to do RAID10 and not RAID5 via software as 5 will eat a lot of system resources and is renown for its unreliability

techdrive

ASKER

Yes I meant RAID on the operating system and not on the MB. I have been contemplating doing RAID 10 but that requires a lot of drives.

Gerald Connolly

We do not recommend RAID5 for business use any more due to the long rebuild times of modern high capacity disks, so it's either RAID6 or RAID10, with RAID10 being preferred. RAID6 is going to eat most servers

Lots of disks! Look at this way, how much is your data worth, and disks are cheap

techdrive

ASKER

Well guys I finally received the cables, installed the card, and NOT only does the server not see the card, but my OS does not see this also. Weird thing is there are no drivers listed on intel site only a firmware update.

Just for giggles I have a LSIMegaraid card. I installed this card and my machine immediately saw this card along with the OS.

agonza07

The expander only works with a RAID card, not the OS. It only uses the PCIe slot for power, as a matter of fact, if you look at the install guide you can also connect a molex power cable to it and not connect it to the PCIe slot.

Once you have both cards (the LSIMegaraid and the expander) you need to run an 8087 to 8087 cable from the output of the RAID card into port one of the expander. After that the other 8087 ports are your outputs that go to your hard drives.

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/sb/e93121003_res2sv240_hwug.pdf

tailoreddigital

My expander is plugged in via the molex and works fine.

techdrive

ASKER

So Tailor your expander is not using any adaptec or extra card and working fine.