[chiglug] Testing SAS drives

[Zane C. B-H.]

On 2020-05-02 09:52, L. V. Lammert wrote:
> On Sat, 2 May 2020, Zane C. B-H. wrote:
> 
>> Not clear what the backplane is for. If it is the MD1200, unless the
>> current one is bad I would just leave it as is.
>> 
> The drives are currently in an MD1200, which is onsite so it is not
> available for testing.
> 
>> Controller it is meant to work with the PERC H800, but I am not aware 
>> of
>> anything that would prevent it from talking to any other say 
>> controller.
>> Just need one with a SFF 8088 or use a SFF 8087 to SFF 8088 adapter.
>> 
> I see three parts to the problem:
> 
> 1) Controller for a PCI slot; many available. 2) Cable from controller 
> to
> SAS drive - none available that I have seen.. 3) Lacking a cable, my
> thought was to use a small backplane (e.g. 6 slot, or even smaller) to
> plug drives into, but then the problem is what cable will connect to 
> the
> controller.

For a controller, for testing just grab any cheap SAS controller that 
supports JBOD(non-RAID, sometimes called IT mode if it is a LSI card). A 
LSI with RAID will work, but will involve passing additional flags to 
smartctl, none RAID is just simpler plus is sweet for ZFS.

A backplane is basically useless with out something to actually put it 
in. It is also very chassis specific. Honestly sounds like you want 
hotswap bay. Just grab any multi-bay one and if you want a real good one 
I suggest the Supermicro CSE-M35TQB.

Then for cables it is going to depend on the card. You will either need 
your generic SATA cables or a SFF-8087 breakout cable.