Question 1

We're trying to connect 6 SATA drives in a RAID 5 setup, would this card be able to handle that, or does it mainly support SAS drives?  It looks like it comes with an adapter cable, but the description says "SAS to SATA."  Are there alternatives we could use to get this setup running?

Thanks!

Accepted Answer

Hi Russel 
So to answer this question I would like to give you some history on this card and I. First thing I have installed and maintain three of these exact cards and one from the previous generation (5805). My profession is an IT Manager for a tech firm in southern Oregon. I work specifically with server distribution and upkeep.

I also have to say that I love these cards for their price point.

So about the card, the SAS to SATA cable adapter works great. This particular card KIT has 2 single SAS to 4 SATA connection adapters, providing support for up two eight drives in that configuration. (optionally this card with the proper connectors, adapters, and expanders will support up to 256 drives these get quite expensive for full support and do not come with this package). The adapter has a very secure connection on both the SAS and SATA sides which is nice.

Now informational SAS is not a drive connection, its a high speed inter-card connector (it works with other RAID parts).
Additional information RAID 5 is an outdated form of RAID, not that it's bad. However RAID 6 is better in any configuration that  is more than ~5TB because of several technical limitations.

This card has several management functions on it as well such as a web based controls. The card also has a function where it will email a user or several users and notify them of any issues that it detects with the card or hard drives without any user interaction. This is a neat function. It saved me in one situation where a drive failed on a server, that almost never gets logged into, but has several shares on it. The bad hard drive was taken out and a new drive was installed while the shares where running and being used. When I logged into the computer the controller asked me if I wanted to rebuild the RAID 6 array that died. I did and there was no downtime while the array was rebuilt.

This is a great product and I would recommend it to anyone.

Question 2

This is the kit correct? the description doesn't mention any cables

Accepted Answer

They do, we ordered this awhile back and used the cables that came with the RAID controller. However if you’re looking to use the fiber cables, this particular model doesn’t have the right connection on the card itself, we had to upgrade to the 8805.
Hope this helps.

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