Help with using Sans Digital EliteSTOR ES316X6+B with WorkStation (Dell Precision 7920)

[Damionix]

Good Day All,

I come to you all for help, and I am quite confident I will get the help I need here 🙂

So, a friend gave me a Brand New SANS DIGITAL EliteSTOR ES316X6+B JBOD to solve my ever expanding storage needs for Plex.

Sans Digital EliteSTOR ES316X6+B

I would like to know how I can connect all the hard drives in this device to a Windows 11 Pro Workstation PC (Dell Precision 7920)

The EliteSTOR JBOB will be for backup only and I will be using Storage Pool to manage all 14 Drives so far ( at least that is my hope).It did come with a SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cable.

I would like to connect it to my Workstation so I can access all the drives on there, but my workstation does not have the port to plug the SFF-8088 cable in. I assume from there that I will need one more component, and I do not know what that could be.
I have been reading on HBA (very new to this), and I was looking at these two;

LSI SAS9207-8E Logic SGL SAS PCIE 12/3.3V CTLR 8Port Ext 6GB/S SATA Plus SAS

and 

LSI Logic SAS 9300-8e SGL LSI00343

 

I believe once I install this on my Workstation, I should then be able to see the 14 drives using DrivePool? 

I know there are people on here with way more experience than me and I hope you all do guide me to achieve what I am hoping to. 

 

Thank You all in Advance. 

[Shane]

Both are "Mini-SAS" but the SAS9207-8E requires SFF-8088 cables (rectangle-shaped ends) while the SAS9300-8E requires SFF-8644 cables (square-shaped ends). So the latter is no good to you unless you also buy an adapter.

I haven't used the card with Windows/Drivepool however, so if anyone has please do chip in with any tips!

[Damionix]

That is actually quite helpful. I didn't know the SAS9300-8E uses a different type of cable. I would rather use the Cable that the EliteSTOR came with, which is the SFF-8088.

 

[RetroG]

On 11/20/2023 at 8:15 PM, Shane said:

I haven't used the card with Windows/Drivepool however, so if anyone has please do chip in with any tips!

it's an IT mode controller, it will work fine, even with 4Kn and TRIM. provided the expander in the JBOD is sane it should literally be plug and play. (I use a custom built jbod this way, on my windows desktop)


but for cables... electrically they are both identical, the shape of the connector is the only difference. you can buy cables that go from 8644 to 8088 too. and honestly I would just go with the 9300, the 9200 series is quite ancient now and the price difference isn't much at all.. and provides an easy upgrade path if you want to someday install a better expander or a jbod that supports 12Gb/s (which you can daisychain the elitestore off of). the only gotcha is that the 9300 is going to run warmer.

TLDR SAS hardware is insanely flexible, if you can think of it it'll probably work.

[Damionix]

Thank You so much for you response. I wish it came earlier. But I did get it done and configured and so far all has been working great.