[OpenIndiana-discuss] sata hba choice

[Sašo Kiselkov]

On 08/24/2012 06:15 PM, Dan Swartzendruber wrote:
> On 8/24/2012 12:08 PM, Rich wrote:
>> You know, you'd think so.
>>
>> There's lots of opinions on SAS expanders, and the general consensus
>> seems to be "if you can avoid the complication, doso".
>>    
> The only complaints I've heard are putting SATA drives on SAS
> expanders.  Even that is not very clear - lots of he said/she said
> stories out there...

I would generally tend to agree with the "no SATA on SAS expanders"
sentiment, especially given that expanders are relatively dumb devices
and so expecting them to play nicely in any kind of heavy-weight
protocol translation is sort-of playing with fire. However, I've yet to
see a problem with SAS-on-SAS expanders, especially considering that
this allows you to easily grow storage and utilize dual-porting natively
built into all SAS drives (not to speak of high-order SAS topologies,
such as with LSI's SAS switches).

Cheers,
--
Saso