[OpenIndiana-discuss] dell r730xd + SATA

[Nikola M]

On 04/28/17 11:57 PM, Nikola M wrote:
>> I have a number of R730s working with the 2x expanders and Intel DC
>> S37{0,1}0 SSDs. It is time to order again and the 24 bay 730XD is a
>> seductress in terms of storage options. I just dont know if it will
>> work well mixing expanders and SATA.
> No it won't. It might look ok, or you could seem happy, but at the first
> sign of trouble or reporting some bug, you could learn the hard way,
> that is not supported configuration to use SATA drives with SAS
> expanders. And avoid configuration with the expanders at all, but do
> direct connecting drives to the controller ports).
>
> Btw, internet is full with expander warnings, hope this helps.

http://garrett.damore.org/2010/08/why-sas-sata-is-not-such-great-idea.html
https://hardforum.com/threads/zfs-and-sas-expanders-with-sata-drives-a-toxic-combo.1548145/

> /Aug 30, 2010: Update: At a significant account, I can say that we
> (meaning Nexenta) have verified that SAS/SATA expanders combined with
> high loads of ZFS activity have proven conclusively to be highly
> toxic. So, if you're designing an enterprise storage solution,
> *please* consider using SAS all the way to the disk drives, and just
> skip those cheaper SATA options. You may think SATA looks like a
> bargain, but when your array goes offline during ZFS scrub or resilver
> operations because the expander is choking on cache sync commands,
> you'll really wish you had spent the extra cash up front. Really./