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- #21
Jeff Kilgroe
Well-known member
Yes, this card is for internal setups. I haven't seen if they have one with external ports. But there are cards like the Areca ARC-1993x (12Gbps) or the ATTO R680 (6Gbps) that offer external connectivity. Both of those models have dual external SAS ports with 4 discreet 12 or 6 Gbps channels, respectively, in each SAS port. Likewise, ATTO also makes 12Gbps adapters, Areca also has 6Gbps ones as well. Those were just model numbers I pulled off the top of my head. LSI controllers, like the one mentioned in the few posts above, work well on Windows. Although there are times that LSI comes up short with driver support -- especially for Linux and OS X, sometimes on Windows too. The LSI RAID controller built into many C6xx series Xeon workstations like the HP Z820 and several SuperMicro motherboards, for example, is pretty much crap. Not only that, but the drivers are crap too and these systems have known issues like Windows taking 1 to 5 minutes longer to fully boot while initializing the RAID. Very frustrating.
Generally speaking the good RAID cards will have both BIOS and software management tools for creating your RAID setup and drivers and tools so you can monitor most aspects of it. Really no different than if you were to buy a pre-built RAID setup from some fully integrated vendor. They tend to use a lot of these same RAID controllers, but what you pay the premium for is customer support and warranty's above and beyond what the HDD makers offer -- which is usually a pretty crappy warranty that's difficult to take advantage of, by design. Some vendors have great customer support, others not so much. Some of the nicer systems also have extra sensors and management in their external RAID systems to account for environmental factors, monitoring temperatures, fan performance, that sort of thing. Most of which you can also assemble yourself from available components, it's just more work and not really necessary for smaller desktop or desk-side RAIDs.
For an 8-bay external drive enclosure already set up with SAS ports, the Sans Digital ones are pretty decent and reasonably priced: http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-12g/tr8x12g.html
Combine those with an appropriate RAID controller for inside your system, add your drives and cabling in between and you're ready to go. For drives you really need to go for the enterprise class hard drives. Good ones like the Western Digital RE series or their RED Pro NAS series are $250 per drive here in the states for 4TB capacity drives.
