Hey guys!

I own a HP Server with a p408i-a. I have connected it to a SAS expander.

8 Slots of the SAS Expander are filled with the front disks in the server. 2 Slots are connected to the RAID-Controller. So far so good, everyhing is working. I want to connect another SAS-Device to my expander - will it work?

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The p408i-a has 8 SAS lanes. Do I need 1 lane per available/used slot on the expander? Or is it just total bandwidth? Somehow I couldn’t find any information about that online. Any help? :)

  • ITisWeirdSometimesOPBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    l dl380 the expander would have 2 cables to each of the 3 front cages + have 2 spare ports for any drives you have in rear of server.With a maxed out 30x 2.5" front+back server they share the 8 lanes from expander to server.

    You can even add another expander to the expander if you want, the

    Thank you, that clears up alot.

    So basically I have 3 front cages, each connected with 2 ports, as you said (DL380 Gen10). The expander has 9 ports, so 1 is free to use.

    I’d like to connect a tape drive to it. It is using Mini-SAS, while the expander is Slimline-SAS. I found a converter, which uses a PCIe-Bracket (without the port, just passively converts), so from what I understood I should be able to convert Mini-SAS->Slimline-SAS and then just connect it with a slimine->slimline SAS cable to the expander?

    How does the speed work - if it is like a switch the bandwidth would only suffer if the Tape is actively using the link? Or will it always decrease because the port is connected?