Raid cage/SATA backplane question

[thecommando]

Hi-

I am currently in the process of building a large storage machine. In my research, I have found no answer to this question:

Can I use multiple SATA raid cages on one array on one raid card?

As far as I know, all the different cages use 1 serial cable per drive, so a 3 drive cage would have 3 single cables to the raid card, a 4 drive cage would have 4. My question is whether or not I can have 2 separate cages in 1 machine and have them run the total number of drives as 1 array on 1 raid card.

thank you for taking the time to help me with this, here are the specs of the build, which will commence in about a week:

Tyan S2882G3NR-D dual core server board
Dual opteron 242
2gig ddr3200
6-8 WD 250Gig sata drives -> 1TB-1.5TB (raid5+hot spare)
ROCKETRAID2220 8 port running raid5

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Nodsu]

The cage is just something to hold the drives together. From the controller point of view it's all just a bunch of single drives and it doesn't matter if you have spread them out over one, two or five enclosures.

Have you considered using SCSI? You would get a much more sensible system (for a price of course).

 

[thecommando]

Awesome, thank you for your help.

I have been researching all the components for about 2 months, SCSI is simply not an option for my budget. As far as I have seen in reviews, etc, serial ata gives scsi a run for its money.

now knowing this I think I am about ready to make the purchase of the components. A few last tweaks, and the newegg order will be placed.

Thank you for your help!

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Nodsu]

As far as I have seen in reviews, etc, serial ata gives scsi a run for its money.

Maybe you should review your review sources..

A 15K SCSI drive is 1/3 faster than a Raptor and roughly 2x as fast as a 7200 RPM drive (seek time and throughput of hard drives directly depend on the RPM).
Perhaps none of the reviewers bothered to refer to contemporary SCSI drives and conveniently chose models from years ago?

But of course, you pay for the speed

 

[douglasberry]

You can multiplex

In our research, my partner and I have found several backplanes that will actually multiplex from a single connection as well. Hot swap is based on the correct controller, but it will function in a multiplex situation as well, if the controller supports it. Another issue, much more obnoxious, for what it's worth, that we have discovered, is that the LED (HDD activity) is NOT PASSED through the SATA cable. So make sure you get a controller with as many LED pins as you need, because you will be hooking these up manually, OUTSIDE the enclosure / backplane. We ended up choosing to run our HDD Access (activity) LEDs at the PC itself, an array of eight (8) LEDs on a single 5.25" face place. Drill the holes, and put them in, and then logically name them.