External Raid system Mac Pro 5,1

[jordangordon]

Hi all,

I am wanting to run an external SSD Raid system through a PCIE port,
I was wondering if anyone knew if it this was possible and if so what connectors I would need?

Cheers,

Jordan

 

[AidenShaw]

Hi all,

I am wanting to run an external SSD Raid system through a PCIE port,
I was wondering if anyone knew if it this was possible and if so what connectors I would need?

Cheers,

Jordan

Depends what you want (and how much you want to spend).

I have a 24TB external RAID (eight 4TB drives in RAID-6) on my home workstation with an LSI/Avago/Broadcom MegaRAID SAS 9380-8e PCIe card. It actually will support up to 240 drives (2.9 PBytes with 12 TB drives). The card supports 8 SAS/SATA "lanes", and I have simple 1-to-1 disk chassis that support 8 drives on 8 lanes. SAS supports switch topologies, so an 8 disk enclosure can have a daisy chain link that supports another 8 disk enclosure, with a daisy chain link that supports another 8 disk enclosure....

This isn't really "external RAID" - it's an internal RAID controller with up to 240 external drives.

If you want to move to an external controller, one place to start is Promise. (https://promise.com/us/Products/Pegasus/Pegasus3-Series) They have a number of systems with external RAID controllers. (The link is for a T-Bolt3 system, so look around.)

And of course, after finding the perfect solution you need to check if it is supported on Apple OSX.

 

[zedex]

Hi AidenShaw,
I notice that you have used a LSI/Avago/Broadcom MegaRAID SAS 9380-8e PCIE Card.....
Whenever I researched the LSI SAS/SATA PCIe Cards, I have never been able to verify the likelihood that this brand of HBA will work (perhaps natively) in a Mac Pro.
I would love for you to share your existing knowledge of the good or bad points associated with the LSI cards.

I have been thinking about buying a LSI/Avago/Broadcom SAS 9302-16e PCIE 3.0 x16 HBA Card..... I want the 16 lanes and I've been offered one at a discount - just wary about proceeding unless I can establish that it will work prior to making the purchase. Any thoughts..? THANKS!!