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Is it better to use a SAS Expander backplane for 12 drives via one SAS connection or is it better to use a SAS backplane with 3 SAS connections? This is in terms of performance, rather than expansion. This array will be setup using ZFS on a OpenSolaris via a LSI SAS controller as an iSCSI target.

The two products being considered are the SuperMicro SuperChassis 826A-R1200LPB or the SuperChassis 826E2-R800LPB

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Usually one of the Mini-SAS ports on an expander is for Failover/JBOD. Your best performance is to split the disks across a couple controllers (even though they say they support 128+ devices).

You could also set up MPIO if you use two of the same controller (that support MPIO).

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Gotcha.. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have a recommendation of a SAS controller that supports MPIO? Thanks – tegbains Apr 8 '10 at 4:34
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