Anyone here know of SATA/SAS HBA 8 port cards low profile

Title says it all!

Well except for the I want to do it cheap part

I've got a 2u Norco hotswap Home brew server. And a Norco hot swap 10 bay for my HTPC.

I bought a HD CARD SUPERMICRO|AOC-SAT2-MV8 R I was hoping to connect 8 drives in the HTPC case to a SAS Centronix device via a cable to a SAS Centronix device (with a low profile bracket) to the 2U serverI found on PCPitStop. They say no low profile. I can use the HD CARD SUPERMICRO|AOC-SAT2-MV8 R, within the server itself for the 8 drives on the server, but how can I get the 8 drives in the HTPC case hooked up to the 2u server without spending $600.00 on a card. The 10 bay HTPC is full ht, so no problems there.

Everything is rack mounted and I wanted to go SAS to have a cable disconnect between the 2 boxes if I have to pull one from the rack

Any help appreciated!


Thanks

SAS don't come cheap...

I had it all worked out for $300.00 till the no "low profile"

Maybe a new hot swap case is in order

This looks a bit like low profile:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151039

Here's the SAS case I have: http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/743/SC743TQ-865.cfm

The fans are a touch loud, but it keeps things cool. Right now I only have two 136 GB 15k RPM SAS drives, and two 1 TB 10k RPM SAS drives in it. So I've got plenty of room for future growth.

Promise may have some, but may be pricey.

Thanks for trying, but those SAS connectors are internal.

I need 8 sata connectors on the card (internally) and the SAS connector externally on the slot cover plate, and of course low profile.

or

The ones I found on PC Pitstop weren't even a card (I already have a card with sata connectors, just a centronixs external port on a bracket and sata ports internally (a coupler and gender changer), but they say no go for low profile.

Thanks Again

I think I found my fix (Thanks Kcarlile). After looking at your link I started thinking. Still a little more research to do, but I think I can use one of these

http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-aoc-saslp-mv8~7SUP918N.htm

for $100 and then just run SAS cables thru a slot in the back of the server to SAS Centronex connectors on the back of the HTPC case. Still disconnectable, still connects the 8 drive bays in the HTPC to the server. Not as "clean" but doable, acceptable and cheap....It's the back side of a rack afterall

For a little more clarification, I'm using WHS, so don't need hardware raid. just JOBD

Think!? I'm there

Didn't realize WHS would handle that many drives. Impressive.

Anyone virtualizing WHS? We're trying it at work and running into some activation problems.

Im a little worried about the transition from the current WHS to vail, now 32 bit, vail 64 bit and NTFS. Lot of data to convert. Think I might need those extra drive bays and a lot of extra disks. Current is built on 2003 server, Vail on 2008 (when it is released) I'm at 7 drives around 9TB right now

I can't believe i'm saying this, but this sounds a little overkill, no? Whats wrong with setting up a share, or even iSCSI?

I doubt your HTPC is going to require that much IO bandwidth.

Well, I actually stumbled upon a different avenue, as you said I really don't need that bandwidth or all the drives hot at once.

I ordered 2 e-Sata multiplier (5 drives ea)from Addonics with the matching 2 port card on the server side. Cost about $150, should be here Friday and I should be(hope)I'm good to go.

I already have a 8 port sata controller card to replace the 4 port cards currently in the server for the bays in that case.

Update.....

Well I got it all up and running today and it seems to work well.

I installed the 8 port controller and the 8 port e-sata controller in the server and the 2 each multipliers in the 10 bay hot swap expansion case (also my HTPC case). Before today, I only could use 7 of the 8 sata hot swap bays in the server.

The 2 TB drive in the expansion case is working great. I was also able to install a second full size bluray reader in the expansion case that is feeding back thru to the server thru the multiplier. The newly installed BR reader is ripping BluRays in about a 1/3 the time the slim drive in the server was taking.

13 TB and counting, 8 empty hot swap bays to go, and 6 1.5 TB drives I can swap out for 2 TB drives in the far future.

18 Hot Swap Bays total (one for HTPC recorded TV, HTPC OS drive is internal and a SSD)

Happy so far!