So we start our journey when i got the notification of my Unraid system that the storage got a little bit low.
This is what we have now.
So that is where we Start from a hardware perspective.
Our mission is to:
Thanks to a funny incident where 8 10TB SAS drives from Western Digital “fell off a truck” we have the most expensive part and number 1 on my list already done.
The fact that we have SAS drives now brings us in a interesting spot because
SAS differs a little from our old friend SATA
For example you can’t just easy peasy go into your freaky NAS build and try to hammer this juicy SATA connector into you SAS drive because you will soon find out that boy doesn’t fit very good.
Because these are two diffrent interfaces.
So what do we need then to make all of this work in gods name?
Glad you asked!
A so called SAS controller.
There are many of them in diffrent kind of forms and flavours.
But we gonna settle in this case for a DELL PERC H730
Why did i choose this one?
So i bought one and some 5 days later i have it at home.
Well there it is and he a beauty.
Now that we have SAS Controller and the drives.
How in the hell do we connect them ?
Well there is something called SAS breakout cable.
Which is what we need.
SAS Controllers have these weird plugs called SFF-something
We have on this controller a SFF-8643 Plug.
So we need a cable that fits that one.
Which i orderd somewhere from mainland China and will probably take an eternity to come but hey they where cheap and times are tough.
So in theory it should work like this.
So in theory should work and should make no problems at all right?
Well i think i work too long in IT to know this thing is going down south pretty hard but hey lets have some fun.
See you in part two when everything arrives and we start to build that thing
Yoroshiku o-negai shimasu,
Chris