OT-ish SATA port replicators vs. SAS "expanders"

[Brandon Vincent]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble at gmail.com> wrote:
> What is the real difference?  Is it possible to hack the driver to support
> (obviously not booting from) SATA port replicators on the LSI?

This website has a lot of good information on the benefits of using
SAS expanders versus SATA port replicators [1]. Most of the storage
requirements demanded by large enterprise organizations can only be
met using SAS expanders (e.g. multipath I/O).

You should also consider that while SATA port replicators work, they
are not as nearly as reliable as SAS expanders [2]. SAS is typically
utilized for high performance storage applications that have a high
reliability requirement.

In the end, your choice of solution depends on your application. Are
you working in a data warehouse with a five nines availability
requirement or are you experimenting at home? For the later, SATA is
the economical choice, while SATA doesn't quite cut it for the
enterprise requirement.

Where did you find that the LSI chipset doesn't support SATA port replicators?

Brandon Vincent

[1] http://www.sasexpanders.com
[2] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/fastpw13-paper7_0.pdf