redux: 48 or 96 sata3 paths ... specific ZFS hardware proposal

[Jason Usher]

Thanks to all for the suggestions RE: my ill informed attempt to create a 1:1 drive/path for 48 or 96 sata3 drives.  Not only is it extremely unlikely that it would ever be useful, it appears not to exist as a hardware option anyway.

So with that in mind, I am falling back on what I see over and over in my searches of this list and the OpenSolaris lists:

Supermicro X8DTH-6F   +   LSI 9211-8i

The LSI 9211-8i seems a no-brainer - completely non-raid, and fulfills the ZFS requirement of giving the OS complete, total control over the disk, and it is 6Gb to match the speed of SATA3.

But the X8DTH-6F motherboard seems too good to be true ... it has 7 8x pcie slots, and further, has two sff8087 connectors onboard with the EXACT SAME LSI chipset as the 9211-8i cards above - so you can get an extra 8 drives on this motherboard using the same driver.  Takes xeon5500/5600 (6core, potentially) at 6.4 QPI ... so, very modern there.

About the only possible downside I can see to this board is that it only takes 192GB of ram, but that is a LOT of ram ...

Does anyone have any comments ?  Is everyone using this motherboard (as list postings seem to indicate) ?  I am perfectly willing to pay more for something newer/faster/more expandable, but I just don't see a 48 drive capable motherboard for ZFS that outclasses this one ...

Thanks.