[PLUG] SAS HBA and miniSAS cabling

[Russell Senior]

Hi,

Wearing my Personal Telco Project non-profit hat at the moment, we got
a new server by way of a generous grant from FreeGeek, a Dell R720.
Come to find out, though, Dell's installed RAID controller (H710 mini)
is missing the ability to treat the drives as Just a Bunch of Disks
(JBOD).  It is possible to use the H710 mini to create 1-drive RAID0
arrays and use the resulting virtual disks that way, but
unfortunately, that breaks hot-swapping which is very desirable for us
(we don't want to take downtime every time a disk fails).

So, I've been looking at options for installing an LSI or IBM
ServeRAID controller in so-called IT mode that makes the disks
available as regular disks.  In order to reach the extra distance to
the PCIe risers where the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) would be installed,
we need new, longer cables as well.

Before plumbing the depths of E-bay, I wonder if anyone on this list
has: a) experience doing this and associated advice; and/or b) a spare
card and/or cables.

TIA!

-- 
Russell Senior, President
russell at personaltelco.net