How do you connect more than 4 drives to a LSI 9361-4i MegaRAID controller?

Question

I’m fairly new to proper hardware RAID having only used it in pre-built server machines before, but on the recommendation of some friends who work for datacentres I’ve bought an LSI 9361-4i MegaRAID controller to install into my main storage box at home as the Intel RST configuration I currently have set up locks up all I/O on the machine entirely whenever I try to write something more than 5MB to the discs until the operation has completed.

According to the text on the box, the 9361-4i supports up to 128 drives, however there is only one mini SAS HD port on the card itself, so as far as I can work out I can only connect four devices to the controller via this port.

My question(s) is: What additional hardware or cables do I need to be able to connect more than four devices to a controller of this type? Should I get one or more expansion modules to connect via the mini SAS HD port using an x4 cable? Do these need to be specific cards for it to work? Also, how would this impact the bandwidth between the controller and the drives?

I have 10x 3TB SATA III WD Reds from different batches which I'd like to set up.

Solution

You need a SAS expander and/or a server with a disk backplane that has an embedded expander...

Please see:

RAID card w/1x mini-SAS connector : how do I physically connect 16 disks?

and

How exactly does a SAS SFF-8087 breakout cable work? + RAID/connection questions

Comments

[Benjamin Nolan]

Mate, that answer with the diagrammes is exactly what I needed to see. Thanks. :)