How to select SAS cables

hello guys so today's video is about SAS cable selection this is one of the most frequent questions I get from buyers who buy IT mode HP 8 cards from me things like this this is an h3 10 with IT firmware already pre flashed and I sell these on my eBay store the artist server and a lot of times people buy this card they're getting ready to build their FreeNAS server and then you know the media question afterwards they buy the card is well what kind of cable do I need to connect this to my hard drives or to my backplane and whatnot so if you've been around computers for the last decade or so you're probably pretty familiar in the consumer space connecting hard drives usually involves these SATA connectors and SATA connectors have been around for quite a long time now and its predecessor the IDE connector was around for a quite a long time as well so in the consumer space these hard drive connections they don't really change that much they get faster a little bit over time but the the connectors themselves seem to be pretty standard and in long lasting now if you're fairly new to the enterprise computing hardware space then it can be quite daunting because SAS connectors like this seem to involve fairly rapidly so over time there's been a lot of different type of SAS connectors and so it can be a little overwhelming and daunting at first when you have to figure out well what kind of cable do I need right so so the process of selecting the cable that will work for your particular setup I kind of have this rule that I go by you can remember it with the acronym cold and so it stands for C which is for connector type o which is for orientation L for length and D for Direction all right so these are the four kind of factors that you need to consider when you're shopping for your SAS cables and I'll kind of briefly go over what I mean by those things okay so if you buy an HP a car or a raid card or any kind of SAS controller they're going to have these SAS ports and in particular this particular one has this kind of rectangular shape with a single slot connector so that is called an eighty eighty seven or SFF eighty eighty seven connector and the male side that goes into that looks like this okay so it's a plastic connector usually with a metal spring latch okay and there's a single PCB board inside in the middle that has pins on both sides of the board and I believe it's something like 36 pins in total and this thing plugs in here and that board in the middle goes into that slot okay and as you just probably heard when it goes in it usually makes a clicking sound because that's when the spring latch okay latches on to those two little holes here on this metal shield on the outside okay so in order to release it you got to press down on that spring okay you hear that latch okay make sure when you plug it in that that click you hear that click otherwise it might be a little bit loose and your connections might not be very secure okay so you plug it in until you hear the click and then you can tug on it a little bit and if the latches is properly engaged it's not going to come back out and so in order to disengage the latch you just press down on the spring and it comes back out okay so this is the one of the connector types that you'll encounter and this is called an SF F 8087 and there's a whole bunch of different other type of connectors I'm going to kind of briefly go over today okay so so that s FF 8087 is actually one of the most common type of connectors you're going to encounter especially with six gigabit and and up another type of connector you might encounter okay for example this HPA cart are these kind of more squarish connectors okay and these are called SF f-86 43 alright and the the other side of this is something that looks like this all right so it's kind of a squarish connector and there are two of these PCB boards in here with pins on either side as well so in a way it is kind of like this 8087 connector but kind of split in two and rearranged in a square versus kind of a rectangular rectangular shape so these type of connectors plug into an HB a card like this and this also has a latch this little black thing here it's usually part of the connector it's not a separate metal spring like the other 8087 and you plug this in and it doesn't make a very distinct click because it's all plastic and it's not unlike the metal that will make a louder click sound but it does latch in and in order to release it you kind of press down on on this lever and it pulls back out okay so these are the 86 43 connectors now one thing I want to note about this is in particular 286 43 is that this type of connector is all plastic okay and I know that on ebay or amazon you can buy cables that have the 86 43 connector for external applications and it's really not designed and neither of these connectors are really designed for external applications but in particular the 86 43 is something you probably don't want to use an external connector and the reason is that these connections are not very secure first of all but more importantly is that this connector is entirely made out of plastic and so is the other side whereas on 8087 okay at least you have this metal shielding which is actually really not part of connected it's just kind of soldered on the connector itself is back here with all the pins and this is just kind of a shield that holds onto the spring latch but the connector on the 86 43 is all plastic and so is this and when you plug this in and let's say you had this running outside you know through a slot and out out out of the side of your case and going into something else if someone were to ever get tangled on to this and yank on this cable okay it is a very good chance that this connection is going to break and it's not so much of that you know you're going to lose connectivity to hard drives that may cause some data corruption problems and whatnot but but even more so this latching mechanism may break and if it breaks on the cable side you might just be a little bit lucky because although the cables are not cheap either this is probably you know the side that if you had something if you had to have something break the cable side is the one you want to have broken because otherwise if it breaks if the plastic breaks on this side then you've just had a very bad day with your HP a card because you've just ruined your HP a card due to some accident right so so I know you can get these cables with you know this 86 43 on one end and an external connector on the other end but I really don't recommend that just speaking from experience I've you know seen broken connectors on HBA cards that have 86 43 so anyway keep that in mind that these are these type of connectors are not really meant for external applications now if you do have a external disk shelf and you're wanting to connect your HP a card to that there are proper ways to do that the 86 43 any 8087 have an external connector version of themselves okay and I'll just kind of show you what that looks like here so this is the equivalent of 86 43 but in acts as an external application and this is the equivalent of 80 87 for an external application okay and they have a slightly different number so this is actually called an 86 44 and this is called an 80 88 alright and as you'll notice the entire connector is made out of metal okay the latching mechanism over here is of metal and the other side I don't have an external card here but the other side usually the female plug is also made out of metal and so these actually make a much stronger secure connection for external use so that if you were to tug on it it won't just accidentally kind of come loose okay so you won't have accidental hard drive disconnects okay as easily as you might with an internal connection getting ganked on but more importantly you know these things even if they do come loose are not likely to break like the 86 forty-three those showing you earlier the 83 six of 86 43 connectors are rather fragile they it doesn't take a lot of effort to break them and so you know if you're using if you have an external setup you know I really don't recommend using 86 43 get yourself a proper HB external HPA card with an 86 44 connection or an 80 80 80 88 connection okay so this is this is what you need for an external connection all right so that's the those are some of the connector types for connecting on the side of the HPA now that's just one side of the cable the other side of the cable okay you also have to figure out what kind of connector EULA and I need on that now one of the most common type of setups that people do is to connect them directly to your hard drives in here and that's a perfectly fine way to set it up so you're in that case you're going to need what's called a breakout cable so you're going to have one end like this that's an eighty eighty seven that goes into your controller and you're going to have the other end being SATA connectors directly plugged into your SATA hard drives okay so this is the type of connectors that you're going to need if you're connecting one of these HBA cards directly to your hard drive all right and there are different types of cables like this so here's a another one that's rather nice it has an 8087 that goes into the SAS controller or your HPA cart and it's got these staggered length SATA right-angle connectors and so this is kind of nice because oftentimes the distance from your HPA connector to your hard drives are not going to be the same and as you know you move further away you're going to need more cable and so this is just kind of a nice staggered cable so you don't have excess cable on the hard drive that's closest to you and the right angle also is a nice touch sometimes for certain applications doesn't always work but in certain situations this can actually can be very convened to have the right angle all right so that's a very common way to connect an HB a card like this to you directly to your hard drives now let's say that you're connecting to SAS hard drives instead of SATA hard drives then you're going to need a slightly different cable so in that scenario you're going to need a cable that's a little bit more like this and it has these connectors here that go into the SAS hard drive so this is looks very similar to a SATA connector the entire connector where this side is power and the side is data but as you may know SAS has does not have a gap between the power and the data Channel instead it has a bridge here and that bridge often carries a secondary data Channel and so therefore the SATA plug will not plug into a SAS hard drive because of that because there there is no gap here so if you're going with SATA SAS hard drives you're gonna need a connector like this and this is called an 80 84 82 I believe and and so this is the type of cable you're gonna Nina in this case I've got two 84-82 connectors here's the power the SATA power plug that provides power to these two connectors and it goes into an 80 87 now of course you can see that this is kind of missing half its half itself because only half the pins here are connected since the 8087 is designed to carry four SAS lanes whereas I only have two SAS connectors here so it's it's basically a half cable okay but you can get other cables that will connect all four SAS lanes and you'll have four of these 84-82 connectors to connect one of these 80 57 ports to for SAS hard drives now if you do get this kind of cable you can also connect a SATA hard drive to this so that's one thing to keep in mind you know oftentimes most of the SAS components will accept SATA but the reverse is not true SATA components often will not allow connecting SAS Hardware okay so that's something to keep in mind now if once you've figured out how you want to connect your HBA card okay so you know figure out the connector type on your HP card is in 8087 like this or if it's an external card it might have an 80 88 port coming out the PCI bracket or you might have a different card that has an 86 43 connector so you have to figure that out first and if you're buying from one of my listings on ebay usually in the description I'll give you the details on what kind of port is on that card so you know if you're if you're having a hard time identifying by the photos just read the description in my listings and I'll usually give you the specific details on that and then the other end of that cable is either going to a hard drive either two SATA ports like this or two SAS 84-82 connectors or in some situations you might have a backplane and so in the situation of a backplane you know it might be common for it to go to another 8087 connector so it just has an example here I have a here is a 24 Bay direct attached backplane and so you'll see in this case I've got one two three four five six connectors SATA connectors here that are the 8087 variety right they look basically identical to what's on this card and there's six of them so in a scenario like this you're going to need a cable that has an 80 87 connector on both ends one going to the HP card and one going into your back plane like that okay now other back planes might have different type of connectors you might have a more slightly modern backplane that has an 86 43 and so then you'll need a cable that has an 86 43 connector on the the side you want to connect to the backplane now if you're using some slightly older hardware you might have a backplane that has this older connector here and this is called an 84 84 connector or SFF 84 84 and it kind of looks like a SATA port that's x 4 in indeed that's kind of more or less what it is it.this also carries 4 SAS lanes so on older back planes you might see a connector that looks like this and so you'll want to get a cable that has the 84-84 connector that goes into your backplane and a whatever connector you need on the other hand in this case this is an 80 87 so this would we actually work with that card right here going into a backplane alright so you have to so that's the connector types that's one of the most important things you have to start out with to figure out the type of connectors you're going to need from the HPA to your hard drive or to your backplane figure the connector types that you need ok so the second point is orientation right so Co LD all is for orientation and what I mean by that is that these connectors now once you've decided or figured out what connector type you need the connectors can come in different orientations and so just to give you an example this was the 8087 connector and it's a standard straight connector this is kind of the most common thing you might find but sometimes you'll have this is a right angle connector as you'll see it kind of bends towards the back and I've also seen I don't have a sample of it right here but I've seen these 8087 connectors also right angle to the left and to the right as well so there is actually four different orientations of the 80 87 connector that you can find and there might even be one where it's kind of Bend like this except with the latch on the other side I haven't seen those myself but I'm sure that's possible so there are at least five are four if not five different orientations of this cable along or this type of connector alone right and here you'll see also this is kind of a right angle there are straight versions of this the 86 43 as well and so there are different orientations of you know this connector as well and also as we saw earlier here with the SATA connectors you know this will be your standard straight SATA connector whereas this is a right angle SATA connector alright and so and you can also have right angles to go the other direction so there are at least three different orientations of a SATA connector and you need to consider whether you know these type of orientations are going to help your setup or not and and in some cases it may not you fit at all so you know just going back to this backplane here if I had a cable with a right angle like this where it needs to fit into this port like this as you can see this cable would then be running into this PCB board and so this cable would not or at least this end of the cable would not work in this situation at all right so there are certain orientations that will not work with your setup and you need to consider what will work best some backplanes i've seen with an eighty eighty seven connector have the connector coming straight out of the board and right behind it perhaps might be a wall of fans and so the clearance between the connector sticking out and the wall of fans might be very very tight and so having a straight connector plug in this way can be very inconvenient because you might have the the cable running into the fan wall and so in that case you might be beneficial to have some sort of right angle connector so you have to take those things into consideration and figure out what type of orientation of the connector that that will suit your need best another example of where the orientation and connect of the connector matters is you know with you'll see a lot of cards that are more like this where the connectors are coming out the the end in a vertical or so in a horizontal fashion and these are usually more flexible in terms of how you can run the cables but some cards will have the connectors in a more vertical orientation and these cards are usually okay if you're in a a chassis that has a full height PCI slot but if you're in a half high PCI slot case like a 2-u server chassis this spacing can get very tight but fortunately these usually are designed to take into account that type of tight clearance and so in this case there's a cutout here and if you were to plug in a straight connector like this okay as you can see if this was the top of the chassis this cable would you know you could you'd have to bend it and probably could still be done but it would be very tight whereas if you got a right angle connector like this one it would fit into that cutout perfectly and give you you know a much better you know way of routing this cable so orientation does matter and can make a difference in terms of how you connect things and and whatnot so orientation that's also another thing you need to consider once you figure out what type of connectors you need all right and so then the last hour not the glass but the Third Point is length and that one's I think is fairly straightforward you need to know what length of cable you need so there are a lot of different lengths there are very short cables like this this one is very useful for connecting to an HPA car that goes in one end and perhaps maybe a expander card next to it right so you might have a very short connection and you don't want a lot of excess cable that might block your airflow and so a short cable would be a great case for that in some other situations you know your backplane or your hard drives might be further away and you need a longer cable so you need to measure and figure out what length of cable you need and usually I would recommend adding at least one inch or two inches to that cable length so you have yourself a little bit of slack now as far as so that's fairly straightforward but a one just one tip about measuring the length don't assume that you you know don't assume that you need to measure the the shortest path most of the time that's not going to be the way you're going to route the cable and I'll just kind of give you an example here here is a motherboard with an onboard 8087 SAS controller now here are the 8087 ports and let's say as an example you need to connect it to this location right here so I would not measure this point to this point directly okay you because you're not going to run your cable straight from one point to another oftentimes what you're going to do is you're gonna run the cables you know through a different path so in this case as an example you might run the cables straight out here you might say go up a fan wall you might make a 90-degree turn and come over here and then you might go down into a connector here right so you need to figure out how you're going to route the cable and then measure the the length of that particular path and then I would say add an inch to whatever your measurement is to give yourself a little bit of slack okay so don't always assume that you're just going to measure the shortest path and then go out and buy the cable figure out how you're going to route the cable you know in a server chassis you know you might encounter the scenario I just mentioned where this cable comes out it's a fan wall you might have to go around the fans or not in a desktop oriented chassis you know a lot of times behind the motherboard mounting plate is a lot of space for cable management and there are cutouts around the mother plate so you might want to route your cables through one of those holes go behind the motherboard and then go to wherever you know your hard drive cage or whatever it is or however it is set up in your systems and so just don't assume that it's going to be the shortest path figure out how you're going to route the cable measure that the length of that path and then go from there and again add add about an inch or so to the measured length to give yourself a little bit of slack okay so that covers the length part and then D is for direction okay and this last point is probably the most important one that gets people okay a lot of times I've had people contact me and say hey I you know I got your HB a card thank you very much I've just connected to my hard drives and nothing showing up okay so in that sooner I'll one of the first questions I'll often ask is okay can you you know what kind of cable is it that you use or can you give me the model number of the cable and I'll go look it up and sure enough what it turns out to be is a reverse breakout cable okay so let me kind of explain that so earlier I I didn't really kind of specify that because I wanted to wait until I get the segment here but here are two breakout cables right I had this going from 8087 to set up breakout and this is similar it's an eighty eighty seven to SATA breakouts in a staggered fashion okay but these two cables are actually functionally very different alright and I'm not talking about the you know the type of wiring or the color the the cables and whatnot I'm saying they're wired differently okay they may look identical in terms of hey there's a DAT certain connector and static connectors on the other end but this red one actually is called a reverse breakout cable and it's meant for a different purpose this is actually the forward breakout cable and this is meant to connect from the controller on 8087 and to the hard drives on the SATA ports okay this cable on the other hand known as reverse breakout is actually meant for the SATA ports to go into a SATA controller so as an example it might plug into the SATA ports on a motherboard and the other end is meant in to go into the backplane where the hard drives are and so for example you might have a four port backplane that has one of these connectors and you you know you don't maybe you don't have an extra HB a card and you don't really want to get one but you can still drive that plane with the onboard SATA ports right and so you would have then you would get a cable like this which is a reverse breakout cable which is meant not to have hard drives on the SATA end but to have a SATA controller on the SATA end and these are wired differently than the forward breakout cable okay and so if you accidentally get one of these reverse breakout cables and plug in it into the HBA on these 8087 side and you plug in your hard drives on this side the hard drives are not going to show up okay so that's one thing to be very careful of the cables you know will look pretty much identical so you can't really identify them by looking at them the only way to identify whether you have a reverse or forward breakout cable well there's only two ways one the you know the product description tells you so when you buy the cable or you get a multimeter and you measure that you've you know you figure out the pin out on these cables and match it to the specification and and you know it'll tell you whether you have a reverse or forward breakout arrangement in the in the pins here okay so the easiest way probably is just to make sure when you buy the cable look at the product description make sure it is not a reverse breakout cable unless you really intend to use to set it up the way I just described where this goes into the SATA controller okay so the directionality matters and that can be a big problem so with the breakout the SATA breakout cables that's one case of that but also in the scenario where you have I mean you have this 84 84 to 88 e7 this also has a directionality okay this particular cable is designed for the eighty eighty seven to go into a controller a SAS controller and for the 84 84 to go into a backplane but there are older SAS controllers that have an 88 84 84 connector type to and you you might want to plug that rate controller or SAS controller into a plane that has an 8087 now the two connectors would look identical but in those cables but you know this particular cable would not work in that scenario this is wired okay the way that the wires are connected this is wired for this side to be on the controller and this side to be on the backplane sometimes it'll be labeled as this side as the host side and this side is the target side okay and there are cables where that's reversed where this is the host side and this is the target side and so if you're dealing with some slightly older hardware where you have an 84 84 connector and an 80 87 or some other type of connector be careful that these cables have a directionality okay so they are not symmetrical they're not you can't just you know plug them you know into the different sides and expect them to work so that's something to keep in mind as well so that's the last part in terms of directionality okay so if you figure out the connector type figure out the orientation that works for your hardware setup figure out the length that's going to work for the way you're going to route your cables and figure out the directionality of the cable that you need okay that will give you all the information you need to go shop for the appropriate cable for your setup alright so now one last thing there's often a misconception about the protocol versus the connector type so a lot of times people will assume that if you have an eighty eighty seven for example that this is going to be for six gigabit or SAS two and that if you have an 86 43 that this is going to be for SAS three which is the 12 gigabit protocol okay that is very common to have something like that and you know a lot of six cubits as two controllers will have an eighty eighty seven and a lot of SAS three controllers will have the 86 forty three okay and and the similar scenario for the external equivalents that we just saw earlier like this but but that assumption is not always going to be true okay so and it's it's not going to be true more times than you think okay so just an example here this particular HP a card has the 86 43 but this is actually a six gigabit card okay so this is not a three not a SAS three or twelve gigabit card this is a six gigabit card and it has an 86 43 connector alright and I do have it that I don't have it with me right now but there is an HP SAS three ok 12 gigabit HBA card that uses 86 or the 8087 connectors alright so the assumption that these type of connectors you know the the type is correlated somehow with the the supported speed of the the controller that's not something I would automatically assume all right so just because you're buying a SAS 3 HPA card don't assume that's going to have an age 643 okay a lot of times it will but not all the time and just because you're buying a SAS 260 gigabit hb8 don't assume it's always going to be an 80 87 all right so that's just something to keep in mind that I find people often confuse or kind of make the wrong assumption alright so hopefully that will help you guys figure out what kind of cable you need once you've got your HPA and you know just so remember once again connector type orientation length and directionality okay and that's all you need to know to figure out the cable type that you need alright so hopefully that's been helpful and thank you for watching please remember to press click on like if you liked this video and please subscribe to my channel if you'd like to see more videos from me alright thank you very much bye bye

Channel: Art of Server

Views: 87,058

Keywords: SAS cable, SFF-8087, SFF-8088, SFF-8643, SFF-8644, SFF-8482, SFF-8484

Id: OW419HwU7sg

Length: 32min 53sec (1973 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019