Me, myself and a 24-bay build that needs (a lot of) guidance

[Stux]

LSI 2008 card + the Intel RSV240 is still a good option for connecting 24 bays.

One port of the SAS card goes to one row of bays. These are your fastest bays.
The other port goes to the Intel SAS Expander. Then the remaining ports go to the rest of your bays.

If you had SSDs that you wanted to put in bays, you'd put them on the bays directly connected to the SAS card, as they would get full 6gbps each. The other bays all share 24gbps.

And this leaves all your motherboards on board SATA for whatever.

You can then pass-through the SAS card into VMware or some other hypervisor if you so choose.

 

[blaatje]

This is a good system board that isn't horribly expensive:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Unopened-Super-Micro-Motherboard-LGA-2011-MBD-X9SRL-F-O/253300204890

First of all thank you for your extensive research you've done for me!

But since it is the motherboard, cpu and cooler are from US sellers I had to look for replacements.

For a motherboard I found the X9DRL-iF for 340 euro's
And for CPU I found double E5-2650Lv2's for 275 euro's second hand from a reputable seller

Or

For the motherboard the X9SRL-F for 295 euro's but uncertainty on when they can deliver
And for CPU the E5-2630v2 for 150 euro's for a refurbished model

For Heat sink(s) I was looking at the Supermicro SNK-P0048AP4 for 36 euro's each.

So this would mean it would cost me about 200 euro's to have a lot more computing power. Which on the one hand is nice, but on the other hand the original plan was to split computing power and storage power with this solution. What do you guys think/prefer?

The SAS controller I pointed out earlier is still a good option. You can either use three of them or you can get a couple of SAS expander cards like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-46M0997-ServeRAID-Expansion-Adapter-16-Port-SAS-Expander/122281398896

The SAS controllers I found in my area were the Dell PERC H200 for 40 euro's second hand, again from a reputable seller. Or the generic one I found earlier for 128 euro's.

For SAS expanders I found an HP SAS Expander Card for 50 euro's second hand but since I've been told there are issues with these cards I'm unsure if I should try it or just straight away go for the Intel res2sv240 24port Expander for 200 euro's.

I noticed that some of the existing SAS cables in your chassis are angled, you may be able to use some of those, but you may need to get some additional ones with straight ends to make these connections. Here is what I have used:

Yes, two of them are angled, I'll try it with the ones I have and else I'll have to buy a few in the long run.

Don't be afraid to be SAS-sy
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/don't-be-afraid-to-be-sas-sy.48/

Thanks for the extra info, never done anything with SAS in my life so was an interesting read!

One port of the SAS card goes to one row of bays. These are your fastest bays.
The other port goes to the Intel SAS Expander. Then the remaining ports go to the rest of your bays.

Oh wow, of course! Did somehow not realize that if I used one port of the SAS card for the expander, I still had one left. That needed more help for me to get that than I will ever admit to anyone!

 

[Chris Moore]

For the motherboard the X9SRL-F for 295 euro's but uncertainty on when they can deliver
And for CPU the E5-2630v2 for 150 euro's for a refurbished model

I would go for this. There is no good reason to spend the extra money on the dual processor board and the E5-2650Lv2 is a particularly undesirable processor because it is only 1.7GHz. That is horrifically slow, no matter how many cores it has. I have had to replace those in systems just to get the system to be usable for it's intended purpose.

For Heat sink(s) I was looking at the Supermicro SNK-P0048AP4 for 36 euro's each.

I think that is the square ILM mount and it will not work with these system boards because they use narrow ILM mounting.
Here is a good article that talks about the differences (with photos).
https://www.servethehome.com/narrow-ilm-square-ilm-lga2011-heatsink-differences/

So this would mean it would cost me about 200 euro's to have a lot more computing power. Which on the one hand is nice, but on the other hand the original plan was to split computing power and storage power with this solution. What do you guys think/prefer?

I prefer to stay clear of the thin, 1U and 2U chassis as much as possible. All the servers I look at are either 3U or 4U. I just like a bit more room inside the chassis to put hardware.

The SAS controllers I found in my area were the Dell PERC H200 for 40 euro's second hand

There isn't really anything wrong with these, but they do run a little hotter. You will need to verify that it has the latest IT mode firmware installed.

Don't forget about the IBM SAS Expander I suggested. The Intel one is great, but the IBM one works too and is probably less expensive, if you can find it.

 

[Stux]

US freight forwarders are a thing too.

I’ve used shipito with success before.

And you really want to steer clear of that HP sas expander, unless you like using HP servers and raid cards to do bios updates, to get basic functionality.
https://hardforum.com/threads/hp-sas-expander-owners-thread.1484614/

 

[nightshade00013]

Actually should be able to do updates without HP equipment just have to work around their lack of software support.

https://serverfault.com/questions/6...as-expander-card-without-smart-array-controll