Raid controllers and Arrays

[Sanm2009]

Hi all I am new here and hope I am posting in the correct forum.

 

I have a few questions about raid setup and raid controllers. I understand what a raid array does, but it is the physical connection that I want to understand.

Basically If I had 6 Hard drives in a server with a raid controller and I wanted to setup two arrays (one for OS and other for storage). Would all of the hard drives be connected to each other with one cable? or do the hard drives of each array need to be on a separate cable.

 

Also some raid controllers have multiple ports, does that mean the ability of having more than one physical cable (with set of hard drives) being attached to it. Or Can the hard drives all be on one cable and the controller gives the ability to choose how many arrays the user wants to create and how many drives to include in each array.

 

Hope the question makes sense.

[plexer]

In the days of scsi disks you would chain from one drive to another but now with serially attached devices such as sata and sas drives you have a cable to each drive from the controller.

 

Ben

[Arthur]

Can the hard drives all be on one cable

Multiple hard drives can be connected to the RAID card using a breakout cable like the one shown below (SFF-8087 Mini-SAS to 4 x SATA for example). Much neater IMO.

 

Edited January 28, 2014 by Arthur