what's the best way to add SATA ports my NAS?

[knoober]

it's a DIY NAS/General Purpose machine that is out of SATA ports and getting full on disk space. I know I can just start swapping in larger capacity drives, but I think my preference is for some kind of pcie sata controller to add the my current JBOD. what I - want- to do is connect a large capacity (8tb or larger) as the beginning of migrating to a ZFS pool, while keeping my current set up intact (to be migrated and added into the zpool at a later time). I'm thinking that adding some kind of Perc with IT firmware would let me have my cake and eat it too. I'd get to add extra storage space (if I am not wrong the SAS to SATA cable let's you connect 4 drives and all the Perc I've looked at have 2xSAS for a total of 8 extra drives) and keep my current setup until I am ready to migrate.

So what is the bang for buck option? A Perc flashed with It firmware seems like it would offer the largest potential
expansion. But maybe I'm missing something or there is a better way?


edit: just realized this might fit better in the storage sub-forum. whoopsie.

 

[Janus67]

I used a perc flashed with it firmware to add 8 drives (using 2 breakout cables)