I been looking at the HL 15 for a while and I about ready to buy one but the one thing I still not 100% sure of is data cable sets.
I have a 9207-8i PCIE3.0 6Gbps 2 SFF-8087 US Will this work for all 15 drives? and if so would this be the correct cable set.*
(2x) SFF 8643 → SFF 8643 [Mini-SAS-HD (Backplane) to Mini-SAS-HD]
(2x) SFF 8643 → SFF 8087 [Mini-SAS-HD (Backplane) to Mini-SAS]
if that would not work what cards/data cable did you go with?
The 9207-8i will support 8 drives (hence the -8i suffix). Do you know what motherboard you will be using?
ASUS Prime Z690-P is what I have right now.
TL;DR
Get a 9305-16i or 9300-16i, and cable set A.
To use all 15 drive bays on the HL15, the easiest thing to do is get a 9xxx-16i card. There aren’t any 9200 series 16i cards, but there are 9300, 9400, and 9500 series, each generation newer and more expensive than the prior. I don’t think LSI makes 9300 and 9400 series cards new anymore (could be corrected), but getting a new-off-the-assembly-line 9500 or 9600 is pretty expensive, like $1000, so most people buy a used 9300-16i or 9305-16i off of Amazon or eBay.for $75 - $150. These cards are pretty robust as a used purchase. The 9305-16i is low profile and a bit more power efficient than the 9300-16i.
If you do that, then you would order;
Set A
(4x) SFF 8643 → SFF 8643 [Mini-SAS-HD (Backplane) to Mini-SAS-HD]
as the 9300 series cards use the same connector style as the HL15 backplane. 9400, 9500, and 9600 series might use different connectors.
There are other options, but they’re kind of janky. You can get SATA expander cards rather than HBAs (cheap, but less table and performant), or you could get a second 9207-8i (if you don’t need the two physical x16 slots for anything else), a SFF8087 SAS expaneder card (would multiplex the 8 SATA channels to the disk drives), or an m.2 to 4x SATA adapter (to go along with the 4x SATA on the mobo, but you may want the 7-pin SATA connectors for other boot drives or such).
Thank you If I was going to upgrade I was looking at 9305