12Gb/s SAS Expander Card FAQs

Product & Features

The Microsemi Adaptec 82885T is the industry’s first 36 port, 12Gb/s SAS expander card in a low profile PCIe form factor. It allows you to connect more SAS & SATA devices such as hard disk drives and SSDs to a single controller because it enables you to fan-out from a single connection to multiple connections.

The 82885T has 8 external ports for external storage expansion, 28 internal ports. 20 internal ports can be directly attached to drives and the other 4 or 8 internal ports are for connectivity to the SAS RAID adapter or SAS HBA.

The Adaptec SAS expander card features SAS and SATA edge buffering capabilities that enable it to increase total throughput to the controller even when using 6Gb/s SAS drives. This is achieved by bursting data at 12Gb/s when connected to 6Gb/s SAS or SATA devices when utilized in conjunction with a 12Gb/s capable adapter such as the Adaptec Series 8 SAS RAID or SAS HBAs.

The 82885T is used as a companion card with a RAID adapter or HBA. The card presents itself as an internal SES device to the RAID adapter or HBA so no unique driver is required for the expander card.

The 82885T is compatible with all Adaptec Series 8, Series 7 and Series 6 RAID adapters and HBAs and have been tested and supported with 3rd party RAID adapters, HBAs, all HDDs and SSDs, and existing active and passive backplanes. Please visit our website at www.adaptec.com/compatibility for a list of tested components.

Adaptect maxView Storage Manager is a one-view utility which centralizes management and will display the drives behind the 82885T. maxView can be downloaded from www.adaptec.com.

Each card is backed by a 3-year warranty and Adaptec industry-leading technical support.

The 82885T SAS expander card is an ideal low cost, fan-out solution for high density storage server applications while enabling a passive backplane architecture in the server. The 82885T also provides for optional connectivity to external JBODs for even greater capacity expansion on a single SAS RAID adapter or HBA.

Market Dynamics

What applications being targeted for the SAS Expander Card?

Ideal for density optimized servers requiring direct connectivity to 24 SAS or SATA HDDs or SSDs. The 82885T simplifies cabling and eliminates the need for costly external enclosures by mounting internally to any available PCIe slot, away from the backplane and offers significantly lower power consumption than competing solutions.