Help! Expanding a DL580 G3 with a P600 SAS card and 8 bay cage..

[sal.alex]

Hi there,

We have one of these puppies at work, and we're looking at expanding the internal storage to max capacity then taking advantage of the exteral sas controller on the P600 card and further expanding the storage.

There is the 8 Bay cage option available for this card with the DL580 G3 server. However does it use all 8 SAS/SATA lanes or does it take advantage of a SAS expander on the cage, allowing the user to use the external SAS connecter and further expand the use of this card?

I've been all over the HP site, but cannot get an answer, i'd make sure we're not investing in a card that does not let us expand and get a second dedicated external SAS controller.

The P600 specs are;
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/smartarrayp600/

Details on the cage can be found here;
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12195_na/12195_na.html
(search for 379090-B21)

Thanks for the help!