SAS PCI controllers

Mini-SAS (SFF-8088)

— the presence of at least one Mini-SAS connector (SFF-8088) on the rear panel of the controller.

SFF-8088 is one of the connectors used to connect external drives via the SAS interface. This interface is more advanced than USB and eSATA (in particular, it supports simultaneous two-way data transfer at speeds up to 22.5 Gbps), but is used much less frequently, mainly in the professional field. Specifically, Mini-SAS (SFF-8088) is an external shielded version of the internal SFF-8086 connector; through it, you can simultaneously connect up to 4 drives, but the data transfer rate usually does not exceed 12 Gbps.