On 2008-02-12, Reginald Beardsley wrote:
>
> I've noticed that these are pretty cheap on ebay and am contemplating
> getting one to use for a personal NAS box w/ 4 large SATA drives.
>
> Goal is gigabit ethernet, raid 5 & 3 TB of disk space for under $3k.
>
> Are there any gotchas I should know about?


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Reginald Beardsley schrieb:
>
> I've noticed that these are pretty cheap on ebay and am contemplating
> getting one to use for a personal NAS box w/ 4 large SATA drives.
>
> Goal is gigabit ethernet, raid 5 & 3 TB of disk space for under $3k.
>
> Are there any gotchas I should know about? Other than rewiring the
> drive bays for SATA this would seem pretty straightforward. I'm assuming
> that I'd need to keep a SCSI disk to boot the system.
>
> Thanks,
> Reg

I'd look and see if you can boot from an Areca-RAID controller.
Unless you want to do some ZFS stuff with the SATA-drives, in which case
it wouldn't make a lot of sense.



Rainer

In article ,
Reginald Beardsley wrote:
>Are there any gotchas I should know about? Other than rewiring the
>drive bays for SATA this would seem pretty straightforward. I'm assuming
>that I'd need to keep a SCSI disk to boot the system.

The V40z's disk backplane is SCSI. It may be easier to buy an
external JBOD disk enclosure and an eSATA HBA.

John
groenveld@acm.org

John Groenveld wrote:
> In article ,
> Reginald Beardsley wrote:
>
>>Are there any gotchas I should know about? Other than rewiring the
>>drive bays for SATA this would seem pretty straightforward. I'm assuming
>>that I'd need to keep a SCSI disk to boot the system.
>
>
> The V40z's disk backplane is SCSI. It may be easier to buy an
> external JBOD disk enclosure and an eSATA HBA.
>
> John
> groenveld@acm.org

I've never touched a V40z, so I don't have any idea how hard it would be
to remove the SCSI connectors from 4 bays and replace w/ SATA
connectors. It's tough to tell from the photos I've been able to find.
Plan B is a V20z which is cheaper and the external JBOD enclosure.

Do you know of a Solaris compatible eSATA HBA? I was considering using
an Adaptec 21610SA and kludging the cabling to the external enclosure.

Thanks,
Reg

In article ,
Reginald Beardsley wrote:
>Do you know of a Solaris compatible eSATA HBA? I was considering using
>an Adaptec 21610SA and kludging the cabling to the external enclosure.

The Adaptec and LSI Logic RAID controllers are supported.

I believe eSATA HBAs with Silicon Image 3124 and 3132 chipsets
are supported by sis3124(7D)

John
groenveld@acm.org

In comp.unix.solaris Reginald Beardsley wrote:
> John Groenveld wrote:
>> In article ,
>> Reginald Beardsley wrote:
>>
>>>Are there any gotchas I should know about? Other than rewiring the
>>>drive bays for SATA this would seem pretty straightforward. I'm assuming
>>>that I'd need to keep a SCSI disk to boot the system.
>>
>>
>> The V40z's disk backplane is SCSI. It may be easier to buy an
>> external JBOD disk enclosure and an eSATA HBA.
>>
>> John
>> groenveld@acm.org
>
> I've never touched a V40z, so I don't have any idea how hard it would be
> to remove the SCSI connectors from 4 bays and replace w/ SATA
> connectors. It's tough to tell from the photos I've been able to find.
> Plan B is a V20z which is cheaper and the external JBOD enclosure.

That seems like WAY more grief than it's worth. The external enclosure is
almost certainly the right solution for most cases.

> Do you know of a Solaris compatible eSATA HBA? I was considering using
> an Adaptec 21610SA and kludging the cabling to the external enclosure.

Here's a list. The Adaptec is supported.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data...lts.page1.html

Not really any kludging required--slap a card in the V40z and connect
the external box.

Here are some interesting looking boxes, by the way:
http://www.usb-ware.com/external-sata-products.htm
http://www.satagear.com/index.cfm

I'm looking at doing the same--connect a JBOD eSATA array to my Ultra60,
and when I upgrade my PC, turn the old one into a S10/x86 box as a server.
It might be time to power down the Ultra 60 at that point.

Colin