[geeks] Netra T1 Disk Limits?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 10:35:48AM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> I'd like (and may make) a 1U SATA JBOD, all I would need would be a 1U
> chassis with (as a start) 4x hot-swap trays[0], and simply run the
> SATA cables to a port multiplier[1] and drop an add-in SATA controller
> to an older machine. Storage wouldn't be bootable, but it should be
> *fairly* affordable. All the external SATA boxes I can find are
> "towers" or 4U "monsters"[2] - I'd rather have a 1U rackmount
> solution... 

I want a 1U SATA JBOD with a bit of a variation.  I want the 4x drives
to go to a 4x infiniband port on the back.  The 4x infiniband port
carrying 4x sata/sas shows up on a fair number of reasonably affordable
used cards and will give better bandwidth, while actually simplifying
your design.

> Another idea would be to retro-fit a SATA backplane into a SCSI-based
> system, a simple drop-in SATA backplane wouldn't be that hard, just a
> mash-up of the existing SCA SCSI backplane with the SCA SCSI
> connectors scrubbed off, and the SATA connections simply run off to a
> standard SATA connector... 

That should be a fairly simple project for some small systems.  For
larger boxes (like the 711), the size of the PCB would make it rather
expensive.

The only issue I see is that you will probably spend at least $100 per 3
board run, and if you are a noob at doing this sort of thing (like I
would be), fear of the cost of getting it wrong on the first try is a
bit off putting.