[SunRescue] Info on Sun Multipack and disk arrays in general (long)

[James Lockwood]

On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Christopher Byrne wrote:

> about your Sun warranty. Sun no longer sells the 12 disk array, which is the
> one I'm offering, because it conflicts in the market space for their lower
> end enterprise storage servers. If they still sold it it would probably sell

Sun no longer sells the 12-bay MultiPack because it doesn't meet SE
Ultra SCSI impedance specs when fully loaded, and because it requires
cooler running drives than the 6-bay version loaded.

> The MultiPack doesn't officially support the new 73 gig drives (big bucks),
> but they do work. Of course finding a 1" high 73 gig drive with an SCA plug
> for less then 2k is pretty much impossible, if you can get one at all. The

Cooling issues are also very significant with a 12-bay MultiPack.  I would
recommend being very careful about which drives you use.

> more common 1.6" or 2" high drives are not compatable. If you fully
> populated the box with twelve 73 gig drives you would have an almost 900
> gigabyte array. Throw in the slots in your Sun box itself and add volume
> management software, and you can build a more than 1 terabyte storage array
> in two small boxes for less than 30 grand. Just to put it into perspective,

And I can get a packaged 1TB array with a warranty and service contract
from CSC for $25K.  For a bit over $30K I can get a 1TB FCAL array with
over 2GB/s max bandwidth.

My point isn't that the MultiPack is a bad product, but that anyone
intending to cram 12 73GB drives into it would be better served by a
different approach.

For what it's worth, I've seen 12-bay MultiPacks on the market in good
condition priced at anywhere from $250 to $1500.

-James