After contemplating a 2tb server made of new 400gb SATA drives I found myself dumbfounded by how much damn money everything was going to cost me. I have since decided that since I have always wanted to go SCSI and I see all kinds of lots for sale on ebay for good dollar/gig prices, I will go with the SCSI route. My problem is that all the drives I am finding are 1.6'' height drives, thats fine, I can deal with the bigger drives. My problem is finding a place to put them all. I would ideally like to get an array of 24-32 drives, RAID 50, keep a hot spare (and maybe even a cold spare) on tap. I need advice on a place to put these, seperate case for all drives? split the drives into 2 halves and have a case for each or should I find one huge case and put everything in one? Also, do older SCSI controllers even allow for RAID 50? I am trying to get as much redundancy as possible while keeping everything as cheap as can be. This is no longer just a file server for me, this is my new project so I am trying to research everything and get the best I can for as little money as possible.
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Need Old School SCSI Array Help!
- Thread starter anths
- Start date
If you're going scsi it's going to be much more expensive than the ide/sata route even with ebay. A 147 gig scsi drive usually goes for 300-400+ on ebay, you'd need 20 of those to hit 2TB like you'd want. That's pushing 6k-8k on drives alone. Not to mention a controller that has a good chunk of memory, at least 4 channels to get the most out of transfer rates...etc...
unhappy_mage
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anths said:
I need a smiley with bigger eyes. Consider what your power bill will be, and then go back to looking at seagate 400s.I recomend you try and find a real scsi enclosure with backplane for the drives. It will typically include power supplies and thermal protection which are really nice. You will be glad you did. Although you will want to make sure you can get drives or else it is basically useless.
This is an example of what I am talking about.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Compaq-Storagew...802712285QQcategoryZ80218QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
This is an example of what I am talking about.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Compaq-Storagew...802712285QQcategoryZ80218QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
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swatbat
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Ok if you want to do this I would also recomend you get a scsi enclosure. You can make your own but these can be found at pretty good prices and are worth it. Second you may not pay for power but that many drives will be very lound. Just something to think about.
30 1.6" drives?anths said:
Most of those ancient relics are Ultra2 units capped at 80MB/sec transfer for the entire bus. You are also looking at tremendous cooling requirements for such an array. 1.4TB of the Seagate 73GB ST173404LC in RAID-50 requires 22 drives, 2TB requires 32 drives, and they pull 1.5A on +12 a pop - 33A on +12 for the 1.4TB array, and 48A to achieve 2TB That would wipe out all three peripheral +12 rails on both the Enermax Galaxy 1KW and PCP&C Turbo-Cool 850SSI You would also need two dual channel SCSI HBAs to achieve 30 drives, and would need a third adapter to allow for 32 drives While it is possible to achieve that capacity with 1.6" drives, it's not at all practical. Be prepared to throw down serious cash to achieve this kind of capacity in SCSI, as 1.6" drives won't get it done. 73GB 1" drives are the smallest I'd go. 147GB units are preferable, but mucho expensive. I think you need to reconsider the decision to abandon ATA, besides the admins won't let me use :eek!: anymore (I have to hardlink instead of using the :: shortcuts)
unhappy_mage
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rofl DL
Couldn't he use wide adapters with 15 devices/channel, though? Then you only need 1 dual channel adapter...
Couldn't he use wide adapters with 15 devices/channel, though? Then you only need 1 dual channel adapter...
As everyone has pretty much stated the physical size, power/cooling requirements, and high dollar controllers/backplanes required to make this work push the pricing far beyond reasonable for the end result.
Once you are ready to make this kind of commitment, you would IMO be better served to look into a used EMC or HDS array. There are a 2 symmetrix 8430 1.7TB arrays with 4Gb cache cards on ebay with a buy it now of $1400. Shipping would probably set you back another thousand or so. The problems going this route are power (you need high voltage), software and physical size. Each of these boxes are about the size of a refrigerator.
The cheaper units on ebay are not factory deinstalled so you have a chance of getting the software with them but no factory support so you'd be on your own when something goes wrong.
Assuming you had the space and power requirements covered, and the technical knowledge to make it work, you'd be hard pressed to match almost 2tb of SCSI storage for $1400 plus shipping... but there are many "if's" involved.
It makes slapping a few 400Gb drives and 1 controller in your box and calling it a day pretty damn attractive
Once you are ready to make this kind of commitment, you would IMO be better served to look into a used EMC or HDS array. There are a 2 symmetrix 8430 1.7TB arrays with 4Gb cache cards on ebay with a buy it now of $1400. Shipping would probably set you back another thousand or so. The problems going this route are power (you need high voltage), software and physical size. Each of these boxes are about the size of a refrigerator.
The cheaper units on ebay are not factory deinstalled so you have a chance of getting the software with them but no factory support so you'd be on your own when something goes wrong.
Assuming you had the space and power requirements covered, and the technical knowledge to make it work, you'd be hard pressed to match almost 2tb of SCSI storage for $1400 plus shipping... but there are many "if's" involved.
It makes slapping a few 400Gb drives and 1 controller in your box and calling it a day pretty damn attractive
Given all the above, if you still want to take it on, get you some of these (rack), or these (tower). Based on DL's post, I'd say 3 or 4 should do it, depending on your array size. If you do, I can tell you first hand that it is quite a sight to see all those blinking red lights when you're done.
