[geeks] FC-AL vs. SCSI

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Bill Bradford <mrbill at mrbill.net>
>Date: 2006/11/09 Thu PM 11:06:20 CST
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] FC-AL vs. SCSI

>On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 10:46:38PM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> I'm planning to put together a "large" storage array for my SPARC 
>> systems, like 500 Meg or greater
>
>I hope you meant "gig"

Yes, I did. ;^)

>> and I see two basic choices:
>> 1) Take a couple Sun multipacks (which I have three of) and stuff them 
>> full of larger SCSI drives (like 50 Gig IBM drives for about $15/each)
>
>Why not just take a few 411 cases, and put 500-gig IDE drives in there with
>IDE-to-SCSI adapters?

I can make an aproximate 500 GIGABYTE drive array by getting 10 50 Gig SCA SCSI drives from eBay for $140 (shipped) with 21 day warranty (i.e. believed good), and 10 sleds for $30 (shipped) - I have SCSI adapters and the multipack boxes (6x 1.6" drives) on the shelf ready to be used. So, I can hang the SCSI drives off dedicated channels...

To follow your advice (which I didn't really consider before you suggested it) would require the purchase of the HD ($190 for a Seagate 400 Gig IDE HD (see: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148098 for sample), plus unknown cost of IDE converter - $50-75? That makes the IDE solution a tad more expensive (about 25% more expensive) and has all data on one spindle.

With multiple SCSI drives I can implement software RAID and I assume some speed benefit from having data spread across 10 spindles. I also like the idea of a "classic" array of storage that can be sliced and diced as desired...

Thanks,

Lionel