[geeks] Via PC-1

[Joshua Boyd]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:16:53PM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> That's an interesting idea - I may have to give that a try this
> weekend if/when I get the time to play with it. The problem becomes
> the attachment of the drives, since you only have two SATA ports you
> would either have to go with USB 2.0 drives and have the ability to
> add a Gigabit Ethernet card in the PCI slot *or* drop a PCI RAID card
> in the system and live with 100 Mb/Sec Ethernet. THat could be
> interesting though, to have a 3Ware 8 port PCI SATA RAID card hanging
> off the D201GLY2 board as a "ghetto" NAS/file server... But where to
> get a case with 8x hot swap trays for low money? (or for that matter,
> 8x SATA drives for a reasonable price, though 8x 400 Gig drives at
> $70/each is low, it is still too rich for just an experiment) 

Software raid via ZFS FTW!

If you need more than 2 drives, use port multipliers.

Save the PCI for a smart GigE card.

As for a case, I'd either give up on hotswap, or I'd look for a case
with room for 2 5.25" full height drives, and use something like that
addonics case you recently posted for $45.  Two of those cases.  Limits
you to six drives, but I'd call that good enough.

Now, you could use 1 port multiplier and connect one drive directly, but
for balance, I'd go for 2 port multipliers, even though that would leave
4 unused ports.

For a case, find either an old dual DLT (or similar) SCSI case and
remove the scsi connectors and replace with eSATA plates, then run the
SATA ports on the LY2 back to an eSATA plate.  Or find some old large
industrial PC that has suitable external 5.25 drive space.

With luck, the entire setup would yield about 1.8 terabytes usable
diskspace (raidz2 guestimate) for about $900.  

Or for FC luns, just use FreeBSD in FC target mode, and a FC card
instead of a GigE card.
 
> It really should be able to, but that is an emotional reaction, not a
> well thought-out conclusion based on facts. An UltraSPARC III platform
> would be an expensive platform for a NAS (IMHO), if not the
> acquisition cost then the on-going electrical/environmental bills... 

280r are getting cheap.  I recently missed a 2x900 complete for $150
(shipped).  I already have a gige card I could move into it (currently
in my e250). 

After the basic machine, there are some options.  Option 1 is regular FC
array.  That seems rather pricey to operate though (trying to get enough
73 gig drives affordably, then the extra electric usage).  Option 2 is
the crazy FreeBSD target idea.  That would be so darn cool, and with a
little work one might even be able to market it.  Option 3, which may be
the sanest, would be to buy a LSI SAS card (there is a nice 8 port on
ebay for $100) and hook up some number of external drives.

I don't need fancy.  3x500 would be enough to start with (actually less
could also be enough, but 500 seems to be the sweet point for HD
pricing).  I could take a 4 bay SCSI tower I can and replace the SCSI
connectors with SATA wiring.  There are some nice kits for doing that on
ebay.  Price would be $100 for the card, $300 for the drives, $50 for
the infiniband cable, and $50 for the SCSI rewire bit.  $500 total.  The
cable can probably be gotten cheaper with more shopping.  And perhaps I
can find a good enough deal on smaller drives to make smaller
worthwhile.  Since I'd be only using 1 of the two infiniband connectors,
doing an upgrade would be fairly trivial with just using another
infiband breakout on the other 4 ports to hook both up simultaneously
for the data transition.