[geeks] Netra T1 Disk Limits?

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net>
>Date: 2008/07/14 Mon AM 11:01:14 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Netra T1 Disk Limits?

>On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 09:08:50AM -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>> Bill Blum wrote:
>> >Is there an upper limit to usable disk size in a Netra T1?
>> >Anyone have a good source of suitable scsi drives?
>> >
>> >
>> To my knowledge, the only limit is what you can afford :-)
>
>Practically speaking though, you are limited by what exists in the
>marketplace (300 gigs, very expensive). 
>
>There has been talk from time to time about making a 1" IDE or SATA to
>1.6" SCSI carrier based on an Acard chip.  But I don't believe that
>anyone has ever gone through with the idea, and that won't work in a 1U
>Sun anyhow.  It still would be a wildly cool project for someone to do,
>but I doubt it would be affordable.

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...

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...

Lionel

[0] http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110270682130

[1] http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm-e.asp

[2] http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/rack_overview.asp