[rescue] Re: Re: San Antonio, TX area rescue

[Robert Novak]

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 09:09:40PM -0600, Eric Dittman wrote:
> > > > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2073869520
> > 
> > With the price of drives constantly dropping, I'm hesitant to
> > buy an big proprietary storage unit.
> 
> Which part of this system are you refering to?  I was under the
> impression that the whole shibang would talk to a standard machine, and
> that all the drives were standard.  I guess I might question using
> proprietary controllers, but then, if you bought 3, why not consolidate
> the drives and save the extra controllers for spares.

The internals are proprietary. The disks are SCSI but they probably have
some mix of custom firmware on the drives and other proprietary bits that
I can't think of at the moment. 

Also, there may be issues of OS licensing. Those products tend to have
proprietary software and may require management software to configure. 

My previous employer's product tries to compete with Hitachi's stuff, so I
have some experiences in what's involved in connecting to this class of
hardware. If you get the right host controllers and have the management
access, you may get lucky. If not, you may have a good space heater.

> > I'm surprised there's not an open source storage controller
> > project to turn a Linux or *BSD system into one.
> 
> Yeah, that would be kinda cool.  Isn't that kinda what iSCSI does,
> except over ethernet or fddi rather than over physical scsi cabling?

I don't think iSCSI gives you the RAID and management, although I might be
wrong. I'd been given to think it was more of a bus implementation. (This
is TOMA, mind you).

I wouldn't be surprised to find that someone was doing a Linux-based
storage server. I know it's been done commercially, but I don't know of
anything cheap for the purpose.

Rob

Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
	"I don't want to doubt you, Know everything about you
      I don't want to sit Across the table from you Wishing I could run."