SATA disk shelf research

I'll compile it here for my reference really.

We use the Perc 5/e card in two servers - we'll use one to attach to our current MD1000 - I'm checking around for a better alternative to another MD1000 - the lowest price I've seen for an MD1000 is $1200 on Dell's Outlet site. Needless to say, it disappeared quite quickly. Now that we have a US address to ship to, that site can be used!

The current MD1000 will be filled with our existing 300GB 15k SAS disks, and probably set up for RAID10 or 50. It'll house our ESXi test environments in two arrays I would guess. We need another one for other purposes.

The purpose of the second unit: mass storage array for temp files, archives, miscelaneous files, and backup-to-disk. The more space and spindles, the better, however, price does factor into things. Another option would be to run openFiler alongside it. Have to explore that.

Here are the current options:
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Used Dell MD1000 (single EMM is fine, dual gives us more SAS ports to play with, and the option for two hosts hooked up properly) with 15 1TB ES.2 drives (quoted $235 per drive).

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Came across this: http://www.aicipc.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ref=RSC-2EG2-0

A nice SATAII enclosure, 12 disks, max of 12TB raw. It is compatible with the Seagate .250-1TB ES.2 series drives, and our Perc 5/e cards (which are actually re-flashed/branded LSI MegaRAID SAS 8480E cards). Nice. But 12TB isn't much in the grand scale of things...would be nice to have more.

For reference, here is the RSC5ED5R-SA1C-0: $1585.00 (RSC5ED5R-SS2 is for SATA, that price is for SAS)

So, $1500 or more for the chassis. We got quoted $235+tax for a 1TB ES.2 drive, so that gives us: $6000 for the drives, $1500 for the chassis, plus whatever we put into it. Sheesh!!

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Enhance-Tech also produces a slick looking unit, albeit running u320 SCSI: http://www.enhance-tech.com/products/diskarrays/index.html

The R16 unit may fit the bill, although lack of RAID10 or RAID50 is kind of a deal killer. They also look expensive (update: and how!).

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RAD-Direct has some fun names: SATAboy, SATAbeast, SASboy, SASbeast. Someone creative in marketing. Unfortunately, 'from $980/TB' is a deal killer for us.
SATAboy link: http://www.rad-direct.com/Product-SATAboy-SATA-Storage.htm

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More to come...



Here's a fun technical article on SATA arrays: http://www.eetimes.com/in_focus/communications/OEG20030414S0072

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