11 May
2007
11 May
'07
10:30 a.m.
On Friday 11 May 2007 11:37, Ethan Dicks wrote:
I was staring at a Seagate "fiber channel"
drive today and trying to
figure out what the most economical method of attaching a few to a
box would be. Seagate made a line of STxxxxFC drives with a small
D-connector (like a narrow SCA connector) that presumably has power,
unit ID lines, and, of course, the drive's part of the FC loop for
data in/out. I know there are a number of Sun boxes (3500? 5500?)
that have compatible connectors right there in the CPU box - you just
drop the drives into bays in the front of the machine and off you go.
Presuming you have something older, with PCI or Sbus, say, what
options are there for using these drives?
The connector is a standard 40-pin FCAL SCA connector, and is used by
basically every available FC drive.
There are some things you can get called "T" adapters to hook up
individual drives, or you can get a multi-drive enclosure to hook up
multiple drives. The enclosures generally come in two different
forms - one with integrated raid controllers, and straight FC-AL drive
enclosures.
As far as the controller goes, there's a 1Gb FC-AL SBUS card that Sun
has to connect to their storage gear (no idea if it'll actually work
with just any FC gear, or if it has to be one of Sun's things, I seem
to remember it'll sorta work with non-sun gear, but can't remember for
sure), or you can use one of a few different 1Gb FC HBAs.
With the HBAs, you can go either copper of fiber (whichever matches your
drive enclosures). I've had really good luck with Qlogic's QLA2200 and
QLA2100 cards, which are also pretty cheaply available on ebay (<$20
ea).
Ethan, if you're gonna be going to Dayton this year, I can haul some FC
gear with me, if you want some enclosures, cables, PCI HBAs, etc. I've
got plenty of extra gear right now, which I could stand to divest
myself of some of. :) If you're interested, catch me off-list.
Pat
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