Does any vendor sell a software product that will expose logical volumes on a Windows 2000 server as fibre channel targets? I'm looking for block level sharing of the logical device with other fibre channel hosts. The Windows 2000 host would act as a replacement for the head end of a...

I'm looking for a vendor who can do an installation on an ADIC i2000 in Kansas City, MO, and who knows Comvault under Windows. Unlike ADIC, which would just install the physical library, I need a vendor who can shrink wrap both the hardware install and do initial software integration and test. ...

Does any vendor sell software for Windows that would make a RAID 1 mirror from two SMB NAS devices on the back end? Performance on NAS has gotten so good with gigabit ethernet that there is little reason to prefer SANs for most applications. What I would like to remove from the equation is...

What low end fibre channel rackmount RAID arrays will give me a consistent 20 MB / second average read and write speed with a reasonable number of 15K RPM SCSI drives in a RAID 5 or RAID 6 configuration? I've been using Compaq RA4x000 arrays as a cheap disk source for applications that do not...

Does anyone know what the QLogic QLA2312F card is? QLogic says it is OEM for HP. HP says it isn't their card at all. On insertion to any Wintel PCI system, the entire system freezes and refuses to even start up the BIOS. -- Will

Does any vendor make a 1U or 2U SATA / SAS RAID enclosure that uplinks to the host by a simple eSATA connection (i.e., RAID on the enclosure, not RAID on the host adapter). -- Will

Has anyone seen a good drive testing application that will run as a bootable CD and test any logical device exposed on the BIOS boot storage adapter? -- Will

For a few disconnected systems (not on regular network) I decided to buy a few Thecus 5200 NAS / FTP boxes, using SATA drives and RAID 6 with five drives. The performance is very decent for a consumer product, and I was measuring about 50 MB/second using gigabit ethernet when writing backup...

When a SATA drive employs more than one cylinder, are they striping data across the cylinders transparently, or are they just laying out data contiguously on any given track / cylinder? I have someone telling me that they have been measuring 150 MB / second throughputs on individual SATA...

I'm seeing a lot of enclosures these days brag about eSATA compatibility, and I guess this translates as "External SATA". Is eSATA simply a standard for how to make the cabling and connectors for external connections more robust than the connectors used internally? If yes, how do you convert...

I have an older Windows NT box that for several reasons needs to remain at Windows NT for a while. I need to find a way to image the boot device on this machine quickly, probably from a DOS or Linux preboot environment, but I would prefer to find a Windows based utility.

What does it mean when all three lights in front of an SDLT320 tape drive are blinking, with the tape inserted? -- Will

I'm looking for a cheap way to have more than one computer share read-only access to fibre channel storage under Windows 2000. I'm using Compaq fibre channel arrays for the hardware, and those are fine for low-end use, but they don't have any option internally to give read-only access. A host is...

I'm curious what are the experiences of other users here who have expansion cabinets on their tape libraries? Without exception, every time I have encountered a customer with even one expansion cabinet it measurably affects reliability of the installation. They typically experience two to 10...

Who makes standalone hotswap IDE RAID enclosures that uplink to the host by iSCSI? -- Will westes AT earthbroadcast.com

I'm looking for a storage consultant in the South San Francisco Bay Area to do occasional short jobs testing storage arrays, bringing them up to latest firmware, etc. I'm very flexible on hours, and this could even be done by someone with a regular job during off hours. Time would not exceed...

What are some good software utilities for surface testing hard drives for errors under Windows 2000 / 2003? We were using IOMETER for a while, but recently it has stopped working because some other program is taking a TCP port it wants to own, and it also appears that development has stopped...

I'm looking for a supplier of VHDCI cables that are high quality and reasonable cost. For a 3 ft cable, I would define reasonable cost as $25 to $30/cable. We are starting to use a Paralan SCSI Cable Tester religiously on all cables we buy, and we are finding failures at LVD speeds on at least...

We are migrating shared files off of a Windows domain controller to a discrete file server, and I'm thinking through what would be the best design for that new server. Given that 64 bit operating systems are now here, I'm thinking we do not need to spend much on fast drives, but we...

I'm looking for a rackmount hotswap SATA case that divides the case into four or more sections for connections to external hosts by SCSI or SATA. Lots of vendors sell such cases with single or dual SCSI connectors, but I have not seen one with more uplinks than that. I'm trying to provide just...