reliable sata hardware array?

Hey Group

Currently i am doing a bit of research for my company regarding purchasing
a reliable sata hardware array. It needs to fill the following
requirements :

*) Holds between 12-16 drives
*) Output scsi 160 and Fiber Channel (preferable add-on since we will
start with scsi)
*) Dual internal Controller which is 100% reduant
*) Dual external scsi connectors
*) Online expansion (How does this work?)
*) Raid 0,1,3,5 and maybe 10

The plan is to connect the array to a couple of servers handeling the
permissions (NFS/CIFS) with failover (the reason why we need dual
external scsi connectors). The NAS-servers will be running linux and
we are planning to use LVM and XFS for growing the file system as we
add disks to the array (why we need Online expansion of the
diskarray). The NAS will act as a filer for a couple of webservers some
streaming servers (we need alot of cheap space why we need to go the sata
way today we have scsi) and a databaseserver. All servers are lightly
loaded (today we handle the job with a HP3000 with 12x18gb scsi disk).

So fare i have been able to find these 2 harddisk arrays that fills some
of the requirements but the first lacks the dual internal controller
and the second lacks the ability to expand disk capacity online?

http://www.av-digital.com/av-16fr_specs.html
http://www.av-digital.com/av-stor-fr.html

There must be more choices out there?

Ive tried promise fasttrack products and please don't suggest them
since my experience with their products is pretty bad.

Please let me know what you think above the setup and suggest
alternative hardware that works reliable for you.

If you need further info on setup let me know.

Kind Regards Thomas

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 15:33:01 +0100, Thomas Kirk
wrote:

Hey Group

Currently i am doing a bit of research for my company regarding purchasing
a reliable sata hardware array. It needs to fill the following
requirements :

*) Holds between 12-16 drives
*) Output scsi 160 and Fiber Channel (preferable add-on since we will
start with scsi)
*) Dual internal Controller which is 100% reduant
*) Dual external scsi connectors
*) Online expansion (How does this work?)
*) Raid 0,1,3,5 and maybe 10

As I've found, there really are no SATA/SCSI controllers that support
an active/active setup. All the redundant controller units I've seen
are Fibre Channel only.

Most of the units I've seen are based on the Infortrend controller.

All servers are lightly
loaded (today we handle the job with a HP3000 with 12x18gb scsi disk).

Ah a fellow MPE user! I feel your pain, I really do!

So fare i have been able to find these 2 harddisk arrays that fills some
of the requirements but the first lacks the dual internal controller
and the second lacks the ability to expand disk capacity online?

http://www.av-digital.com/av-16fr_specs.html
http://www.av-digital.com/av-stor-fr.html

Both of those use the Infortrend controller.

In article , Thomas Kirk wrote:

Currently i am doing a bit of research for my company regarding purchasing
a reliable sata hardware array. It needs to fill the following
requirements :

F.ex. Nexsan ATABoy2 (not serial ata, but good old ata/100).

http://www.nexsan.com/


*) Holds between 12-16 drives

14 drives

*) Output scsi 160 and Fiber Channel (preferable add-on since we will
start with scsi)

They have both SCSI and FC, and I would think you could convert a SCSI unit to FC..

*) Dual internal Controller which is 100% reduant

yes, but I don't know if they're 100% redundant..

*) Dual external scsi connectors

yes

*) Online expansion (How does this work?)

If you don't allocate all data in a raid array to volumes, you can grow
the volume later.

*) Raid 0,1,3,5 and maybe 10

Only 0, 4 and 5.

The plan is to connect the array to a couple of servers handeling the
permissions (NFS/CIFS) with failover (the reason why we need dual
external scsi connectors).

I'm working on the same thing with our ATABoy2! What software are you using
for failover? I use heartbeat.

The NAS-servers will be running linux and
we are planning to use LVM and XFS for growing the file system as we
add disks to the array (why we need Online expansion of the
diskarray).

I don't know if you'll be allowed to add disks to the ataboy2 raid arrays,
but you should be allowed to add a second raid array on the new disks, and
then you can include it in LVM.


-jf