I think that the F740 only scales to 1 TB
raw storage. To get to 16 TB you need to look at a newer, larger head and
those aren’t cheap. I believe that the FAS960 is the cheapest head
that supports more than 16 TB of storage outside of clustering. The list
price on a FAS960 is somewhere north of $80K.
All-in-all, I probably wouldn’t
attempt this with a NetApp. This probably isn’t workable. An
F740 won’t even boot if you try to use some parts that are supported in
the F800 series. They are very particular about what is allowed and what
will boot. I’ve found that if you can get the system to boot all
the way, then you can probably make it work. I definitely wouldn’t
bet more than $0.50 on it though.
You would be better off using linux, samba,
and NFS. If you have to have an iSCSI target, look at www.stringbeansoftware.com. They
make iSCSI target software for Windows, but I don’t know about *nix.
From:
owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Joe Schmoe
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 8:17
PM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: Piecing together a NetApp
on the cheap (with IDE) ?
I want to put together a very cheap, yet very high capacity NAS.
Some of the advanced features of NetApps (like data replication over WAN, etc.)
have really caught my eye, but the prices are just too much for my budget.
I plan on leveraging the low cost of IDE storage. I have noticed
the existence of third party disk shelves/JBODs that accept IDE disks in the
front, but present a SCSI interface out the back.
So my question is, would it be reasonable for me to buy a very cheap,
old NetApp head unit off of ebay (like an F740 for $400) and then attach
several of these SCSI enclosures packed with IDE disks to it ? Pesumably,
four loaded enclosures at 4TB each (10 400gig IDEs) would give me 16TB, which
is very attractive ...
Let's set aside the philosophy issue of sourcing third party parts and
the advice netapp has regarding that - I am simply interested if this idea is
_workable_. The reason I am not looking at the native IDE NetApp units is
that they are too new and are not available on ebay for hundreds of dollars.
Also, I have no idea if this is even acceptable to NetApp in terms of
licensing - do they support ebay purchased gear in any capacity ?
Your comments and suggestions, even if tangiental, are greatly
appreciated.
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