Adam> Not a netapp ;) but I am looking for recommendations for a Adam> directly attached raid shelf that uses scsi disks and has a Adam> capacity of around 1 T.
Why SCSI? Raw 1tb or useable 1tb? SCSI is much more expensive per Gb these days (along with FC disks) when compared to SATA/IDE drives.
Adam> We dont need much space at all but I want enough disks to make a Adam> raid5 make sense. 7 or less 72gb disks would be ideal, but have Adam> enough slots for future expansion. I am looking for something Adam> that is COMPLETELY software independant, has its own network Adam> port for sending notices and for configuation (and/or config Adam> through serial). I don't want to fool around with software Adam> needed on the host system to monitor and/or manage it at all.
Why are you so worried about software dependence? If you're talking direct attached storage, getting a JBOD system and running software RAID makes alot of sense.
In a past job, we had Sun HW RAID boxes and plain A5x00 boxes using VxVM and I never had problems with the VxVM that I couldn't fix. We junked the HW raid boxes as soon as we could. You have zero control over whatever the vendor decides to do to you.
Adam> Other than being SATA, various Nexsan products look appropriate, Adam> but I'm looking for a company that has appropriate products Adam> centering on reliability, price, and decent speed. We have not Adam> had specific component problems in the past, so I'm not sure Adam> dual controllers, cables etc would help, simply isolated or Adam> chronic quirkyness with medium to disasterous effects. I want Adam> something that acts solid and predictable from the moment you Adam> first plug it in.
Adam> I'm not sure I want to dive into iSCSI yet, or if it would work Adam> well in our environment. My concerns with that are client Adam> support (Solaris 9, Linux 2.6, FreeBSD 6.x) and what would Adam> happen in the case of network drops. We don't have a seperate Adam> storage network now.
So are you looking for a single device which can talk to multiple clients? Or are you trying to setup a master device which the other hosts will talk to?
If you just want 1Tb of NFS/CIFS storage, go look at the Buffalo Logic device. It's a standalone NAS box, RAID5, hot spare. 4 x XXXGb disks. Currently they offer 500Gb disks. Put them into a 3x RAID5 with a hot spare and you should be good to go.
But you haven't really said what you're constraints are. Money? Performance? Ability to configure devices? Backups? Interoperability?
I've also used the Fibre Attached Ataboy (Nexsan?) hooked to Suns running RAID5 for around 2.5Tb of storage. Came to $15k back then, alot cheaper now.
Oh, big problem with RAID5 is the rebuild time. You lose a disk, it can take upto 24+ hours to rebuild, so make sure you get a UPS for your setup than can hold both the RAID box and the server which manages the filesystem(s) on it.
RAID6 is another promising technology (Raid-dp in Netapp terms) where you have dual parity disks instead of single parity disks. More redundancy, but not as bad a RAID0 mirrors.
John