They sound like FC8\FC9 shelves (the NetApp designated part). If I recall correctly, those old shelves were made for NetApp by a company called xyratex (www.xyratex.com) but I'm not sure you're going to find much about them.
Happy hunting.
As for the comm ports, those are not comm ports... they sound like the DB9\FCAL ports that you use to transfer data (using copper cables).
Old filer? You're talking about a 700 series or older, or maybe an 800 series if you can find one. Issues: in order to make it work, you need to license it - NetApp won't just give you licenses since you picked it up on resell and they'll charge a premium for supporting it. You're probably looking around $1500 on the low end for old stuff that doesn't have any new software versions coming out.
From the sound of it you may be better off building a linux machine with some of those new 1TB harddrives for the same money.
If money was no object, I'd suggest a FAS270... but $40k is probably out of your budget (like mine). :)
Glenn
-----Original Message----- From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Charles Sprickman Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 9:07 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Using old FC shelves without filer
Hello all,
I recently had three NetApp shelves dumped in my lap (ouch!).
They were attached to a host with a (now borked) Mylex ExtremeRAID 3000.
I'm not having much luck finding any hardware RAID cards that compare to
the Mylex card and don't cost more than a few grand...
Anyhow, I may just get a simple FC card and do software RAID under FreeBSD using the new GEOM RAID tools. But before I go too far I'm trying to find some documentation on these shelves. They are FC/copper shelves. There
are labels on them that read:
Part Code - XL401R-FJ-02D Part Code - XL401R-FJC-02D Part Code - XL401R-FJF-02D Revision - A "Made in Ireland"
On the back each shelf has a rear panel flanked by two power supplies. The rear panel has three "cards": FC In/Out, Comm1/2 w/ temp/mute buttons, shelf id select with port a/b expansion switches.
Each shelf has 7 36GB drives.
Some digging reveals the company that made these for NetApp was bought by Adaptec a few years ago.
Where can I find some docs on the shelves themselves, specifically the two "COMM" ports? I tried hooking a terminal up to each, but no response after trying a variety of speeds.
Lastly, what kind of money would I be looking at to buy a used Filer? This would be primarily for hosting mail and web stuff. We're talking about up to 10,000 mailboxes (Maildir) and a few hundred low-volume websites. If I go used, I would ideally like to buy a spare filer, or a
bunch of spare parts for a filer if possible...
New is way out of the budget.
Thanks,
Charles