Joe> I want to put together a very cheap, yet very high capacity NAS. Joe> Some of the advanced features of NetApps (like data replication Joe> over WAN, etc.) have really caught my eye, but the prices are Joe> just too much for my budget.

As the old saying goes:

You can do it cheap, fast, reliable. Pick any two.

This extends to NetApps and other NAS devices, though not quite exactly. Basically, you pay for what you get. And in this case, when you pay NetApp the big bucks you get an easy to setup and manage system which has good to great performance, and is reliable.

So sure, you can setup a cheap, reliable NAS box. Don't expect it to be blindingly fast.

Joe> I plan on leveraging the low cost of IDE storage. I have noticed Joe> the existence of third party disk shelves/JBODs that accept IDE Joe> disks in the front, but present a SCSI interface out the back.

Sure, they exist. Might even be good. But can they hot-swap drives? How is the performance? How durable area they? How fast can they rebuild data when (not if) you have a drive failure?

Joe> So my question is, would it be reasonable for me to buy a very Joe> cheap, old NetApp head unit off of ebay (like an F740 for $400) Joe> and then attach several of these SCSI enclosures packed with IDE Joe> disks to it ? Pesumably, four loaded enclosures at 4TB each (10 Joe> 400gig IDEs) would give me 16TB, which is very attractive ...

That NetApp head would come without a license probably, and NetApp certainly wouldn't support it in a non-standard configuration like that. And if you don't have the OS (Data OnTap), how are you going to make the unit run?

If you're looking for a real cheap, but large NAS, then you could get a bunch of SATA drives and the new 3ware 12 port SATA controllers, and run Linux or FreeBSD or some other OS like that.

Joe> Let's set aside the philosophy issue of sourcing third party Joe> parts and the advice netapp has regarding that - I am simply Joe> interested if this idea is _workable_. The reason I am not Joe> looking at the native IDE NetApp units is that they are too new Joe> and are not available on ebay for hundreds of dollars.

Nope, the idea is not workable since the NetApp won't even talk to SCSI disk shelves unless it recognizes them, which it certainly won't with the setup you are contemplating.

Joe> Also, I have no idea if this is even acceptable to NetApp in Joe> terms of licensing - do they support ebay purchased gear in any Joe> capacity ?

Sure, if you pay them enough money to re-certify the hardware. Going to cost you a bundle.

In summary, it's not really clear what you're trying to do, but I also don't think you've really thought this through either. If your data is valuable, why keep it on cheap storage that is pieced together and of dubious reliability? And think of what a pain it will be when (not if) you need to restore data from backups. You are doing backups, right?

John John Stoffel - Senior Unix Systems Administrator - Lucent Technologies stoffel@lucent.com - http://www.lucent.com - 978-952-7548