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