On Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:07:40 -0400, you wrote: >I have been looking to upgrade a server to an AMI card with a few disks >in drive enclosures. Thing is, there are so many enclosures out there. >Any recommendation for SATA disk enclosures? > >Thanks in advance, >
First of all, your question was off list but I think the following might be helpful to others on the mailing list, so I sanitized things removing your name and such, then bcc'd you. I hope you don't mind. Your question is good but tough to answer. There are a lot of companies making enclosures of various types and not all of them are designed well. The important thing is knowing what to look for... Things you need to consider are: (1) What type of SATA drives? (SATA/150 1.5Gbps) or SATA/300 3.0Gbps) -There are not many SATA/300 enclosures out on the market at this point since it's so new. They may exist but I don't know of any SATA/300 add-in enclosures on the market, so you might end up buying a whole new rackmount case with a properly vented/cooled SATA/300 backplane (www.servercase.com or www.rackmountpro.com or www.supermicro.com or where ever). (2) What's the case layout (i.e. how many open 5.25" slots) and how many disks do you need to fit in there? -You can go with single drive enclosures (one disk in each 5.25" slot) or multiple drive enclosures (four disks across three 5.25" slots or three disks across two 5.25" slots ...) (3) What kind of cooling does the enclosure provide? -Are fans redundant, how many fans, aluminum or plastic housing ... (4) What kind of warning/alarms dose the enclosure provide? -Things like fan failure, temp warning, power/voltage, LED or audible alarm, ... This is a good article from the EE Times that addresses the issues I mentioned in my other post to the list. If you're choosing enclosures, it's worth reading. http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20031017S0044 The article above mentions the 3ware documents on "good design" of enclosures. You can find those docs here. http://www.3ware.com/gooddesign/pdf/Storage%20Chassis%20Test%20Specification.pdf http://www.3ware.com/gooddesign/pdf/AMCC_SATAGdD_0604.pdf If the 3ware PDF links don't work, you'll probably have to go through their bullshit registration to download them. http://www.3ware.com/gooddesign/gooddesign.htm Obviously, 3ware makes enclosures, http://www.3ware.com/products/ata.asp the same is true for Promise Technologies: http://www.promise.com/product/segment_lv2list.asp?segment=Drive%20Enclosures and StarTech: http://startech.com/ststore/itemlist.cfm?product_desc=SATABAY3&category=P10130&itematr=&all=1&pdays=&onsale=0 and Cremax ("ICY Dock") http://cremax.com/ SuperMicro (www.supermicro.com) has SATA backplanes and enclosures for many of their cases and they usually do a very good job with cooling. Their web site sucks but with a bit of effort you can find stuff. As for what's the best, I'm certain every marketing/sales department of the above companies would tell you a different answer. Since I haven't used all of the products, I don't have much of an opinion on what is the best. The only opinion I have is knowing what I look for (cooling, alarms etc) and why I look for those features. I hope this helps... JCR
