Hi all, Space is starting to get a bit tight here, so I'm looking at adding a couple of TB to my home server. I'm considering external USB or FireWire attached drive enclosures. Cost is a real issue, but I also want the data to be managed by ZFS--so enclosures without a JBOD option have been disgarded (i.e., I don't want to use any internal HW RAID controllers).
One product that seems to fit the bill is the StarTech.com S352U2RER, an external dual SATA disk enclosure with USB and eSATA connectivity (I'd be using the USB port). Here's a link to the specific product I'm considering: http://ca.startech.com/product/S352U2RER-35in-eSATA-USB-Dual-SATA-Hot-Swap-External-RAID-Hard-Drive-Enclosure The intent would be put two 1TB or 2TB drives in the enclosure and use ZFS to create a mirrored pool out of them. Assuming this enclosure is set to JBOD mode, would I be able to use this with ZFS? The enclosure would be connected to either my Sun Blade 1000 or an Ultra 20. The SB 1000 is currently running SXCE b130; the Ultra 20 would either run SXCE b130 or the latest version of Solaris 11 Express (or whatever its called!). I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't work, but I also have exactly zero experience with this kind of set up! Assuming this would work, given that I can't see to find a 4-drive version of it, would I be correct in thinking that I could buy two of the above enclosures and connect them to two different USB ports? Presumably, if that is the case, I could set them up as a RAID 10 pool controlled by ZFS? This would be replacing a D1000 array, which is mostly empty (I think I'm only using one pair of 10K RPM 143 GB disks at the moment!). I could add extra disks to the D1000 but appropriate disks seem to be rare/expensive especially when $/GB is factored in to the equation. Assuming my proposed enclosure would work, and assuming the use of reasonable quality 7200 RPM disks, how would you expect the performance to compare with the differential UltraSCSI set up I'm currently using? I think the DWIS is rated at either 20MB/sec or 40MB/sec, so on the surface, the USB attached drives would seem to be MUCH faster... Many thanks for any pointers received, -- Rich Teer, Publisher Vinylphile Magazine www.vinylphilemag.com _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
