[kwlug-disc] OT: SAS cables/controller cards (and Fibrechannel?)

[Ron Singh]

4 things --

1 - can you give some idea of the storage capacity of the arrays? See,
these arrays are loud as hell, suck a lot of juice($$$ to run) and if >8
years old, pretty low in capacity. Buying cables/cards to use them as
storage devices for PCs/servers would not be cost-effective by any stretch.

2 - Fibre-stuff, though fast, can be spendy to get up and running as
cables/cards are not cheap to come by or free for that matter. Most of the
>8yo FC arrays were along the lines of 2tb-4tb of raw storage that sucks
some 120w-150w depending on speeds of the HDDs. Those 10KRPM HDDs are
power-hungry.

3 - I have some Intel and 3Ware 9650se-8 ML cards(PCI/e 8087-conn) that can
be borrowed, I am sure I have the some short(18") 8087-8087 cables in hand
too.  These are capable of 3Gbps SAS/SATA.

In most cases, it is worthwhile popping the drives out and returning them
to service in a desktop with a bunch of open bays and tossing the original
cage. Again, limited storage to be gained as the world is all about 4TB
HDDs and 1TB SSDs these days.

4  - The fact that you have drive arrays in this privacy-aware world is
surprising. My IT shop regularly get some of this older stuff with the raid
array scrubbed, but scrubbed poorly since an 8-drive 2.4tb(raw) array takes
about 4 days to complete a 3-pass DOD-type scrub. We are tasked with
destroying said array, we do that by drilling the hell out of the drives so
that the platters become a mess of broken glassy bits.

You are welcome to borrow as many as 4 cards from my local IT joint for up
to 2 months if you feel they can be useful.
I could bring them by 50 Queen(?) or wherever the arrays are residing.

Thanks,

Ron Singh



On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 1:31 AM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

> This is pretty off-topic, but I will ask anyways.
>
> I am doing a small project with Computer Recycling to sort through a
> large number of drive arrays they have received. I am running into
> trouble because we are missing cables and controller cards for some of
> this hardware. I am wondering whether any of you have spares (or old
> stuff) around that I could borrow for a while (or maybe that we could
> purchase). We have thought about purchasing cables ourselves, but
> cables are not cheap, and we don't know whether this equipment is any
> good.
>
>
>
> I am not super-familiar with this world so I am probably saying stupid
> things. Please forgive me and correct my misunderstandings.
>
> I am taking descriptions of ports here:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI#Connectors
>
> I have an IBM SR-BR10i (maybe a rebranded LSI SAS 3082E-R) RAID
> controller card which might work for testing the drive arrays. It has
> two ports which I think take in SFF-8087 connectors.  I do not know
> for certain whether this card works and I do not know whether it is
> sufficient to connect and test these drive arrays.
>
>
>
> I have a Dell MD 1000 that I think takes in an SFF-8470 connector (the
> Infiniband one from the Wikipedia page), but I do not have any cable
> with that end.
>
>
>
>
> I have some IBM drive arrays that I am hoping to test. Most of them are
> IBM exn3000 (alternatively: 2857-NAS) that I believe have QSFP ports.
> We have some QSFP cables and I have one that I believe is SFF-8088 to
> QSFP. But I do not think I can connect a SFF-8087 to a QSFP directly,
> so I need an adaptor? I am not sure how this works. I do have one IBM
> server that I have used to successfully detect the drive arrays, but
> that is about as far as I can go, because the built-in RAID controller
> is not well-supported by Linux any more.
>
> There are not good pictures of QSFP connectors, but here is the
> wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSFP
>
>
>
>
>
> We also have some oldish IBM drive arrays that have Fibrechannel
> connectors. I have no idea whether I can make these work, or what I
> would need to do so (I think I need big expensive proprietary IBM
> controller that I cannot use without expensive proprietary software I
> don't have). Maybe I can access those drives directly? They have
> connectors that look like this:
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_Channel_electrical_interface#40-pin_%22SCA-2%22_disk_connector
>
> In particular, here is somebody selling one of the models in the array
> for some money:
>
> http://www.harddrivesdirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=456786_73P8017
>
>
>
>
> Anyways, if you have some of the cables/adaptors/cards/etc that I
> would need to test this equipment then please get in touch. If you
> know in particular what I should be looking to get in order to test it
> that would be helpful too. Our goal is to evaluate some of this stuff
> for internal use, but if for some reason you want to purchase it from
> Computer Recycling (especially the Fibrechannel stuff) then we may be
> able to make arrangements. In the worst case we will give up, strip
> what we can and then e-waste the rest.
>
> - Paul
>
>
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