There are times I realize there are big holes in my tech-savvyness. In particular, my experience with more enterprisey storage systems, while it exists, doesn’t have a lot of ‘hey wouldn’t this be cool…’ to it.
Recently a friend asked if I’d be interested in a fibre channel disk array and associated accessories that he was disposing of. After a few seconds deliberation, I said ‘sure’ and a week later, here it is.
This is a 10 slot fibre channel chassis, hub, and a pair of HBA’s to round it out (the rackable box on top is a different project). The array has a mere 7 18 gig drives in it. In modern desktop drive land, it’s pretty pitiful. But FC drives on eBay are going for $30 for 73gig, so I can kit out this box with some pretty fast storage for very little.
For now though I have to learn about HBAs, GBICs and all the other tech that slipped by me.
This should be fun.
