Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Recommendation for SAS RAID Enclosure

Jordan Livingston

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 9, 2009
Messages
349
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Age
44
Website
www.jlpmovies.com
I'm a MacPro user and I currently own the ATTO R380 SAS controller and am looking to upgrade my RAID storage. Does anybody have a recommendation for a good enclosure that will work with that controller card?

I'm also considering possibly upgrading to the newer ATTO R680. Recommendations for RAID enclosures compatible with that model are welcome too!

Thanks in advance...

- Jordan
 
Hi Jordan,

I highly recommend the Enhance Technology ProAvio EB8MS. Both those ATTO's are qualified for use with it. I use mine with a Highpoint RocketRaid 4322 and have been getting close to 800MB/s read/write.

www.proavio.com

Hope this helps!

Adam
 
I use Fibrenetix RAIDs.

http://www.fibrenetix.com/products/16985/16989/

I'm very happy with this storage systems.... and they are available in all connections...
If you want to change later from SAS to Fibre you need to exchange only the interface
on the RAID... Expansion is also very easy done....

best,
rainer
 
I'm using a 12 Bay Enclosure from CineRAID.. Great stuff!
 
Thanks Scott,

This might be wishful thinking, but my hope is that I can have an ATTO SAS RAID card running in the same MacPro system as my ATTO SCSI-3 card; simultaneously supporting an SAS RAID, my existing SCSI-3 RAID, and the occasional eSATA external hard drive (i.e. G-Tech G-RAID, etc.) via eSATA fanout cable.

If those two ATTO cards can co-exist peacefully and simultaneously with those three drive systems I will be a happy man! Anybody have any real world experience mixing this particular cocktail?

- Jordan
 
Thanks Scott,

This might be wishful thinking, but my hope is that I can have an ATTO SAS RAID card running in the same MacPro system as my ATTO SCSI-3 card; simultaneously supporting an SAS RAID, my existing SCSI-3 RAID, and the occasional eSATA external hard drive (i.e. G-Tech G-RAID, etc.) via eSATA fanout cable.

If those two ATTO cards can co-exist peacefully and simultaneously with those three drive systems I will be a happy man! Anybody have any real world experience mixing this particular cocktail?

- Jordan

Just not sure if the esata is hot-swappable via a fanout cable. On my areca card it is not.
 
Just not sure if the esata is hot-swappable via a fanout cable. On my areca card it is not.

Really? Weird. eSATA and SAS are both hot-swappable by spec. You should be good if you have a proper SAS to eSATA fan-out. Make sure it's the eSATA version and not the one with standard SATA internal plugs -- HighPoint and others make ones with both styles of connectors. Only the eSATA ones are properly grounded for external use. However, that should not have any effect on hot-swappability. You should be able to unmount the disk and disconnect, then connect and mount a new one just fine. I do it all the time on my ATTO cards with SAS to eSATA fan-out cables. Could be something with the Areca drivers.
 
Then it is something to do with the areca drivers for my 1680ix-16 as I'm using a standard sff-8088 to 4 drive esata cable. I can go into the raid software interface and can mount/unmount them but no support from the finder. If they are simply connected they are not visible in disk utility and if dismounted and turned off/removed the raid alarm will activate.

I'll be setting up a second system for myself soon and this is good info for my next choice in raid card.

thanks,

noel
 
Noel,

This seems more like a configuration issue. I believe you have to configure the 4 ports on the host with the fan-out cable to be ignored by the RAID monitor and exempt from RAID status. I don't know if that particular Areca card lets you separate out ports or channels in this way.
 
Noel

Noel

Hello Noel,

The Areca RAID controller does support the ability of performing a hot-swap drive replacement without powering down the system. A disk can be disconnected, removed, or replaced with a different disk without taking the system off-line.

It sound like you want to connect a single non-RAID disk drive. If so, you can acheive this by configuring it as a pass through disk. A pass-through disk is not controlled by the SAS RAID controller firmware. It is seen as an individual disk.

To create pass-through disk, Open the MRAID and go to the MAIN menu, click on physical drives then you'll see "create pass-through" link.

If you have multiple drives that you want to plug in as pass through disks, you will need to make sure you assign each one with a unique SCSI Channel/ID/LUN.

One thing to remember, if you remove a pass through disk from the controller, it will need to be re-assigned as a pass through disk the next time you connect the drive so it'll recognize it and access your data.

Let me know if this works for you.

Ricardo Reyes
Areca Technologies - US Channel - www.Areca.com.tw
CineRAID System - www.CineRAID.com
 
Back
Top