SATA JBOD, network set up

[chucksavage]

Peter, thank you for the DAM book.  You've done a great job putting it all together in an understandale and comprehensive fashion.  BRAVO!

I'm not sure I understand the comments in another thread "JBOD reccomendations?" about SATA JBODs being difficult since no one manufactures complete units.  Based on what I've read on the mac gurus site

http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/sata/hotswapsatakits.php

it  seems as though the hot-swappable feature SATA drive boxes are not extrememly difficult to assemble.  Is there something eles I'm missing that would make this not such a good choice?  It seems worth the extra bucks when it comes time for backups. 

Any thoughts on my idea to buy an 8 bay box with four 400 gig drives and expand from there as needed?  I would be using Cat5e cableing.  What  switch would you reccomend, if any?  Also, I have available one dual 450 G4, a dual 1.25 and a brand new still in the box G5 dual 2.4 plus a G3 350.  Which machine will allow the network to function up to its potential without wasting resources? The plan is to use the G5 as a processing workstation and the other G4 as a second work station for printing, film scanning, etc.

Thanks, Chuck Savage

[peterkrogh]

Chuck,
Thanks for the props.

You are right, a SATA JBOD is not hard to put together. And I would have confidence in any package I got from MacGurus.   It's a good way to go.

>Any thoughts on my idea to buy an 8 bay box with four 400 gig drives and expand from there as needed? 

Also a good way to go.

>I would be using Cat5e cableing. 

Excellent

>What  switch would you reccomend, if any? 

I've had good luck with D-link, but I think any of the major brands would be fine.  You might want to keep all your switches/hubs to the same brand for easier tech support if you have a problem.

>Also, I have available one dual 450 G4, a dual 1.25 and a brand new still in the box G5 dual 2.4 plus a G3 350.
 Which machine will allow the network to function up to its potential without wasting resources?

I'm guessing that the Dual 1.25 is the only one with Gigabit Ethernet.  Your server needs that more than a fast processor.  For a simple file server, I think that the dual 450 is probably fast enough, if you can get gigabit ethernet. (Might need a separate card).

>The plan is to use the G5 as a processing workstation and the other G4 as a second work station for printing, film scanning, etc.

Excellent plan.  Try and make the dual 450 work as the file server.

Peter

[chucksavage]

I spoke with Rick at MacGurus yesterday.  Rather than one eight bay enclosure he reccomended two four bay units to allow for more placement options and ease of movement.

[Mark Martin]

I decided on Firmtek for enclosures, cards and cables. Here is a link: http://store.yahoo.com/firmtek/
I'm all Mac-The PCIX SATA cards are backwards compatible to PCI, with the 64 bit PCI slot supported-other cards I looked at were 32 bit and that apparently is a bottleneck.
They have a complete line of cables, cards and enclosures.
It's a big confusing mess to research and put a system together. Firmtek seems to have it covered, will report back on how it works asap.
 

[peterkrogh]

Mark,
Please let us know.  I keep hearing about compatibility problems with SATA.  It's definitely not the mature technology that ATA/EIDE is. 

I think one solution is to single source your buying as much as possible.  Firsthand accounts of friends point to MacGurus as a good shop.
Peter