So I had a little chat with one of the fellows from Micronet. While they have not released pricing, he told me that for around 1TB of storage you’re looking at about half the cost of an xServe RAID. Not too shabby. But it’s still out of my ballpark price wise. It would probably not be so if they didn’t come populated with drives. I already have 3 drives that I want to use, and will be getting 2 or 3 more for the RAID.
Guys, seriously, you’ll make money selling the enclosures by themselves. Don’t try to get me to buy the bundled drives along with it. For example, take the 6k 1TB xServe RAID. To add 3 250gb drives to that configuration costs $1500. $500 for a 250gb drive? Are you kidding? If I could by the Xserve RAID, bare with no drives for 3k, I would be tempted. But at 6k for one TB? It just tosses it right out of my range. That’s fine, it’s really an enterprise solution, but why do I have to throw down 2 grand for any other RAID 5 firewire or SCSI solution?
So it looks like the Linux RAID is going to happen. So, here’s where I need your help. I want to build it in a shuttle case. I was something small and relatively portable. I’m looking for a shuttle case with room for 5 3.5 drives. I don’t need an optical drive past initial set up. It must have enough processor to deal with Linux software RAID and a fast enough bus to feed 5 drives and gigabit ethernet at around 70mb/sec. Oh, and it needs to have gigabit. If I need to build it in a minitower, so be it, but I would prefer to make it as small as possible. If I’m going mid tower, I’d like some recommendations for MLB/Processor combinations that aren’t going to choke back gigabit and 5 drives. Soon the fun will begin.