They're mostly business stuff. I won't try to put one of them at home.

BTW, did you get a disk tray or an entire array? I mean, most disk arrays are arrange in a way that one or more "disk trays" are connected via FC to array controllers. Then the array controllers are connected (directly or via a FC switch) to computers with FC HBAs. On the other way, there were (mostly in SCSI and SAS stuff) disk trays that had their own array controllers and could be connected directly to servers.

So, if you got a disk tray without controller, it's mostly useless.

As @Zup said, the FC stuff is practically useless nowadays.
This is also reflected in the throwaway prices of this stuff being dumped.

On the other hand, the old SCSI server stuff (U160, U320) is quite useful for retro users who want to have spinning rust and avoid the IDE nightmares. These drives are server class quality. The IDE stuff is no match in speed, reliability and durability.

Regarding the often-mentioned noise issue, one has to keep in mind that not all manufacturers produced loud drives, they are all different. For this reason I use solely Fujitsu drives for my retro PCs and Macs.

I didn't get any controllers - Just several disk enclosures each holding 15 drives. Some are loaded with 450GB 15K drives, some 600GB 10K drives. One was full of 2TB SATA drives with each "caddy" containing a SATA to FC adapter - that one got parted out.

I once picked up an SGI Origin 2000 with an FC drive array for EUR 1. I was a broke student at the time so the drive array (I forget exact config, but it added up to about 1TB in total) was actually larger than any ATA HDD I could afford at the time, so I got myself an HBA (FC adapter card for in PC) and actually used it, even taking it to a few LAN parties (both to show off and simply to have my main storage there).

You can do all sorts of cool stuff with FC, but at a minimum, all you need is an HBA, a cable (usually fiber), an enclosure and at least one disk in it. You already have the enclosure and disk(s), so you just need the HBA and the cable.

Now, back in the mid 00's this stuff could be borderline practical (if you weren't paying your own electricity bills...), but today it's complete nonsense to use it for anything other than historical sake. But given that's the sort of nonsense we get up to here, go for it 😜

Fibre channel is dead, practically no one wants it anymore. But if it is one of these SATA/SAS FC enclosures, (you can plug regular SATA drives in SAS backplane, IIRC) then there's a potential use but it's going to be a double edged sword : you can recycle old hdds that you have kicking around and potentially cut corners (huge hard drives such as 10+TB models aren't cheap.. But it's gradually coming down) on the other end, you'll get a shit ton of noise + power consumption will skyrocket.

Vynix wrote:

on the other end, you'll get a shit ton of noise + power consumption will skyrocket.

On the plus side, since it's fibre, you can keep the drive enclosure in a completely different, sound-insulated location. Cable length really isn't an issue.

I was a bit surprised to see there's still updates to the fibrechannel ecosystem around, with speed definitions up to 128Gb/s and 256Gb/s, so I guess it might still be used in certain environments with really heavy data-centric applications.

Yeah, I used Sun StorageTek FC array at work. I hated it. Everything about it. From Uber-stupid java based UI to licensing and FC itself as well. Switching over to iSCSI from Dell EqualLogic was the best decission.

As a practical thing, no, but I don't think you can start preserving history too soon, provided you can afford it (money, energy, space).

There are patterns to the technological ecosystem. Some people upgrade early and pitch often, some people keep obsolescent stuff running, some people save old stuff from the crusher (and sometimes not).

Heh... I can find a HBA on ebay for around $15 (PCIe, PCI-X is more expensive), but the cables are expensive... Tried making a couple of offers, but got auto rejected. If I can find a HBA and cable for a low enough price (or more likely find the HBA in a machine being scrapped and then have to buy the cable) I'll try this out - If only to hear what 15 x 15k RPM drives sound like when being thrashed.

Decomissioned a HP EVA 4100 with 4 FC disk shelves at work last year. In storage we have an EVA 6100 (8 shelves) that we got for free from another company, but never used it. Also had an EVA 3000 we bought used years ago for the rack and for spares such as fans and PSUs.
Would love to set up the EVA 6100 with 112 15K 300GB disks at home with some old Proliants, but space, noice and powerconsumption will not make this an option. 2TB limitation per virtual disk is also annoying.

Its posssible hook up the disk shelves directly to a HBA with one cable/single loop. Can make a JBOD or software raid like this and i probably have to do that for erasing the drives with dBan. Its really not possible to get any data for the drives unless you have all drives from a disk group, but will erase them anyway before we recycle them.

dr.ido wrote:

Heh... I can find a HBA on ebay for around $15 (PCIe, PCI-X is more expensive), but the cables are expensive... Tried making a couple of offers, but got auto rejected. If I can find a HBA and cable for a low enough price (or more likely find the HBA in a machine being scrapped and then have to buy the cable) I'll try this out - If only to hear what 15 x 15k RPM drives sound like when being thrashed.

Check fs.com for cheap but good fiber cables. If you select slow shipping, it's really affordable.

You can get multimode fiber from Ebay for a few bucks apiece. Even the aqua stuff, although the old orange cable is plenty good for garden variety 4Gb/s FC.

The main issue is licensing. FC is such a huge PITA for licensing. Your typical Fibre Channel SAN would have a storage unit (the disk + controller box) that would cost 10s of $K, then you buy the FC switch(es?) for 10s of $K, then you LICENSE THE PORTS on that switch, then you buy the $1k HBA for your servers, and most of the time need to license the stupid multi-path client so you can have redundant links... It's insane, and once iSCSI became viable, everyone I know was happy to tell the FC vendors where they could stuff their licenses.

Good riddance, IMO. Go join MCA in the pit of hardware that out-cost itself. 😁

I have some Fibre Channel equipment in use, this is a perfect match for older servers. The only thing to remember ist that these huge number of drives draw a lot of power.
You should be able to find some HBAs and cables from online auctions. One thing to mention: Some manufactures used non standard disk layouts like 620 blocks/sector so the drives seem to be defect, but just need low level formatting.
I use two Compaq racks as JBOD in a direct connection and two MSA 1000 as a fabric using FCA switches. I did not power up my HSG80 for several years now. (MSA 1000 and HSG80 both use SCSI drives but connect to the server by FC)

Yeah, I was thinking it would be match for one of my old servers - seems fitting to use FC disks on the HP itanium box I haven't done anything with yet - except I would need a PCI-X HBA which (at least least I checked) were going for a bit more than what I'd spend on something like this. I probably would have grabbed a $15 PCIe HBA anyway, but the cheapest cable I could find was going to be around $40 with shipping. fs.com has cables that I think would work for around $15, but painful shipping terms.