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On Wed, 2017-02-15 at 21:58 +0000, Sue Baker wrote:
DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote on Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:13:10 GMT:

IBM also announced some new EXP12 drawers that hold these
guys. Not sure if they are supported for i though. Have to
look.

The new EXP12SX drawers are not supported with i at this time.
None of the new LFF disks are supported either.

This raises a question in my mind. Does the I have "hardcoded" (for want
of a better term) acceptable disks? Or can it accept any disk that can
be connected to it just as long as the interface/protocol matches?

To expand. Are the cables/protocols/connectors/backplane industry
standard in that they use the SAS interface and the SAS command set?
Following that, if SAS, does the SAS also include the sata tunnelling
protocol so that it can accept sata disks?
That then leads on to the question, if the cables/interfaces are
industry standard... is it possible to "build your own" expansion box by
running the cables into an external drive draw and shoving a load of
larger IBM LFF's or commodity "near line" SAS's in there?

Obviously if the drives/interfaces are fibre channel then thats a whole
different ballgame (interposer cards ;-).

Now I realise that a person buying an I is likely to want all the
advantages that come with the box, such as reliability and the ability
of the disk system to keep the processor busy and a host of other "it
just does" features... but as a nerd with a home built multi-TiB media
server running linux who loves the technicalities, and nitty-gritty, of
both hardware and software the details and "I wonder if I could just..."
questions and answers fascinate me.

I guess the above also raises another question... pricing! Now I know
vaguely that I pricing (excluding hardware) is based on a number of
factors such as users, "OS" software stack, processor power, and so on;
but does disk storage also come into play in the "OS" pricing? If you
can buy an I for a given, but small, "workload" but have a massive data
data storage requirement does that affect the price? Could you buy/build
a multi TiB backend with an external fibre channel interface/card;
linux; gluster; a bunch of cheap satas; and attach to a lowly P05 (or
whatever a small(ish) I is called) and use all that lovely diskspace for
no extra cost?

Jon

--
Sue
IBM Washington Systems Center - Power Systems
Rochester, MN




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