[OpenIndiana-discuss] Expanding storage with JBOD

[Dave Pooser]

On 1/7/14 11:15 AM, "Edward Ned Harvey (openindiana)"
<openindiana at nedharvey.com> wrote:

>The main point is, a port multiplier might be useful if it's *outside*
>your system.  Supposing you have an external enclosure that holds 4
>drives or something like that...  You might say, "I have SATA 6Gbit bus
>which is good enough for the 4 drives in that enclosure."  And I would
>tend to agree, if they let you run a single 6Gbit SATA cable to the
>enclosure and then internally they use a SATA port multiplier, that would
>be pretty nice.  But when I look around, I don't see any 4-drive
>enclosures that use a single upstream 6Gbit ESATA bus...

Sans Digital makes one-- their part number TR4M6GNC, selling at NewEgg for
$134.99. I'd never use one myself, because they seem to be a recipe for
weird flakiness and I/O hangs, and ZFS does not deal well with SATA
kinda-sorta-maybe failure modes. But they exist.
-- 

Dave Pooser
Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com
"...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but to slide across the
finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and
shouting GERONIMO!!!" -- Bill McKenna