--- Ed Pastore <email@hidden> wrote:
> > I would like to get a new xserve with an Xserve
> RAID. I already have
> > the drives I would like to put into this thing.
> They are regular 250 GB
> > Maxtor ATA drives. When I get the unit can I put
> these drives into the
> > RAID unit? Does the unit already have the hot
> swappable mounting kits
> > or am I going to have to buy those separate?
>
> The Xserve RAID comes with empty trays (basically
> just placeholders) or with
> complete modules (imaginatively referred to as
> "Apple Drive Modules"). The
> modules have the drive, controller, and interfaces
> in one unit. AFAIK, it is
> not possible to buy the modules without drives.
It's worth mentioning that the placeholders are
completely useless and you CANNOT place your own drive
in them.
> I believe Apple's philosophy here is that for a
> high-performance massive
> storage system, they don't want you hacking in any
> ol' drive you got from
> Pricewatch for $50 or whatever.
Right. The drives Apple sells you have been tested and
burned in and are obviously quality drives. Sure,
they're just ATA drives and you COULD slap in your
own. Most likely it'd work fine too. But you're much
more likely to deal with dead drives. If it's not
mission critical and you don't care about degraded
performance as the RAID rebuilds a drive after the
non-apple drive fails then go ahead and use them.
> P.S. On the plus side, modules are interchangeable
> between some Xserves and
> some Xserve RAIDs. There are two different form
> factors, and I'm not exactly
> sure which ones fit which devices, but there is some
> interoperability there.
> IIRC, the cutoff is that the Xserve G4 and the
> Xserve RAID use Ultra ATA,
> and the Xserve G5 uses Serial ATA.
Right. The ADMs from the Xserve G4s are
interchangeable with the Xserve RAID ADMs. The Xserve
G5 changed to SATA, which is not compatible with the
ATA drives.
I would recommend just using Apple's drive modules.
You're going to have to pay for them anyways in order
to get the trays to place the drives in.
- Gabriel
=====
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