From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Sep 12 16:12:17 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from q.closedsrc.org (ip233.gte15.rb1.bel.nwlink.com [209.20.244.233]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4250737B408; Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:11:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: by q.closedsrc.org (Postfix, from userid 1003) id 7A4CD55407; Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:11:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by q.closedsrc.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6891951610; Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:11:51 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:11:51 -0700 (PDT) From: Linh Pham To: Alexey Koptsevich Cc: , Subject: Re: are backplanes needed for IDE RAID? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 2001-09-10, Alexey Koptsevich scribbled: # We are buying 3ware 7810 IDE RAID controller (supports hot-swap) and # thinking now about disk enclosures. There are some on the market (e.g., # backplane http://www.synetic.net/Synetic-Products/2-to-3-IDE.html) but I # wonder do we need them? As far as I understand, some power switching is # necessary for hot swap, but do backplanes provide any advantage against # simple mobile racks with disk power switcher? Also, the backplane cited # above has two power connectors, are they necessary for hot-swappable power # supplies or not? Backplanes aren't needed for IDE RAID... all you need are cables that connect the IDE RAID controller to the hard drive (the usual 40-pin/80-wire IDE cable is required for ATA/66 and ATA/100 to run at their top speeds). Backplanes are only needed if you want to be able to hot swap the hard drives, but there are IDE drive trays that can do that for you without requiring a special backplane (like the ones found in many SCSI-based servers... ie: Compaq DL380). Hot-swappable power supplies somes connect to a distribution board to power the motherboard and other devices in the server. -- Linh Pham [lplist@closedsrc.org] // 404b - Brain not found To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message