One question often asked is what type of connector is needed, or what do all of these connectors mean. I thought that it may benefit my readers to have a quick-and-easy reference to the main SAS and SATA connector types. Some of the below images did get cut-off when being downsized so one may get additional detail by clicking...
At the request of some users, I am putting together a few bits of storage news from the past week. If the response is positive, I may make this a weekly Friday digest.
OCZ Z-Drive R3 PCIe SSD Solution For Enterprises and OEMs
OCZ Technology, a leader in providing 2.5", 3.5", and PCIe SSDs announced the Z-Drive R3 PCI-Express SSD...
While visiting a local retailer I saw a Supermicro SC-731i-300B on the shelf during the same visit that I was purchasing the Core i7-2600K and ASUS P8H67-M EVO that were used in the Sandy Bridge and H67 chip set for the home server review. It is one of those items that came close to making the cut for the...
Recently creating a VMware ESXi virtual machine for NexentaStor was covered in a quick how-to guide. The next logical piece of the puzzle is this guide to getting NexentaStor installed in the virtual machine. There are, of course variations to the installation, so this guide will not cover every variation out there, but it should be more than sufficient...
A lot has been made of the new Intel Sandy Bridge parts. For HTPC's they are really great CPUs as they offer low power consumption, in line with Clarkdale, and have a slew of new features. Since there has been a lot of discussion regarding the new CPUs already in terms of overclock ability and general performance, I am...
After the recent article on passing controllers through to ESXi virtual machines, I did get some questions around pass-through in Hyper-V. First off, it works a bit differently in Hyper-V, but you can still expose raw disks and RAID volumes to Hyper-V virtual machines, and this does not require Intel VT-d. This is an important feature of Hyper-V because...
Norco is a server case manufacturer that is very popular with home build enthusiasts as they provide inexpensive means to house large quantities of disks in 2U, 3U, and 4U configurations. Like the DIY JBOD/ SAS Expander project posts from a few months ago (using Norco cases nonetheless Iteration 1 and Iteration 2 – A Better Solution) , Norco...
After some prodding I am starting to do a few more chassis reviews. To continue on this theme, I recently purchased a Supermicro SC933T-R760B which is a 15 bay 3.5" SAS/ SATA chassis with a triple redundant power supply. In 2010 low-cost 3U and 4U storage enclosures became popular DIY options. Those low cost enclosures like the Norco RPC-3116...
This is a simple guide to creating a VMware ESXi virtual machine for NexentaStor. Actual OS installation is very easy and will be covered in another piece. Just over a year ago I created The Big WHS on a platform of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Windows Home Server installed in Hyper-V. Simply put, this may have been the...
Stratospherix ServerControl iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad review of a management app for Windows server platforms.