Bought a SAN for cheap now what the hell do I do?

J

Jason0352

n00b
Joined
Mar 10, 2008
Messages
18
I bought this iSCSI server/san off ebay for $220 basically to see if I could make it into a NAS server for my roommates and I.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=350358165923&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

* 2.8Ghz Xeon (1x)
* (4x) 250gb SATA Hitachi HDS722525VLSA80 7200rpm drives
* 2GB memory (4 x 512 DDR)

I thought "hell if it didn't work I still had 1TB of hard drives to use any way I wanted."

I powered it on connected my monitor and keybaord to it last night and it booted into a proprietary san management console (SANIQ) that required a login/password. It looks like its built off of a Linux kernel.

I took one of the drives out and connected it to my desktop to see if I could somehow access the hard disk from a Win7 environment. Turns out the computer assigns it a drive letter, but I can't format it from windows.

Can I get any sort of advice on what to do next? I was thinking of booting off Knoppix and trying to re partition/format that way.
Wouldn't I be able to just take out the hard drives and stick them in an actual NAS and use the storage that way?
Thanks
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Yeah I'd start by booting a Linux LiveCD and see what's going on there. Whether it has a hardware RAID or is using Linux softraid, you should be able to mount the partition(s) and reset the password. My LiveCD of choice for this kind of thing is Finnix. It's small, boots fast, and includes all the tools you need to do these kinds of tasks.

Or you could probably just blow away the existing OS and replace it with something like OpenFiler or FreeNAS.
 
I've got a bunch of these. Pull out the two IDE USB type memory cards and boot a linux flavor and configure. Don't bother with the Lefthand installation. You'll need special software to administer it.
 
Do you mean the card in the back with the 2 big cylinders above the ram slots? Or the 2 IDE slots right below the 4 sata cables?
 
The two in the IDE slots. They both have what look to be a power cable (red and black wires) coming out of the top. I believe they are 256mb cards so I guess you could use them for FreeNAS but would need to be formated. I would also remove the big card. I have no idea what it is but it looks power hungry with those big caps.
 
While Lefthand does work on regular x86 hardware. You should keep the OS that they have on there. Download the lefthand tools from HP (they bought them) and carve out volumes as you see fit then connect them in Windows through the iSCSI initiator and format the volume. Don't use it as a dymanic disk, that doesn't work well with iSCSI, just a basic windows disk.
 
Oh man yea just reread your post. Lefthand does run on Linux, but the only thing you do through the interface on the SAN is configure IP addresses really.

Go to:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/vsa/index.html

Download the 60 day trial, inside there there should be the SANIQ management tools. Using that command line on the SAN give it an IP address. Then install the SANIQ tools on your windows computer. Connect to the SAN's IP address and configure the volumes through there. Do not format the actual disks, and they will not work in your PC directly.
 
The Lefthand software that is installed on these units are hard coded to use the 250GB IBM drives in the unit. You can not replace them with anything else.
 
I dunno if thats entirely true, because you can replace lefthand drive modules with larger ones don't know how you'd get it to recognize unofficial drives though.
 
I really appreciate all the help guys, but what should I do? Install something like OpenFiler/FreeNas or get the SAN management tools.

Also, ColdZero, you say not to make it a dynamic volume; does that mean I wont be able to stream movies/music off of it?

Thanks
 
It sounds like NAS is more appropriate for your intended use than SAN, so I'd just blow the SAN software away and use something else. Probably try FreeNAS from a LiveCD first though and make sure it sees all the hardware okay before I did anything destructive though.
 
I loaded up Freenas and installed it on one of the drives. I was able to logon from another host in my network and add drives and everything. When I rebooted freenas it didn't load into freenas like it should have. It just sat there with a blinking cursur. My boot options were to boot from my hdd 1st and there was nothing in the CDROM.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top