cheap JBOD chassis for ZFS:

[brutalizer]

Anyone tried this Sans Digital chassi?
http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-/tr8xplus.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Image...ure w/ Mini-SAS (SFF-8088) x 1 TR8X+ (Silver)

Basically, it is a Tower case with only room for 8 disks, connected with two SAS SFF-8088 mini sas cables. So, I could connect this to a mini itx PC whenever I need access to a zfs raid. Inside the mini ITX pc I should have a LSI2008 card with two external mini-SAS cables.
http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9205-8e.aspx

And if I want to get fancy, I buy two of these 8-bay chassis and connect them both to a 16 port LSI 2008 card, with 4 external mini-SAS cables?
http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9201-16e.aspx

This should work, yes?

 

[spankit]

My boss at work had the old model that used two esata ports on it and I assuming it had some port multipliers to support the 8 drives. We used it with FreeNAS v8 as solaris wouldn't work with the SATA port multipliers.

In my opinion considering the price you can just get a NORCO chassis and call it a day. They have 12, 16 .20 and 24 bay cases available all for less than one of those sans digital boxes.

 

[brutalizer]

Ok, so Norcos are cheaper? But that Sans Digital case costs 300 USD. I doubt you find norcos cheaper than that?

Another question, it doesnt say it supports 6G disks, but if I plugin 6G disks and use a 6G LSI card, then I get 6G speeds? The case itself does not need to support 6G?

 

[spankit]

I'm seeing 399.99 USD on newegg.

 

[thefreeaccount]

The cheapest possible option is this for $190:
http://www.epartsandmore.com/produc...rce=google1&osCsid=cfp2gg5utm5klm4vl0pe9lugf2

The only drawbacks are the lack of a full profile adapter for this particular chassis and the fact that they only ship one PSU with it.

 

[idea]

What if I had a chance to buy one of these used, for much less than $400? Would it be worth it then? It's the eSATA version though (SI 3132).