Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Chip Marshall]

On January 23, 2008, Jarod Wilson sent me the following:
> On Wednesday 23 January 2008 08:42:10 am Tom Buskey wrote:
> > I've also heard of multiport(path?) where 1 SATA port goes to 4-5 devices.
> > Does Linux have device drivers for it?  I know Solaris does not and MacOSX
> > does.
> 
> Are you sure you're not thinking of the cabling setup 3ware uses on some of 
> their SATA raid cards? They call it 'multi-lane', and its really just a 
> compact single port on one end, which isn't a standard-looking sata 
> connector, but has the pins for like 4 sata connectors at the other end 
> (either via an octopus breakout cable or a connection to a hot-swap 
> backplane).

I think he's thinking of SATA concentrators. I've seen some external
SATA boxes that have some number of drives with a single eSATA cable
going back to the host PC. Wikipedia has a little graphic which refers
to the part as an "expansor", but I've never heard that term used
elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA#Topology

I'm led to believe the concentrator/expander has another controller
chip, which may require specific drivers. In the external array I was
looking at, the controller could take care of RAID services.

-- 
Chip Marshall <chip at 2bithacker.net>     http://weblog.2bithacker.net/
GCM/IT d+(-) s+:++ a26>? C++ UB++++$ P+++$ L- E--- W++ N@ o K- w O M+
V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t+@ R@ tv@ b++@ DI++++ D+(-) G++ e>++ h>++ r-- y?
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20080123/fc0869d2/attachment.bin