Cyberguys.com has always been one my of favorite computer parts and accessories vendors. They have good prices, a pretty wide selection and I've never had any problems with ordering from them. They're not quite as big as say NewEgg.com, but Cyberguys tends to have slightly different and interesting products for sale.
One of the enclosures available at Cyberguys is a nameless 4-bay eSATA enclosure (item# 163 0333). It's only $279 and comes with a RAID controller card (not as much use to me, if I'm going to use it on a Mac, but might be handy if I ended up using a Solaris x86 setup).
(If you're interested in a USB version of the same enclosure, it's only $199.00)
Cyberguys 4-bay SATA/eSATA enclosure
This enclosure is not explicitly hot-swappable with drive sleds/trays but at least since it's SATA, the drives looks like they slot directly into the bridge board as-is without cables and without needing a screwdriver. For a Mac-based solution I'd have to also factor in the cost for an eSATA controller card. For my PowerMac G5, which uses PCI-X, I could get a basic 2-port eSATA card to add 2 external eSATA ports for $62 and up (as of April 2008), such as the Sonnet Tempo SATA E2P.
I too was looking for suitable drive enclosures for running ZFS -- and connecting to it with a Mac and other PC's. The problem you will find with almost all of these boxes is that they all assume you want to run their proprietary built-in RAID. If you're using ZFS you'll almost certainly be better off getting 'as close to the metal' as possible -- i.e. JBOD mode, where each disk is under full control of ZFS, without some RAID stuff in the way. ZFS likes to have full control of the disks so that no 'funny business' is going on between ZFS and any box's RAID firmware. So if you're after a general purpose fileserver you have 2 options as far as I see it.
1. Buy a pre-built box/enclosure that allows pure JBOD mode.
2. Build your own machine and make sure to disable any onboard RAID within the motherboard's BIOS so you get JBOD mode.
Personally, to give flexibility and full control, I chose option 2 and built my own box, disabled RAID to ensure JBOD mode within the BIOS, and put Solaris on it. You can see my setup here:
http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/home-fileserver-zfs-hardware/
And a series of other article on setting up a Home ZFS Fileserver here:
http://breden.org.uk/2008/03/02/a-home-fileserver-using-zfs/
Importantly, also you will have to decide how you want to connect to this fileserver. Will it be DAS or NAS? Direct attached storage will connect the fileserver directly to the computer plugged in to it, but if you connect the fileserver using something like Gigabit ethernet, you will be able to have any computer/network-enabled device on your home network connect to it. I chose the NAS approach for mine. Using a 10/100 Mbit/sec router will not give fast transfer speeds, and Gigabit wired switches (1Gbit/sec) are so cheap these days that you can create a speedy setup very cheaply now.
Simon,
Thanks for the excellent comments. I had been considering for a while about building my own Solaris x86 box to use for ZFS. But I wanted to do my due diligence and see what's potentially available before going the Solaris route. It's interesting to see what is (or isn't available) for possible Mac-based ZFS solutions.
We run Solaris at work (and make pretty good use of ZFS), so the admin part doesn't particular faze me. Mostly it's a space and cost issue. I already have too many systems at home :) so it would be nice to be able to host off an existing system, at least to start. I need to get rid of my older clunkers and consolidate onto fewer but newer boxes.
Anyway, yes I'm primarily looking only for any enclosure that will support JBOD (at least per their specs). I think I've only posted about ones that can do JBOD, with the exception of the Drobo. Initially, I don't mind having the ZFS storage directly attached. I could build a dedicated ZFS-host later on as a NAS server and migrate the array/enclosure to the new host (and upgrade to GigE, as you suggest).
Although this is assuming the zpool is fully portable between a Mac-ZFS and Solaris-ZFS environment. I know ZFS is supposed to be endian-neutral and can be moved between SPARC and x86. However to complicate things, my primary system is actually a G5. The ZFS on Mac binaries are universal and so would run on a Leopard/G5 system. The interesting question would be what would happen (i.e., break) if I tried to move the existing zpools from Mac-ZFS to Solaris-ZFS.
-Tony
Hi Tony,
I agree that it's good to see all the possible options in the marketplace before diving in and getting burned! I experimented first by adding 2 SATA drives into the Mac Pro's case and creating a ZFS mirror. Worked OK but got a couple of panics, probably the flaky version of Apple's ZFS port. After I built my Solaris box I did a 'zpool export tank' on the Mac to flush out any final pending writes, then moved the drives over to the new Solaris machine and did a 'zpool import tank' and then I could see the file systems exactly as they were on the Mac -- very cool.
Good luck, and nice site by the way!
Simon (email me at simon [at] breden [dot] org [dot] uk if you want to do a link exchange to increase traffic)
http://breden.org.uk