eSATA hub/switcher - even possible?

[paulcurtis]

Im curious as to whether it's possible or whether anyone has created a switcher for eSATA much like a keyboard/monitor switch?

So two PCs each with eSATA cards in, both connected to a switch that, in turn, is connected to an eSATA RAID box. The switch determines which of the PCs can see the RAID at any one time.

Better still, a switch that can share the drive. Heading towards a SAN here though but not as expensive as FC?

Is this even possible? a DIY job?

thanks
paul

 

[PCcashCow]

You wouldn't want such a device for various reasons. This is what is networking for.

 

[paulcurtis]

I would use it: I do film work so deal with huge files. Whilst working i would want my storage attached to my workstation for interactive work. Then whilst rendering i would like it attached to a server whilst i continue with different work.

I could do it by physically unplugging the arrays and workstations but i have everything hidden and cabled up for sound reasons so it would be a bit of a pain.

The idea of a SAN based on eSATA is interesting but i can appreciate the locking and multiple transfer problems that probably render this pointless. But a switch would be useful.

paul

 

[nobly]

I think it would be technically feasible to do it. The problem with a switch is that you can easily corrupt the data if you accidentally bump it or forget to release it from the host computer before switching it. Then all your work goes down the tubes.

You'd be better off with a networking solution that allows multiple computers to access the data. But with ethernet, you'd be limited to 1 or 2 gigabits unless you when all commercial. Now with 2 gigabit ethernet, you can almost get to eSATA speeds. (2 gigabit = 250MB/s, eSATA = 300MB/s).
So you're only going to hit those speeds with a RAID 0 setup with 3-4 HDD's.
Of course you probably won't want RAID 0, as it sounds like you need some redundancy as well.

You could probably write a protocol layer to get eSATA to act like a network, but that sounds like too much pain to go through.

 

[paulcurtis]

Fair point about corruption. I just want to avoid a FC SAN, overkill for what i need at home. Is 10 Gigabit ethernet around yet?

cheers
paul

 

[gd000277294]

There is an eSata hub out there. It's pretty neat. Check it out.

http://www.cooldrives.com/sahub5muussi.html

 

[mvhurlburt]

I know this thread is pretty old but I would certainly find an eSata SAN a great low cost alternative to FC especially for small workgroups that require high performance, high availability and scalable data storage. A clustered filesystem such as DataPlows SFS could be utilized to enable concurrent access. If someone could develop a managed eSata switch that would allow for concurrent block level access so the drives we would just need a suitable piece of software to allow for spanning multiple eSata subsystems across the cluster. I'm curious what it would take to develop such a switch......