[Naac]

Here's what I want, but haven't been able to find:

I already have a beefy server at home ( it's actually a refurbished enterprise workstation, with 24 cores, but read on ).

However it lacks drives. What I ideally want is a a dumb drive bay I could buy, and then connect ( somehow ) to my existing server, so I could use its CPU and RAM.

I don't want this drive bay to have its own CPU, I just want it to hold data and transfer it over some wire. Ideally I would achieve close to gigabit speeds requesting data off of this server/drive bay.

Some options I've explored are those dumb quad storage bays that connect over USB-3. But I was worried about running ZFS over a USB interface, as well as potentially parallel read and writes with the quality of the USB controller.

[MrGilbert]

Not sure what your workstation offers, but I bought myself an Icy Dock Black Vortex (MB074SP-B) [1]. It's just a case (internal 5,25", but that airflow! :D) which fits 4x3,5" drives with a 120mm fan in front. Slapped some noise damping feets under it. I then bought two low-profile eSATApd to internal SATA slotpanels [2] and 4 corresponding cables [3]. Works great so far!

And yes, you need eSATA, because the distance between cage and machine might be enough to introduce read/write errors. That's what I had, because I used normal SATA cables before.

[1]: https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=166

[2]: https://www.delock.de/produkte/G_61725/merkmale.html?setLang...

[3]: https://www.delock.de/produkte/G_84402/merkmale.html?setLang...

[KaiserPro]

what you need is a JBOD!

Get a decent[1] external SAS adaptor, a SAS cable, and a second hand enclosure and bob's your noisy uncle!

something like this: https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/dell-powervault-md1220-sto...

https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/hp-z800-z820-external-mini...

Your workstation might even have a sas controller on it already.

This might be overkill, but even with spinny disks you'll be able to get fast random io[2]

[1] subjective. If yours is an enterprise workstation you'll most likley be able to get an official SAS controller for it.

[2] well about 10 iops per drive.

[francis_t_catte]

Hm, rack mounted fiberchannel drive enclosures exist (~$100 used on fleabay, usually sans disk trays), but that'd require a fiberchannel card in your server, direct attach copper (or fiber) cabling, and driver finagling.

[njharman]

Man, SCSI daisy chaining did this, what, 30yrs ago.