Disk shelf beginner here

Hello!
I gues ill start with my goal and you guys can stear my in the right direction etc etc.
I currently have a semi beefy home lab (Mostly Cisco based and thats my focus) However I need me some storage solutions. I have 2 Cisco UCS 55xx chassis currently using iscsi to my SSD filled freenas box. This works great for the OS booting but i need some type of mass storage. I was looking into getting the NetAPP disk shelf im sure were all familiar with, but I know nothing about the connectivity between the shelf and the Controller.

Wendell or that newish bald dude if your reading this Id gladly pay for your time to talk abt this, just dont kill me plz.

I think you need a Host Bus Adapter or HBA in order to connect a server to an external disk shelf. I’ve looked into setting one up, but they are a bit more then I’m willing to spend and are not really necessary for my needs, but I would agree that a video on HBA’s would be a good idea there seems to be a lot of confusion about them.

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I agree, I,ve heard ive needed an HBA but like… do i literally go from SAS (or whatever cable comes out the back of the shelf) to a cable inside of my case? I have to breakout the dremel? so many questions.

You could avoid that and get a cheap Netapp head if you don’t want to go with an HBA. The trade off there is that you may over saturate your network with disk access if the machines are not directly connected, IE 1Gbps or 10Gpbs from the NetApp head to the server versus NetApp head to Network to Server

They have internal to external SAS cable adapter, they also have HBAs that have external and internal ports.

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