NetApp DS14-MK4 shelf in a homelab: which HBA and SFPs does it need, and are the drives usable
A DS14-MK4 shelf came my way for almost nothing and I would like to hang it off an ordinary tower server as bulk storage at home. It is fully populated with its original carriers, it powers up, fans spin, front panel looks alive - but I cannot get a single disk to appear on the host.
- NetApp DS14-MK4 shelf with its original drive carriers
- ordinary tower server with free PCIe slots
- spare SAS HBA and a handful of 10G SFP+ optics from the parts bin
- host will run Linux or TrueNAS, not decided yet
# shelf powered and cabled to the HBA
lsblk # no new devices
dmesg | tail # no attach messages at allWhat I already did:
- tried both shelf modules and both ports on each
- reseated every carrier
- verified the HBA works, it enumerates a directly attached disk without trouble
Before I spend anything else on this: what does it actually take to attach one of these shelves to a normal host, and once it is attached, are the original drives usable as they are?
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Comments 3
Your SAS HBA will never see that shelf, and no cabling trick changes it. This is the Fibre Channel generation of the NetApp shelves: the host side needs an FC HBA, 4 Gb FC SFPs and LC fibre. The 10G SFP+ optics in your parts bin are not a substitute for 4 Gb FC modules either, so budget for those as a separate line item.
The bigger obstacle is the media. Those carriers hold enterprise disks with an FC interface, and they are typically low-level formatted at 520-byte sectors, with the extra bytes per sector used by the array itself. A normal OS will not touch them in that state, so every drive has to be reformatted down to 512 bytes before you can partition it, and that is a slow job you repeat for every carrier in the shelf.
Then the unpopular part. The shelf and the drives are roughly a decade old, the enclosure pulls real power around the clock, and once you add the HBA and the optics, plain modern SATA disks come out cheaper than keeping this alive - with a fraction of the noise. As a lab exercise it is perfectly doable and you will learn a fair amount of FC on the way, just do not expect it to be an economical way to buy capacity.
Post two things before anyone can help properly: what is printed on the back of the shelf modules, and what the interface line on a drive carrier label says. That family of shelves exists in more than one flavour and the answer is completely different depending on which one is in front of you - which is very likely also why your SAS HBA sees absolutely nothing.
And decide the host OS before buying a controller, not after. If TrueNAS is still on the table, remember it is FreeBSD underneath and the driver cvoerage is much narrower than Linux. People get caught by that constantly on the network side, where an Aquantia AQC107 has no driver at all while a Sonnet Twin10G built around an Intel X520 stands a chance. The same homework applies to whatever HBA you end up buying: check the driver first, then the price.
Checked the labels: FC on the drives, and the shelf modules match, which explains the total silence on the SAS card. An FC HBA and a pair of 4 Gb FC SFPs are on the way.
In the meantime I pulled two drives and started the reformat from 520 to 512 bytes on a bench machine. It runs for hours per drive, so a full shelf is going to take a while, and that is before any of them turn out to be tired. At this point I am doing it for the learning value - the arithmetic on power plus optics against a couple of modern SATA disks is clearly not in the shelf's favour, as predicted above. It will stay a lab toy rather than real storage.