Hitachi AMS2500 Shelves(DF-F800-RKAK) with Freenas

[Lasse Knudsen]

Greetings,

I have an old Netapp 3240V cluster with a AMS2500 backend, this backend has a lot of DF-F800-RKAK with 14 SAS/SATA shelves. I would like to get rid of the Netapp and the AMS2500 as they are out of support.
So i thaught why not used the shelves with a Freenas server, my issue is that i dont know if there is firmware in the disks that prevent this. I suspect that the interconnects are regular SFF-8088. And i dont know if the shelves can be used without the AMS 2500.

So my question is does anyone have experience with a setup like this, and have any insights they want to share?

thank you
LK

 

[dlavigne]

This almost certainly has custom drive firmware on the drives. Whether they are detected by a standard OS I don't not know, but I'd be surprised if they work. The interlinks are indeed SAS, but there are interposers somewhere as there are FC and SATA drives available for the shelves. This might also be an issue. I'd say the chance of this working successfully is low.