I'm not quite sure what you'd consider cheap for this. Certainly 1.5TB
doesn't really fall into the traditional "cheap" model ;)
The solution that first comes to my mind is using relatively standard
hardware. If you used two or four channel u2w or u2w lvd controllers, you
can fit 15 drives per channel. Two four channel u2w controllers could run a
max of 120 disks, and at say... 18G per disk, you could have 2.1TB online,
just through two pci slots. also, 3 dual channel controllers with 15 drives
would hit about 1.5TB. Performance, while probably quite fast, won't be in
line with that number of drives * their max throughput.. or really anything
close... as that many drives will completely saturate the scsi busses
involved. You could probably end up with as much as four of five four
channel controllers... with less drives per controller... and get a
considerable performance boost... though if it's a network centric
application it's worth noting that you can't use close to all of this
speed... one channel at 80MB/sec far faster than even several 100mbit cards
fully saturated.
Software RAID has a limitation of 12 drives per set. You can up this a
certain amount... but to combine all of these drives into one set, you would
likely make X raid5 sets, maybe one per channel, and then combine the result
using raid1 or linear. Though you'll be using more disks for parity.
Tom
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