Mark Landin wrote in message

If so, you probably want the Western Digital Raptor
drives. Personally, I would stick with SCSI/SCSI units until I could
replace the HP 9000 with something that could support FC controllers.

Well I could get FC controllers for my HP if need be. I was hoping to
avoid the need (and expense) however.

My experience (the kind you get when you don't get what you want) is
that there is only so far you can cut corners. By going for SATA
drives (instead of e.g. Seagate SCSI), I think you've cut as much as
you want to cut. You should look for someone with a high-quality
chassis and electronics and who will give you the support that you
need. In order to be compatible with the vendors/manufacturers that
you want, I think that means you are going to have to bite the bullet
and get FC controllers.

If the motivation is a technology refresh, I would bite the bullet on
FC host adapters now rather than later. The drives are somewhat
disposable but the controllers represent more of an investment, and
SCSI host connections do not appear to be the future.

I've worked with Alex @ Impediment ,
http://www.impediment.com) for Xyratex stuff (http://www.xyratex.com).
Impediment is a small company but Alex stands behind his sales.

The other manufacturer that I would be interested in is LSI Storage
Logic (http://www.lsilogicstorage.com). I've only bought it through
Silicon Graphics (e.g. SGI TP9400 is an LSI 4884). I also thought
their stuff was very well made.

Whatever you get, I would demo it thoroughly. In particular, failover
and failback, bad block handling, drive failure, and bad block
handilng simultanious during a failed drive mode or rebuild. Error
and failure handling was something that Infortrend controllers had
particular trouble with in early revisions of their firmware on early
SCSI/IDE RAID units (I have not thoroughly tested their more recent
FC/SATA controllers).