From Servers4Linux

Dell PowerVault 220S SCSI Storage Array

More soon, stay tuned.

Servers and arrays from a few years back, like this one, are in general pretty loud. The fans are probably too loud for home or office use. As these units go, this is one of the quieter ones, *IF YOU PLUG IN BOTH POWER SUPPLIES*. If you have both power supplies plugged in, and power both on, the fans will immediately kick on high, but then quickly throttle down to pretty quiet. If you try running it on one, it'll run fine, but the fans will stay stuck on maximum roar.

Dell is good about manuals, see the PowerVault 220S and 221S Systems Service Manual for reference.

Pay careful attention to the 3 position bus configuration switch on the rear. This controls internal termination, as well as split or joined bus operation. For normal use, don't use the cluster mode setting.

I use these just fine without additional termination, provided I use a sane switch setting (*NOT* cluster mode).

ZFS fans, note that ZFS *LOVES* just a bunch of disks like this. Get some Linux host with a SCSI card, and hook drives like this up JBOD. ZFS will love it!

220S front view, this is a 3 rack unit (3U) system, about 80 pounds.

220S label, there's 2 variants, 220S (shown, rack configuration) or the almost identical 221S (tower/deskside configuration).

220S service tag, every Dell system has a service tag number for quick reference, be sure you know yours.

220S rear view. Note dual controllers and power supplies. The original SCSI U160 controllers (shown) were later replaced with faster U320 controllers.

220S drives as a host sees them. This is what a HP Proliant DL380's RAID controller sees. Note that there are indeed 14 drives, but there's some interesting numbering going on, some SCSI ID numbers are reserved (and therefore skipped).