Fitting 8 drives into an ML310E

[net2112]

I'm looking at buying an HP ProLiant ML310E server. On paper, it is perfect in pretty much every way, except for one: it says that it only supports 4 hard drives - I need it to have room for at least 8. Is there any way to fit 8 drives into it? They don't have to be easily accessible, or hot swappable. Looking at photos of the server, it's clear that there are 4 bays at the front, behind the panel, but I can't find any photos of the inside of the server. Is this possible? Or would I need some sort of external storage device to hold all the drives?

[net2112]

I'm guessing from the lack of replies to a question that I'm pretty sure anyone who's ever actually seen an ML310E up close could answer means that this is not possible (at least without heavy modifications to the case, which would be inadvisable). What kind of external device would I be looking for? This is what I imagine the device to be:

Has 8-24 bays

Rackmount or Tower

Has NO BRAINS IN IT. No processor, no RAM, no motherboard... Maybe some kind of a SATA controller, but that's it

Some high speed way to connect it back to the server, like maybe a fiber optic link or 10GBase-T. The server would need a PCI-E fiber optic or 10GBase-T card in that case.

Transparent, so that the computer thinks they are connected directly to the motherboard, requiring no special drivers (kernel modules) for Linux

Does a device like that, or something similar exist? Most of the devices with multiple drive bays that I see online either already have guts (motherboard, processor, etc.) or have room for it and expect you to add it yourself. I don't want a NAS - I just want drive bays.

[gabriel1986]

I think that a HP D2700 disk enclosure may be what you are looking for.

Also, be sure that pick a array controller with external SAS ports for your server in order to use it with the enclosure.

[net2112]

The HP D2700 looks awesome, but it's a bit out of my price range. Good to know such a thing exists though. I wonder if I can find a cheaper one... Hmm...

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)

[gabriel1986]

Great, im glad that it helped you. By the way, there are some generic disk enclosures very cheap out there ;) just use the magic words in google :)