External enclosure for RAID hard disks

Diethe, Thanks for your reply.
The explanation is detailed but I'm having difficulty understanding the new terms. So please allow me to clarify.

1. I will be using an Areca PCI card on the IBM machine, which has run out of hdd slots.
2. I would like to connect the PCI card to an external box containing only hdd (no motherboard, etc)
3. This connection will be using an SFF connection (not sure which one, as the box is in the office).
4. So to my understanding the box need only hdd and power supply. It doesnt need additional raid card/electronics inside (which means I'm looking for a JBOD box?)
5. I was aiming for about 8-12 hdd because the raid card has 2 sff slot. And each slot is connected to a splitter cable (expander?) that connects to 4 sas hdd each.

6. I am in fact looking at neweggbusiness and norco technologies. The problem is I dont know which one to chose because I get confused over the ones with built in raid (which I dont need) and the JBOD. Some of the jbod case seems to also have built in LSI card?

7. Working with the ideal vendor is a stretch over here where I live. So I hope to be able to tell them the exact part number that I need. Otherwise, they'll get as confused as I do over jbods and raids and so on.

So to conclude:
Is it correcct that I actually am looking for a JBOD case with SFF connection with 8-12 bays and SES (sounds nice...) function ?
A link would be nice, just to confirm that I didnt misunderstand.

Thanks again

Take for example:
http://www.areca.com.tw/products/6gsasjbod.htm

what is an expander board connector?
Is this the jbod chasis we're talking about? why does it have a jbod controller module? (I'm thinking the areca raid card is the controller?

What's yer budget?

I would go SAN / NAS  before I would start to plugin drives and cards.

WD has a nice product for under a grand that has Windows storage server and is a no brainer to install.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=610

pgm554, roundabout a grand sounds about right.
I might not add all the hdd to capacity to begin with though.
The areca card I actually already have.

I've never been fond of SAN/NAS because I like the simplicity of controlling folder privilege in active domain under windows. Besides these hdds are for running virtual computers under windows. So probably not ideal for NAS?

It can join an AD and you can share the disk and folders anyway you want.

It is running Windows storage server and would be transparent to the users.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/microsoft-windows/what-windows-storage-server-213357

You can also use iSCSI which looks like a local disk on the file server and share it that way.

The WD uses enterprise RE disks and is pretty reliable.

Let's just save a whole lot of time.  For all any of us know you can't possibly afford or even need some of these suggestions.

1. What is your TOTAL budget?
2. How many GB usable do you need?
3. Please quantify desired performance.   What configuration do you currently have (RAID level, types of disks, RAID config, and controller ... and is that too fast, slow, or just right).
4. Any special availability, reliability requirements?  (If the hardware goes offline then how much money will that cost if it is off for a few minutes, hours, or days)

Remember, you have cost, performance, and reliability.   Pick two ;)

1. I think I really just need to buy a casing. So the budget is about $1,500
2. Shouldnt need too much. about 2Tb should be enough for now. I have already about 1TB anyways.
3. Performance is not very important here. The function of the virtual computers running on these disks are to be used as an RDP client by remote users to access internal database. The virtual pcs will then be clones of each other. So redundancy is not important.
4. Availability is not important either. As these are just clones of virtual pcs, I can simply move it to another machine temporarily.

So I pick cost and performance.

But really, I think I just need a case that will do this.

Where are you that you cannot get IBM caddies?
http://discountechnology.com/Products/SCSI-Hard-Drive-Caddies-Trays
http://www.servercaddies.co.uk/ibm-hard-drive-caddies

Andyalder
I am in Indonesia. They dont sell just the caddies here. They sell the caddies with hdd as a set. And its about 2x the price of wd, seagate and so on

You're better off buying caddies.  It isn't as if you live in North Korea.   You can buy from one of those links andy supplied and get them shipped internationally.

Diethe:
a number of reason:
1. expensive shipments & customs.
2. there are only 1 slot left. With the solution I wanted, I can add about 8 more hdd.
3. I dont want to rely on a particular brand

If we were to stay in the required solution, can we get back to the question:
"Can someone please advise and provide a link?
Personal experience and review of such configuration will be appreciated."

Thank you

So $1500 for a SAS-2 enclosure with 8+ bays, expander, cabling, and shipping?  You really need to work with somebody who can sell you a bundle to make sure everything is compatible.  

Try newegg.com.

Diethe,
Going back to your post above, which casing would you recommend that has the least vibration? Thanks

The least vibration is easy.  Seriously .. just look at the shipping weight.  The bigger and heaver the box, the better.  More metal means greater rigidity and less vibration. Find something made by xyratex on Ebay.  

They make the high-end enclosures that companies like NetApp put their names on.