I didn't know connector used for hard drives and SSDs could be re-pinned for Ethernet

[cbn]

That is pretty amazing.

 

[cbn]

Here is an ethernet drive by HGST:

This one had CPU, RAM and ran Linux:

 

[Elixer]

This one had CPU, RAM and ran Linux:

I wouldn't mind have one to play around with... though, I do have to wonder about security with these things. I assume they are locked down pretty tightly?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, I really wasn't expecting this, but it stands to reason that this would reduce the costs of per-port NAS storage by quite a bit. I mean, there used to be the drive cost, per-port SATA controller cost, per-node ethernet cost, per-ethernet-port costs at the switch, etc.

I really like this idea, but wonder about the manageability aspect. I mean, traditional SATA SSDs, have the embedded controller and FTL, but enterprise SSDs, expose the raw flash, and allow a host-based FTL for flexibility and aggregation / scalability.

This seems much like the opposite idea, for HDDs.

But it should make the WD MyCloud drives cheaper to make.

Actually, are these "embedded NAS" drives, or NDAS? I guess that they might be NDAS.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

There was a flurry of press coverage about four years ago when Hitachi made those slides, and not a peep since.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Actually, are these "embedded NAS" drives, or NDAS? I guess that they might be NDAS.

They're comparing the protocol to SCSI, so I'd assume it's similar to iSCSI (block over IP.)