Question IBM 1746-C4A DS3524 Dual Controller Storage System?

[IamDavid]

I recently picked up an IBM 1746-C4A DS3524 Dual Controller Storage System loaded with 18TB's thinking it'd be a great expansion option for my Plex server but now i'm lost... How do I connect this to my windows 11 PC? What type of card and software do I need? I received the SAS cables along with the storage controller.

 

[Tech Junky]

Please tell me you didn't spend $700 on a box that's meant to be connected to a rack server. There should be connections on the back but it would have been easier to buy a PC case and put it on your network.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Are you looking for older announcements letters and sales manuals?

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Looks like Windows isn't supported. Your choices are Linux and Mac OS. And honestly, no idea what a host kit is. This seems to be a data center focused product.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Windows is supported for the DS3500, but specifically, it's an old system that was only validated for Windows Server 2012 R2 for the purposes of Hyper-V. Still, SAS is SAS, and while Dual Controller setups can be finnicky with firmware interoperability, sometimes it "just works". Your hurdle here is that you have a dual controller unit that expects MPIO to be used with Windows Server. Windows 11 is completely free of MPIO. Can't even enable it in Powershell. So you're going to be limited to a single SAS cable to one controller. Since this is not going to be high performance and you're going to be limited to 1 6Gbps SAS port, I'd just find an old Broadcom 9207-8e on eBay as an HBA to plug it into. You don't want to sink too much money into this old thing for a Windows 11 platform.

 

[IamDavid]

Thanks, everyone!

FYI, I paid under $100 for the setup so worse case I can pull the drives.