@Brandon: thanks for the pointer - seems like I haven't expressed myself really well:
we deliberately don't want to set up a SAN (mainly a cost and management issue).
Instead we want to beef up the server's storage (with an external storage module since our 2 height-unit server is pretty limited in that regard) and share that as a managed share through the server.
You are implying that we only need meta-data controllers if we directly mount the storage - right?
Because that's what we won't do at any rate. The storage module is just a second chassis that's connected to the server's raid controller as far as I know.
Cheers,
Mike
