Isn't it all about stripe width? RAID-4? RAID-6? Dual parity? Diagonal parity?
Does the SataBeast 2 (great name) have an underlying I/O size that cannot be changed? (e.g. like NetApp WAFL is 4KB block based)
If so, should you make the number of data spindles in your parity group divide evenly by the smallest I/O size supported? But maybe this angle is unnecessary if the SataBeast storage is addressable by traditional sectors.
Anyone know what the default DSU/DSSU I/O fragment size is for NetBackup? Is it 1 MB? If so, maybe you should have the number of data disks in your parity groups be some number that is a power of 2 - e.g. 8 data disk per parity group - or 16 disks per parity group, and then create one LUN in that parity group - so that one NetBackup I/O causes complete stripe writes.
Does the SataBeast 2 do de-dupe?
Can anyone else comment?