Yes, from the very beginning, but they are based on SATA expanders and have relatively very poor performance. They are really built specifically for that workl

Yes, from the very beginning, but they are based on SATA expanders and have relatively very poor performance. They are really built specifically for that workload and not for a lot of other storage workloads. That was depressing circa the first BB pods where there really wasn't another option (other than using a Sun Thumper/x4500, which we also considered) ... but now the chassis options from supermicro are so good - ranging from 45-90 drives - that it's not a problem at all.