I am a programmer (not an expert hardware engineer) trying to build a small hadoop cluster at home (at a cheaper price point) for processing some datasets of interest.
I am getting these Dell PE 1950 boxes (http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/poweredge-1950/pd) with SAS controllers and virtually no hard drive capacity (73 GB) and the 146 GB SAS drives are prohibitively costlier than their SATA counter parts. I read a few questions here regarding using SATA drives with SAS controllers (SAS they say is a superset of SATA command set etc.), but I want to ask about my case where I have 4 (2.5 inches) drive bays.
I am wondering if I can use the SATA-II drives with these SAS controller or interface? Is there an adapter I can use to adapt the SATA interface to SAS? I have not seen the adapters yet, could there be some caveats I should be aware of?
Please excuse me if this sounds very primitive, but my understanding of build a machine limits to building desktops, I have never used one type of controller with the other hence this question.