Hitachi controller box Model DF850 CBSLR Expansion

The Hitachi DF850-CBSLR (also referred to as DF850-CBSLR or part of the Hitachi Unified Storage 110 (HUS110) family) is a dual-controller LFF (Large Form Factor) storage enclosure — a 12-bay 3.5-inch disk array unit from Hitachi Data Systems (HDS, now Hitachi Vantara) Unified Storage platform, launched in the early 2010s.

The DF850-CBSLR is a controller-equipped base enclosure (Controller Box with Single-Controller or Dual-Controller LFF Rear configuration) that serves as the primary storage building block for Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) 110 systems. It integrates dual RAID controllers (for high availability and failover), a 12 × 3.5-inch LFF SAS/SATA drive bay backplane, and all necessary I/O modules, power supplies, fans, and midplane for direct-attached or SAN-connected storage.

Key characteristics:

• Dual active/active controllers — each with embedded cache, SAS ports, and FC/iSCSI host interfaces (depending on configuration)
• 12 × 3.5-inch LFF hot-swap drive bays — supports SAS HDDs (7.2K/10K/15K) and SATA HDDs for capacity-optimized storage
• SAS-2 (6 Gbps) back-end connectivity (via internal SAS expanders)
• Modular expansion — can connect to additional DF850-DBS/DBL drive boxes (expansion shelves) for scaling capacity up to dozens of drives
• RAID support — RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60 via Hitachi Storage Navigator Modular 2 (SNM2) management software
• Host interfaces — typically 8/16 Gb Fibre Channel, 1/10 Gb iSCSI, or FCoE (via optional I/O modules)
• Redundant hot-swap components — dual PSUs, dual controllers, redundant fans/cooling
• Front-to-back airflow — standard for data center racks

This enclosure was commonly used in:

• Midrange SAN/NAS storage for block/file workloads
• Backup targets, archival, secondary storage, or VTL (Virtual Tape Library)
• Small-to-medium enterprise environments before migration to newer Hitachi VSP or HPE/Nimble/NetApp platforms