newbie JBOD question

[TransAMrit]

I'm trying to understand how flexible JBODs are...

Here is my scenario:
- Have 1 server w/ SAS (SFF-8088)
- Acquiring 2nd server w/ SAS (SFF-8088)
- Want to add external disks to each via JBOD

So, my question:

Is it possible to have one JBOD supply disks to multiple machines, NOT in a clustered environment?

In other words, given 12 drives in a JBOD, I'd like to allocate 4 to a SAS HBA on machine A, and 8 to a SAS HBA on machine B - no clustering or anything of the sort going on.

Are there solutions that allow for this, or will I simply end up buying 2 JBODs? I had one vendor tell me that such a JBOD requires 2 backplanes, but I have a feeling the guy was talking about multipathing the disks for redundancy, rather than partitioning...

Thanks

[ua549]

There is no way I know of to make it work directly without using a network.