Question : Problem: Anything else required to enable hot swap?

Right, I will have 3-5 IBM u320 36gb scsi drives in raid 5 on, lets say, an adaptec 2200 scsi raid adapter.

What actual requirements are there to make it hot swappable? The O/S will be fedora 2 or 3, so that's ok. Is it the drive that makes it hot-swappable, does it have to be a special scsi drive, or the adapter?

Considering if I buy the Chenbro 2U RM 214 chassis which has hotswappable bays and a backplane (yes, only a u160 backplane, so would require different drives) but is that it? Would normal scsi drives just fit in and become hot swappable?

TIA

Answer : Problem: Anything else required to enable hot swap?

If you put normal SCSI drives in a Hot Swap Enclosure and use a Hot Swap Controller, yes they will work fine.  It's the enclosure and controller that need to support the Hot swap.  The drive is the same.