Good price on Supermicro 74-bay storage system (5 available)

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WeekendWarrior

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Apr 2, 2015
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For those among us that want "the mother of all FreeNAS systems," Unix Surplus has a good (not necessarily great) deal on 74-bay Supermicro systems with 2x v2 e5 processors and 256GB RAM for $1146+ $250 shipping. This box is the next level up from the 847 boxes (45 bays) discussed on this board.

This is a good price (I've seen these at 1500+/- recently) although $250 for shipping seems high. If you are local to the Bay Area and can get them to allow local pick-up, this is a good deal.

For those that care, this model is 6047R-E1R72L2K. Its details are here: https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6047/SSG-6047R-E1R72L2K.cfm

The link for this system is here: Supermicro 4U 74 Bay Xeon E5-2630L V2 12 Core Low Power 6Gbps FREENAS 256GB RAM | eBay
 

itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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at 35" deep and 67 lbs unpopulated I think it is indeed a beastly mother of all FreeNAS systems. Motherboard supports bifurcation on some slots too so SM's dual NVME card will work in there as well.

Just realized with 14TB drives that is in essence a PB box (raw and differences in B2 B10 marketing stuff not withstanding)...
 
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SPCRich

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Mar 16, 2017
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Am I missing something? I only count 36 Drives...24 on the front and 12 on the rear, not 74

Edit: NVM, see it's 2 drives/bay.
 
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hatchi

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Nov 8, 2014
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does anyone understand how they are connected from inside
how many SAS connections we can get from the front Backpalne to the HBA , same for midplane and the one on rear ?
what is the Midplane and why it is SAS3 ?

I dont understand how 2x LSI 9200 ( AOC-S2308L-L8e) HBA cards are enough for this number of disks

Also I couldnt access the link for the chassis and motherboard specs but i assume it has 4x pcie x8 slots
i mean with HBAs to handle all disks not sure how many free slots will be free after that
 
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itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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does anyone understand how they are connected from inside
how many SAS connections we can get from the front Backpalne to the HBA , same for midplane and the one on rear ?
what is the Midplane and why it is SAS3 ?

I dont understand how 2x LSI 9200 ( AOC-S2308L-L8e) HBA cards are enough for this number of disks

Also I couldnt access the link for the chassis and motherboard specs but i assume it has 4x pcie x8 slots
i mean with HBAs to handle all disks not sure how many free slots will be free after that
the Motherboard has one onboard 2308 based controller with two SFF-8087, plus the the two add in cards. So that's 24 SAS channels or a 1:3 ratio, not really different that what most CSE-846's are configured for.

At a guess using commonality of parts and similarities with the 72 bay 2.5" unit I just acquired, there are probably three 24 port expanders in the system. The front is probably split between top and bottom, the expander is probably the same used for: front top, front bottom, back bottom and each exapnder is probably fed by dual SFF-8087. Dunno if they are joining the expanders together or not. I know about dual controller visibility. I have not seen triple controller visibility and don't know if it is possible.

edit - thinking about this further though, three backplanes, three HBA's each BP can have two HBA's connected via SFF-8087. So my guess is that's how it is configured so the system will survive a single HBA failure.
 
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Aestr

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Oct 22, 2014
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MCP-280-00024-ON for the replacement tray. Looks like they are available, but not at a price that will work for more than replacing a tray or two.
 
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Kneelbeforezod

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Sep 4, 2015
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So just how noisy is this beast? How noisy are the 2K PSUs too? And can they be swapped for the 920 SQs units? I've got one 24 bay X8 Server and 2 36 Bay X9 Servers and the X9 are way noisier than the X8 - i think partly du to the fan speed being controllable in the bios on the X8 Series and fewer fans.
 

Aestr

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Oct 22, 2014
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So just how noisy is this beast?
Expect louder than your existing servers. The fans in this are FAN-0146L4 which are ~10dBA louder at full speed than FAN-0126L4 which are likely in your current servers. Of course you can control the speeds using IPMI using the guide here, but assuming your plan is to load this up with drives, the double density means you'll be dealing with that much more heat from the drives that needs cooling so it's only fair to expect more noise because of that.
 

BlueFox

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Oct 26, 2015
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So just how noisy is this beast? How noisy are the 2K PSUs too? And can they be swapped for the 920 SQs units? I've got one 24 bay X8 Server and 2 36 Bay X9 Servers and the X9 are way noisier than the X8 - i think partly du to the fan speed being controllable in the bios on the X8 Series and fewer fans.
The 920W PSUs are undersized for this chassis. It's going to be considerably louder than your 36 bay chassis and there's no way to do anything able that.
 
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Kneelbeforezod

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The 920W PSUs are undersized for this chassis. It's going to be considerably louder than your 36 bay chassis and there's no way to do anything able that.
Ah well, if it's too noisy then it's not an option as my servers are in the house. I thought maybe i could consolidate servers with this one and the price isn't bad at all for a 74 bay monster. Only thing better would be that 90 bay SM has...
 
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