LF high density chassis recommendations for 2.5" SSDs

[josh]

I've been infected by the thread in the Deals section and I'm looking to buy a bunch of the HGST SSDs to spin up a shared storage for a VM cluster.

My current hypervisors run XenServer so they'll take iSCSI, so EQL would work.

Another alternative I'm considering is using one of the C6220 nodes with 21/24 drives assigned and installing FreeNAS over it.

Another alternative is getting a PS6510 and filling it with SSDs but I'm not a fan of wasting space on 3.5->2.5 conversions.

Rack space is not an issue, anything from 2-4 is acceptable as long as it is high density.

Thanks!

 

[BeTeP]

Are you looking for a server chassis or a disk enclosure? In either case 24x2.5" in 2U is pretty much "standard" density. Are you looking for higher density than that? Do you need SAS3?

 

[josh]

Are you looking for a server chassis or a disk enclosure? In either case 24x2.5" in 2U is pretty much "standard" density. Are you looking for higher density than that? Do you need SAS3?

I'm looking for a way to serve them up to my HVs as shared storage so either a EQL type of SAN that exports it as iSCSI out of the box or a high density cloud server which I can install FreeNAS on. I've seen how the PS6510 manages to increase density by placing 3.5 drives vertically (48x3.5 in 4U) so I was hoping there was something similar for 2.5s.

 

[Terry Wallace]

The only thing closer to what your describing that I have seen is these supermicro servers

48 2.5" drives SC418E16-R1K62B2 | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

or

72 2.5" drives SC417BE2C-R1K28LPB | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

neither of witch uses the vertical drop in storage. That seems to be the realm of high capacity nearline storage.,. where they are dropping 3.5" 14TB drives in, in large quantities.

unless you find a deal on ebay on one of those Your best bet maybe a good 24 Bay 2u rackmount server(off ebay) with a sas card that has external ports. Then daisy chain a couple more 2U drive bays onto that.

 

[BeTeP]

I never understood people's obsession with those extra high density chassis. Unless you rent space for your servers by the rack unit they are just not worth the extra cost in my opinion. And those top loading chassis are major PITA to properly install and maintain. I used to have some high density Hitachi shelves - they were great quality and everything. But I still sold them and went back to lower density regular front loading enclosures for the sake of convenience.

 

[josh]

I never understood people's obsession with those extra high density chassis. Unless you rent space for your servers by the rack unit they are just not worth the extra cost in my opinion. And those top loading chassis are major PITA to properly install and maintain. I used to have some high density Hitachi shelves - they were great quality and everything. But I still sold them and went back to lower density regular front loading enclosures for the sake of convenience.

Trying not to split drives across different machines if I'm building a large storage machine. I understand clusters have their own set of benefits but I don't see the need to use more than 2xE5-2670s on 48 disks.

 

[josh]

The only thing closer to what your describing that I have seen is these supermicro servers

48 2.5" drives SC418E16-R1K62B2 | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

or

72 2.5" drives SC417BE2C-R1K28LPB | 4U | Chassis | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.

neither of witch uses the vertical drop in storage. That seems to be the realm of high capacity nearline storage.,. where they are dropping 3.5" 14TB drives in, in large quantities.

unless you find a deal on ebay on one of those Your best bet maybe a good 24 Bay 2u rackmount server(off ebay) with a sas card that has external ports. Then daisy chain a couple more 2U drive bays onto that.

The 72 drive chassis is really interesting in design, unfortunately a little out of budget for just a chassis

 

[itronin]

The 72 drive chassis is really interesting in design, unfortunately a little out of budget for just a chassis

I'm enjoying my 72 bay chassis . I did look for the sc418 on eBay but could not find anything in my budget. Not sure what out of the budget is for you. I looked at the price of two SC217's with shipping and considered making 1 a JBOD. However with shipping it was more than what I found for an SC417 so that is what I decided to get.
see https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...icro-4u-cse-417-72-bay-599-00-obo-ymmv.25779/
On the bay this one advertised as new -
NEW Supermicro 4U CSE-417 72 Bay SFF Barebone Server 2x 1400W PWS Rails | eBay

It has the SM rails according to the picture and is the B variant so I believe you are able to add the 2.5" dual bay (system disks) to the back of the chassis. No idea what freight to you would be though mine came via Fedex. and the seller is accepting OBO. Had this option been available when I purchased mine (or had I found it then) I'd gone with the new one.

The 417 is loud out of the box. I replaced the PSU's with SQ (1200W though I am sure 900W would be fine with all SSD's) and I pulled the second row of three fans, connected the remaining front fans to the motherboard set it to optimal and it has quieted down nicely.

 

[josh]

I'm enjoying my 72 bay chassis . I did look for the sc418 on eBay but could not find anything in my budget. Not sure what out of the budget is for you. I looked at the price of two SC217's with shipping and considered making 1 a JBOD. However with shipping it was more than what I found for an SC417 so that is what I decided to get.
see https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...icro-4u-cse-417-72-bay-599-00-obo-ymmv.25779/
On the bay this one advertised as new -
NEW Supermicro 4U CSE-417 72 Bay SFF Barebone Server 2x 1400W PWS Rails | eBay

It has the SM rails according to the picture and is the B variant so I believe you are able to add the 2.5" dual bay (system disks) to the back of the chassis. No idea what freight to you would be though mine came via Fedex. and the seller is accepting OBO. Had this option been available when I purchased mine (or had I found it then) I'd gone with the new one.

The 417 is loud out of the box. I replaced the PSU's with SQ (1200W though I am sure 900W would be fine with all SSD's) and I pulled the second row of three fans, connected the remaining front fans to the motherboard set it to optimal and it has quieted down nicely.

What do you think an acceptable price would be?

 

[itronin]

for me it was < 550.00 shipped. I always set a maximum spend for ebay.

My math looked like:

a system and a jbod chassis (4U total but 3 or 4 PSU's):
CSE-216's 200 + 80 shipping x 2 systems == 560.0

Single chassis with the CSE-417 (still 4U but only 2 PSU's)
The deal I OBO came in at 465 + 70 == 535.00.
I preferred 1 system instead of 1 system and 1 jbod chassis.

BTW I was wrong. the item I originally linked is not the "B" variant. just 72 bays, so you cannot add the extra 2 bay unit (system disks). this is pretty much the same chassis that I purchased except its advertised as new and comes with the supermicro rails.

You might communicate with the seller and see if they can estimate shipping to you and /or tell them what you are willing to spend including shipping and see what happens?

there is also a used jbod unit on ebay and it looks like seller accepted an OBO. However you'd likely have to hunt down the nut based standoffs (which can be hard to find) as it probably does not have enough for a motherboard (just the SM jbod supermicro power card); you'd have to get the SFF-8087 cables (use SM if you want the sideband connections) @ ~$10.00 each for say 4 to 6 of them depending on your configuration;. I do not know if the area for the ATX IO is removeable or not in the JBOD unit. <- that could be a biggie

Lastly if you are using a NON SM motherboard you'll need / want the adapter cable (~$10.00) or fashion your own.

IMO I don't think purchasing the JBOD unit is worth the hassle given the steps needed to turn it into a standalone system.

You probably already realize this but "the system area" in the CSE-417 is only 2U high so all the cards going in there need to be half height.