Building a FreeNAS Tower

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josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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Trying to build a FreeNAS server for home use so trying to avoid rackmounted noise levels and sizing.

Mobo is E-ATX, will need 10 3.5" SAS/SATA and 8 2.5" 15mm SSDs.
Ideally, I'd be getting 2x 5.25 to 2.5 and 2x 5.25 to 3.5 mobile racks. That would mean I'd need 8x 5.25 bay slots. Looking for recommendations for such cases.

Also need some feedback on these racks:
KF-52-B (can't find any official documentation that states SAS support)
MKS-535TL (found official manual stating SAS compatibility but double the price of the KF-52-B)
RL-FS305B (seems to be a more reliable brand but costs more as well)

Using LSI 9211-8i HBAs which have SF8087 breakouts. Not sure if these enclosures would slow down performance on SAS drives.

Sorry for the messy post, finding it hard to organise thoughts.
 
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Netwerkz101

Active Member
Dec 27, 2015
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Interesting. I see an opportunity for a custom build.
I know of no enclosure, off-the-shelf, that would fit.

CD/DVD duplicator chassis are plentiful for the drives, but if
there is any motherboard support, it's usually mITX.
 
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josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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Netwerkz101 said:
Interesting. I see an opportunity for a custom build.
I know of no enclosure, off-the-shelf, that would fit.

CD/DVD duplicator chassis are plentiful for the drives, but if
there is any motherboard support, it's usually mITX.
Click to expand...
I found something really close, Thermaltake M9 if I switch the board out to a regular ATX. It'll be my fallback plan if I don't manage to find something with e-ATX support.
 
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josh

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Oct 21, 2013
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Something else I dug up while doing research is the possibility of using regular HDD bays and connecting them on the back to a SAS hotswap cable like this. If anyone has any alternatives I'm listening.

Edit: On second thought, maybe a multi-drive backplane is not the best idea for a parity pool. I've read some reviews where the backplane shorted out all the drives at one go. That would instantly take out even a RAID Z-3 array. Also not sure how ZFS will handle 5 drives dropping out of an array at the same time if the backplane loses power or something.
 
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RageBone

Active Member
Jul 11, 2017
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To keep it short.
Two problems with EATX and Casey.
1: Does it physically fit into the case
2: Does the mounting Fit.

When a Case mentioned EATX support, it does not mean that one or even both Casey apply.

Especially sine Motherboard OEMs often cook their own soup.

Asus does adhere to the ATX spec, Asrack does,
Supermicro does not in most cases.

The Fractal Define XL should fit and have the mounting.
 
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josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
615
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RageBone said:
To keep it short.
Two problems with EATX and Casey.
1: Does it physically fit into the case
2: Does the mounting Fit.

When a Case mentioned EATX support, it does not mean that one or even both Casey apply.

Especially sine Motherboard OEMs often cook their own soup.

Asus does adhere to the ATX spec, Asrack does,
Supermicro does not in most cases.

The Fractal Define XL should fit and have the mounting.
Click to expand...
Drive cages are nice but I need some method to allow hot swapping of all the drives since they will be in RAID and I need to replace them without powering down.
I know all SATA ports are theoretically hot swappable but I've had one bad experience where inserting the power cable fried the connector and I have never dared to do a naked hot swap since then.
 
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itronin

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Nov 24, 2018
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Denver, Colorado
I believe the Rosewill RSV-L4500 is actually 9 5.25" bays turned sideways. Remove the Drive/Fan Bays, Remove the ears from it and treat it like a tower server. If its tippy you may need to brace the bottom. Takes standard ATX PSU blah blah blah... Can handle ATX and I believe E-ATX like gigabyte ga7-pesh2. Very popular with the folks over at serverbuilds.net. Might want to do a little research though before jumping in.

It typically goes for $95-$150.00 depending if it is on sale or not. I've even seen 2:1 at normal price before. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas chassis prices have a tendency to fall (norco, rosewill via newegg and amazon) so if you can wait you might consider that.

IMO Rosewill build quality is a little better than Norco but they don't do the LFF drive density that Norco does.
 
Spartacus

Spartacus

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May 27, 2019
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Austin, TX
FYI you could pickup one of these: SuperMicro CSE-M28SACB Black Mobile Rack - Newegg.com

Or two of these: SuperMicro CSE-M14TQC Mobile Rack - 4x 2.5" Hot-swap SAS3/SATA3 HDDs - Newegg.com
(I have one of these 4x 2.5" and can confirm it will fit 15mm drives, I have 4 SAS SSD in mine)

Then for visual cohesiveness SM also has a 3x 5.25 to 5x 3.5: CSE-M35T-1B | Supermicro&reg Cse-m35t1 Mobile Rack Csem35t1b
(I would recommend the above over any of the plastic POS ones from rosewill or the like brands)

They will cost you a bit more but are definitely SAS compatible and will last you a long time.


Side note, these are not optimized sizing wise for standard cases, other than the 1U 2.5" version you have to bend the slats for the 5.25" bays in (which for most folks isn't an issue).
 
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josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
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itronin said:
I believe the Rosewill RSV-L4500 is actually 9 5.25" bays turned sideways. Remove the Drive/Fan Bays, Remove the ears from it and treat it like a tower server. If its tippy you may need to brace the bottom. Takes standard ATX PSU blah blah blah... Can handle ATX and I believe E-ATX like gigabyte ga7-pesh2. Very popular with the folks over at serverbuilds.net. Might want to do a little research though before jumping in.

It typically goes for $95-$150.00 depending if it is on sale or not. I've even seen 2:1 at normal price before. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas chassis prices have a tendency to fall (norco, rosewill via newegg and amazon) so if you can wait you might consider that.

IMO Rosewill build quality is a little better than Norco but they don't do the LFF drive density that Norco does.
Click to expand...
Can I fit mobile racks into the L4500s?
At what point should I give up trying to fit the giant mobo and just buy a R720XD and swap out the fans? 4U is bordering on unacceptable for placing around the house.
 
J

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
615
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Spartacus said:
FYI you could pickup one of these: SuperMicro CSE-M28SACB Black Mobile Rack - Newegg.com

Or two of these: SuperMicro CSE-M14TQC Mobile Rack - 4x 2.5" Hot-swap SAS3/SATA3 HDDs - Newegg.com
(I have one of these 4x 2.5" and can confirm it will fit 15mm drives, I have 4 SAS SSD in mine)

Then for visual cohesiveness SM also has a 3x 5.25 to 5x 3.5: CSE-M35T-1B | Supermicro&reg Cse-m35t1 Mobile Rack Csem35t1b
(I would recommend the above over any of the plastic POS ones from rosewill or the like brands)

They will cost you a bit more but are definitely SAS compatible and will last you a long time.


Side note, these are not optimized sizing wise for standard cases, other than the 1U 2.5" version you have to bend the slats for the 5.25" bays in (which for most folks isn't an issue).
Click to expand...
The CSE-M35T-1B doesn't mention SAS at all in the product page. I'm having the most difficulty with finding something for LFF. I managed to dig up two TT Max-1542 from storage which fits my 15mm HGSTs if I remove the top covers.
 
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josh

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Oct 21, 2013
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I'd love to hear some thoughts on ditching the E-ATX board for these options:
1. Supermicro DP ATX board like X9DRL-3F + CS 380 (will have to stick two 3.5s somewhere in the case but I'd get 8x 3.5 SAS compatible hot swap built in)
2. R720XD (will have to find some way to fit 4x2.5s, maybe a 5.25 to 4x2.5 mobile rack sticking out of the top or something)
 
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itronin

Well-Known Member
Nov 24, 2018
1,240
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Denver, Colorado
josh said:
Can I fit mobile racks into the L4500s?
At what point should I give up trying to fit the giant mobo and just buy a R720XD and swap out the fans? 4U is bordering on unacceptable for placing around the house.
Click to expand...
yes. see here via tweaktown

the picture shows an icy dock fatcage 3x5 . you could install a second and then three 4 bay 2.5" mobile racks.

price it out - compare it to the R720XD or maybe a prebuilt SM CSE=846.
 
Spartacus

Spartacus

Well-Known Member
May 27, 2019
788
328
63
Austin, TX
josh said:
The CSE-M35T-1B doesn't mention SAS at all in the product page. I'm having the most difficulty with finding something for LFF. I managed to dig up two TT Max-1542 from storage which fits my 15mm HGSTs if I remove the top covers.
Click to expand...
CSE-M35T-1B | Mobile Rack | Accessories | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.
"5x 3.5" Host Receptacle Connector, Hot-swap SAS/SATA HDD"

At the end of the day its just a backplane that just passes the signal through, I'm using a pair of 8TB SAS HUH721008AL5201 so I can assure you SAS works.
 
J

josh

Active Member
Oct 21, 2013
615
190
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itronin said:
yes. see here via tweaktown

the picture shows an icy dock fatcage 3x5 . you could install a second and then three 4 bay 2.5" mobile racks.

price it out - compare it to the R720XD or maybe a prebuilt SM CSE=846.
Click to expand...
Not really about the pricing. The e-ATX board has 3x PCIe x16 and 3x PCIe x8 which I appreciate because I'd be able to stick some GPUs in for virtualization passthrough if I decide to play around with NN in the future.
Not sure if I'm trying too hard to squeeze everything into a single server, maybe it's better to buy a smaller board + CPUs for the FreeNAS and stick the e-ATX board in a smaller case without bothering about the drive space? I'd have no space to use the x8 slots because they're directly under the x16s and most GPUs take up 2 slots anyway.
 
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