The drive sleds are made out of thin plastic and seem cheap compared to SuperMicro sleds, which were thicker and reinforced with metal.
Not that i'm aware of but I wasnt really in a position to know. We used all sorts of SATA disks (desktop and cloud class) in them and they generally seemed to work. I know we had custom firmware for some disks, although I never knew what was changed in it.
I dont remember, someone on the hardware team set the collar on the screw driver and no one ever messed with it. Be gentle is all I can recommend. And yes SATA 3 disks worked fine in them. We didnt really use SAS disks that often if at all, just about everything I ever handled was SATA. But since the backplanes and HBAs were SAS I dont see why you couldn't use them. I'm not sure if they will only negotiate SATA disks at a certain speed like some HP MSAs do (SAS 6gbps but only support SATA at 3gbps). For our use this wouldn't have been a problem anyways since 48 disks can easily saturate dual 10GbE (in the case of a Slicestor 2440). I'm sure someone here who bought one could report if it has 6gbps negotiation issues.
The problem is there's only so much space across the front of a 19" chassis and 4 3.5" drives takes up just about all of it. Thicker trays means thinner dividers and case. And / or needing a hammer to seat the drive because the clearance is so tight.
Remember, these are top load.
I paid $275 each with free shipping and I feel like I got a fantastic deal. I am dismantling these and turning them into expander chassis and I might end up making my initial investment back after selling ram, cards, CPU and motherboards. If a single xeon x3460 is enough horsepower for what you plan to do $350-400 seems reasonable to me.
I'll see if he plans on changing the hardware from a x3406...I believe he is as he was talking about dual 2670s a couple months ago when he started planning his build.
SuperMicro makes a 90 bay top loading chassis in the same general design. From their pics it looks like the trays for that are also reinforced with metal. There is enough free space in the Chenbro chassis that they could have made better trays if they wanted to.
Exactly. Probably the fault of some bean counter in Accounting I'm sure. The rest of the case is awesome.
We used APC racks which if i remember correctly were 1200mm deep. I'm not sure if i'm mixing up the rails/models in my head, but one thing I always hated about the SS1440/SS2440 were that the rails protruded beyond the rear of the chassis, and I cut myself on them a few times because of it.
Thanks, ended up buying EVGA 1600W 80+ Plat. Your post made it sound like I could get away with something smaller. However, why risk thousands of dollars worth of equipment to save $100¿
Its been a while since I used one but iirc sometimes the power supplies would be finicky and would want to be reseated. I dont recall if I did this hot or cold. Check for failure lights on the power supplies and if the fans are spinning? If neither is relevant then you can look through the manuals for the chassis here, it is the NR40700.
Just a FYI but the power connectors to the back plane may not be standard and you might need to make some cabling. If you check the link above you should be able to find pinout diagrams.
