DIY storage device with eSATA input?

[WeekendWarrior]

I've been reading various DIY NAS articles with interest although a lot of this is new to me. My background is more in processors and software than storage or systems.

My question is: could I build a DIY storage system that communicated with my PC by eSATA rather than by Ethernet? Assume 1 eSATA receiving interface.

This solution would seem to require an eSATA interface that receives communications from my PC in the storage system and for that receiving interface to be tied into my storage software much in the way an equivalent tie would exist for a NAS to receive a request from a computer via Ethernet.

Do such interfaces exist as a component that can readily be added into a storage system?

The reason for my interest is the relatively low bandwidth of 1Gb Ethernet and my presumed inability to use higher-bandwidth solutions like IB with my laptop. My laptop has an eSATA port though.

thanks in advance --
Dave

 

[Shadow.X]

Were you thinking about something like this sans digital Esata enclosure? This enclosure would allow you to connect 4 drives up to your computer through Esata.

The Caveat though, is that your device (laptop,desktop,etc) needs to have an esata port multiplier built in. If your device doesn't, than it will only detect one disk.

There are other enclosures like this one that have different features. Some of them have built in raid controllers, some connect to your machine through usb,etc.

 

[T_Minus]

Why go through all that hassle and not go with a $150 external NEW IN BOX Raid card and run a "REAL" JBOD chassis that you can pickup for as cheap as the 4 drive ESATA units??? WAY more expandable, about same price, more performance (esp with 1gb cache), etc...

 

[Shadow.X]

Why go through all that hassle and not go with a $150 external NEW IN BOX Raid card and run a "REAL" JBOD chassis that you can pickup for as cheap as the 4 drive ESATA units??? WAY more expandable, about same price, more performance (esp with 1gb cache), etc...

Fair point, how much would these "REAL" JBOD chassis run? I know the SGI Rackable 3u 16 hotswap units are available for around $150 on ebay.

I mentioned an ESATA option because thats what dave asked for

 

[T_Minus]

That would be the cheapest option I believe. I have the SGI one, and haven't even tested it yet so I'm not sure on suggestions beyond that model

For other options: $150-$300+

$150 = SGI (came with cable)
$300+ = SuperMicro 24 BAY (846) You can get 848 too if you watch deals, some come with motherboards you can resell and get price lower, some come with rails, etc... just depends what you wanted.
$175 = There's another thread here for a 2.5" Hot Swap for $175, so... depends on what you need

Obviously if you want silent probably none of these are options. I say probably because I can't imagine the SGI being quiet, but I haven't powered mine up with drives yet

And then figure $100-200 for a good RAID card.

 

[Shadow.X]

It entirely depends on what OP wants to achieve.

The SGI's are not quiet at all, I would expect many/most of those type of enclosures to be loud without modification.

Dave, Would something like the Sans digital enclosure or something like a SGI work for you?

What is your goal? Do you just want to add more storage to your laptop/desktop or have something that will provide more storage for networked machines.

You may want to consider something like what T_Minus is suggesting or considering building a dedicated NAS.

 

[T_Minus]

Good to know about the SGI units. I agree 4 drives vs 24 is a bit of a difference

I believe the 846 and 848 COULD be modified to be silent enough to run near your primary desktop/workstation.

Replace mid-plate fans with larger quieter, higher performance ones, and same for the rear. Add a fan to the PCIE slots (they exist, or custom but easy) for extra air. Haven't seen it done but I don't see why it can't be done.

That's my idea for higher capacity off-ethernet / local storage JBOD thingy, I call it .

Add a mobo/cpu/ram and you have a NAS/media server and more too

 

[Shadow.X]

The Norco Hot swap cages aren't far off either. They have a 120mm mid plate option.
With larger Quieter fans it shouldn't be too bad.

Great point about adding mobo/cpu/ram and having a nas.

 

[T_Minus]

Not to get this off track but to turn any of the cheap chassis into a NAS you could use:

L5639 + SM 1366 1P Board + 2GB HYNIX RDIMM = Cheapest, powerful setup I can think of off top of my head.
Watch for CPU: $50-110
Watch for Mobo: $65-180
Watch for 2gb RAM: $5-15 Sometimes it's super cheap, and other times 2x+ as much.
Watch for 4gb RAM: $8-20 Sometimes super cheap especially if you buy 10+ at once, but still really cheap in smaller lots like all RAM so many things come into play for fluctuation you just need to watch daily/multi-times.

The x56## series offers more for the $ but uses more electricity/$, and you could easily spend as much for 1 of those CPUs as the entire above 3 combo setup if you went for a 5670+, the 5650 is not too bad on the $$ compared to the 5639 often, if power isn't a concern. (5,500 and 7500 passmark between them and 60w vs 95w) the x5650 runs at the L5639 Turbo on all cores, at lowest frequency)

Only because you need to fill so many slots I'd even suggest 2gb. 4gb isn't bad though only a couple to few bucks more depending how many you get at once, and when you're needing so many 2-8$ each adds up fast!


Just thought I'd throw out a cheap solution to a NAS/ESXI/ALL IN ONE on the VERY CHEAP. For those looking.

That also assumes you have a spare OS drive to use If not factor in $20 for a Intel 320 SSD with lots of life left, and power loss protection... the ultimate cheap OS/boot drive. Obviously if you're going to make a VM HOST you'd have more requirements... but this should be a great ultra-cheap starting point.

 

[WeekendWarrior]

Thanks all for the comments and interest - much appreciated. I was purposefully vague on what my ultimate goal was because I didn't want to sound like the storage noob that I am Unfortunately I have a lot of conflicting constraints that don't give me much room to operate.

First, I am looking to build my own NAS (probably freenas but still researching that) and want something in the 12-20GB range (hopefully 10-15GB usable after redundancy considerations). I've done a lot of reading about this stuff but that's not saying much because I was starting from ground zero on networked storage although I've had an inexpensive Synology drive for 6 years. I would like to have something like 6-10 2GB drives - possibly Hitachi for reliability reasons.

Second, I purposefully kept my budget quite low on this because I recently bought some hardware to create a basic but useful cluster at home so I can experiment with Mesosphere. While that hardware is being shipped I'm trying to put this together.

Third, this cluster would start at home and it can't make a ton of noise. The SGI racks look great and I've talked myself into and out of that several times - ultimately out due to my suspicion that noise and power would be an issue.

Fourth, I'm trying to be very power conscious because the rates - at home or at colocation - are quite high here in NorCal.

Fifth, I am limited in my I/O connectivity. Although I have Gb Ethernet, more interesting solutions like FC etc are inconsistent with my hardware - at least one of which will be a laptop. Thus, I am thinking that in order to allow the lowest common denominator for I/O, I would need to either use 1Gb ethernet or some sort of connectivity through the mini PCI-e or eSata ports on the laptop. I know enough to know that eSata doesn't lend itself to peer-to-peer connections but I would like each system to connect in the same way. In effect, I would like a multi-port external disk but they don't exist (at least not at 5 or more ports).

So, finally, my question arises because I thought an eSata receiver board might exist that would allow several eSata masters to speak with individual receivers on a multi-receiver board, such that a motherboard could interface with that multi-receiver board. Since eSata is ostensibly higher bandwidth than 1Gb it seemed like a possibility but I can't find anything out there. But, I did find over a dozen people wanting the same thing so we may all be crazy but I'm not alone.

Thus my goal is a laptop-compatible DAS if possible. Otherwise, I'll make due with a DIY NAS (which would be great).

Any advice - thanks again
Dave

 

[Shadow.X]

T_Minus's suggestion isn't a bad place to start.

Since power is a major concern you could use an i3 or i5. There are plenty of i3/i5+mobo+ram combos on ebay for under $200.

There are also systems like a lenovo TS440 yux varient. It often goes on sale for under $400, it includes 2x4 3.5 hotswap bays (caddies are $15 each extra), xeon e3-1245,4gb ecc ram.

There are plenty of options when sourcing your own DIY nas.

I think the thing to figure out is if you want/need direct attached storage to your laptop or if something like a nas is ok.

The esata enclosure I mentioned earlier could work if your esata port supports a port multipler. Depending on the model, it would give you access to each drive individually. You could then do software raid from your laptop.

I am not sure if you are looking for an esata enclosure like I mentioned, or an esata enclosure that lets you connect to multiple machines through esata at the same time. I have no idea if something like that exists.

For Nas os's you can checkout nas4free,openmediavault(with omv-extras),openfiller,xpenology(lets you run synology on your own hardware). If you want me to mention a more complete list just ask.

What type of i/o limitations are you worried about? Do you need more than say 100MB/sec to your laptop?

What is your budget?

It might help if you list your goals for this project and what you want to do.

 

[cperalt1]

You can take a look at the adonics products. They have several boards you can use to create a DIY DAS.

 

[WeekendWarrior]

T_Minus's suggestion isn't a bad place to start.

Since power is a major concern you could use an i3 or i5. There are plenty of i3/i5+mobo+ram combos on ebay for under $200.

There are also systems like a lenovo TS440 yux varient. It often goes on sale for under $400, it includes 2x4 3.5 hotswap bays (caddies are $15 each extra), xeon e3-1245,4gb ecc ram.

There are plenty of options when sourcing your own DIY nas.

I think the thing to figure out is if you want/need direct attached storage to your laptop or if something like a nas is ok.

The esata enclosure I mentioned earlier could work if your esata port supports a port multipler. Depending on the model, it would give you access to each drive individually. You could then do software raid from your laptop.

I am not sure if you are looking for an esata enclosure like I mentioned, or an esata enclosure that lets you connect to multiple machines through esata at the same time. I have no idea if something like that exists.

For Nas os's you can checkout nas4free,openmediavault(with omv-extras),openfiller,xpenology(lets you run synology on your own hardware). If you want me to mention a more complete list just ask.

What type of i/o limitations are you worried about? Do you need more than say 100MB/sec to your laptop?

What is your budget?

It might help if you list your goals for this project and what you want to do.

@Shadow_X - agreed that T_Minus's suggestion is good.

Your questions are also helpful. My I/O concern is that if I have four or 5 systems writing to the NAS at the same time it will get bogged down with only 1Gb Ethernet. It's hard to tell how often, if ever, that would occur though. Maybe I'm over-thinking this. Part of me wants to create a "worthy" solution while another part of me wants to keep it simple to keep costs down. The latter is probably the better approach given my comparatively light weekend warrior workloads.

My budget is 1000-1200 with maybe 70%-80% of that for disks. I've read the reviews on various c2750 systems and they sound interesting but at 350 for mb/processor it seems expensive at that level of performance. But the issue probably shouldn't be processor performance but whether it provides the solution I need - only some of which concerns the processor's performance.

Ultimately the motherboard challenge - in my price range - comes down to inexpensive systems without enough SATA ports or a more expensive system with ports but only a modest processor.

I could rationalize a more expensive mb/processor if it could do dual duty for, say, a pfsense purpose. But isolating pfsense also seems important. Again, a lot of goals in tension with each other.

Choosing what really matters:
* price - no getting around the 1000-1200 budget
* capacity - need 10G+ usable after considering good redundancy measures
* power - can give a little on this but want idle power to be around 30W or less
* size - need to avoid rack-sized enclosure - that won't fly with my wife and our small place
* can focus on NAS rather than DAS given the technical issues involved and the relative unlikelihood that multiple devices write to a NAS at the same time (at least for very long)

Related question: laptop processors have very low idle power consumption and some motherboards are designed to allow such processors. That might be one approach for balancing cost and power - is there a reliable place to find idle TDP for desktop processors? I can find such info for one-off processors but it would be daunting to find it for more than a few. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks for all your comments --
Dave

 

[WeekendWarrior]

You can take a look at the adonics products. They have several boards you can use to create a DIY DAS.

@cperalt1 - thanks for the suggestion. I had seen Addonics components in my original research but it may be worth coming back to them.

for example, this interface seems interesting: Addonics AD5HPMREU 5port HPM Xu eSATA USB 3 0 | eBay

It seems to have the ability to receive eSata from a laptop and port multiple that to 5 SATA drives. But, if I had 5-6 such interfaces, I would need a way to allow each interface to communicate with each drive among 5-10 drives in the disk array. I've been stuck on that issue - let me know if you see any solution.

Your suggestion wasn't specific to the component listed above, but it reminded me of that question.

I've also read a lot of warnings about port multipliers - that one disk failure on a multiplier tree will lead to all disks not being readable. Not sure if that is true but that would kill my redundancy goals.

Any thoughts on these points would be appreciated.

 

[WeekendWarrior]

That would be the cheapest option I believe. I have the SGI one, and haven't even tested it yet so I'm not sure on suggestions beyond that model

For other options: $150-$300+

$150 = SGI (came with cable)
$300+ = SuperMicro 24 BAY (846) You can get 848 too if you watch deals, some come with motherboards you can resell and get price lower, some come with rails, etc... just depends what you wanted.
$175 = There's another thread here for a 2.5" Hot Swap for $175, so... depends on what you need

Obviously if you want silent probably none of these are options. I say probably because I can't imagine the SGI being quiet, but I haven't powered mine up with drives yet

And then figure $100-200 for a good RAID card.

These are great options - appreciate the suggestions - but they are all too large for the present political environment (wife whose believes I already have too much stuff). My solution needs to be visibly innocuous.

 

[WeekendWarrior]

Not to get this off track but to turn any of the cheap chassis into a NAS you could use:

L5639 + SM 1366 1P Board + 2GB HYNIX RDIMM = Cheapest, powerful setup I can think of off top of my head.
Watch for CPU: $50-110
Watch for Mobo: $65-180
Watch for 2gb RAM: $5-15 Sometimes it's super cheap, and other times 2x+ as much.
Watch for 4gb RAM: $8-20 Sometimes super cheap especially if you buy 10+ at once, but still really cheap in smaller lots like all RAM so many things come into play for fluctuation you just need to watch daily/multi-times.

The x56## series offers more for the $ but uses more electricity/$, and you could easily spend as much for 1 of those CPUs as the entire above 3 combo setup if you went for a 5670+, the 5650 is not too bad on the $$ compared to the 5639 often, if power isn't a concern. (5,500 and 7500 passmark between them and 60w vs 95w) the x5650 runs at the L5639 Turbo on all cores, at lowest frequency)

Only because you need to fill so many slots I'd even suggest 2gb. 4gb isn't bad though only a couple to few bucks more depending how many you get at once, and when you're needing so many 2-8$ each adds up fast!


Just thought I'd throw out a cheap solution to a NAS/ESXI/ALL IN ONE on the VERY CHEAP. For those looking.

That also assumes you have a spare OS drive to use If not factor in $20 for a Intel 320 SSD with lots of life left, and power loss protection... the ultimate cheap OS/boot drive. Obviously if you're going to make a VM HOST you'd have more requirements... but this should be a great ultra-cheap starting point.

I'm going to give these components a very hard look. At first blush they do seem very interesting. Will look for idle power on the CPUs/mb which might assuage my power concerns.

 

[cperalt1]

Silverstone ds380 with the adonics esata/usb3 adapter for DAS. Or better yet avoton mitx with the ds380. Will not take up much physical real estate, low idle at up to 8-12 drives (8 being 3.5" hot swap)

 

[WeekendWarrior]

Silverstone ds380 with the adonics esata/usb3 adapter for DAS. Or better yet avoton mitx with the ds380. Will not take up much physical real estate, low idle at up to 8-12 drives (8 being 3.5" hot swap)

Yes - thanks - Silverstone DS380 looks like a very good candidate for an enclosure - small, innocuous, reasonably priced, and capable. Came across favorable discussions of this enclosure elsewhere also.

Only unanswered question regarding DAS is how I can direct-connect several computers simultaneously to each disk. Doubt there is a solution to that but it would be attractive to get > 1Gb/s connectivity to the storage box (NAS or DAS) at any time - especially concurrent requests each greater than 1Gb/s.

Obviously higher connectivity solutions like IB exist but the ones I'm aware of are not practical or probably even possible from a laptop even if only operating at a fraction of their potential speed.

 

[cperalt1]

If you go with an avoton board with more than one nic. You could do link agregate so that if you have 4 clients on a 4 nic board you could potentially have 4 gb/s coming out of the NAS. Remember you won't get more than a gigabit per client nic at a time but you will not be throttled by the clients trying to all consume 1 pipe since you will have 4.