iStarUSA 45 Bay Server Chassis

[CyberSkulls]

I've always been interested in the backblaze pods, and more recently the HGST 60 bay deal) just out of curiosity but even just the empty pods are way way overpriced. While searching around on ebay I came across a newegg listing for a chassis I never knew existed. While I know nothing about it, its significantly cheaper than either of the two so called backblaze pod manufacturers @ $495.

When the hell did iStarUSA start making 45 bay top load chassis? Anyone ever seen one of these or better yet, have one?

While we have seen the HGST 60 bay chassis going extremely cheap lately, replacing one of those power supplies or one of the backplanes might be an issue as far as finding them, not to mention, 220 power, crazy expensive cabling blah blah blah.. So I'm kind of on the fence on that one and like the fact that the iStarUSA chassis uses your standard components we all have laying around, run on normal household power..

Anyway, if you guys haven't seen them yet, here is the spam free link to newegg. No hidden affiliate links

iStarUSA EB-445-PM Black Steel 4U Rackmount 4U 45 3.5" HDD Bays EATX Storage Server Chassis eSATA Port Multiplier - Newegg.com


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MatrixMJK]

One big difference with the iStar chassis vs. the HGST or some others is that it uses SATA port multipliers vs. SAS expanders to connect up the drives.

That limits you to SATA drives and not as efficient lane switching to the drives.

But, if you are looking for a similar box to the BackBlaze system this is a good fit. The BackBlaze boxes are also SATA port multipliers.

 

[CyberSkulls]

One big difference with the iStar chassis vs. the HGST or some others is that it uses SATA port multipliers vs. SAS expanders to connect up the drives.

That limits you to SATA drives and not as efficient lane switching to the drives.

But, if you are looking for a similar box to the BackBlaze system this is a good fit. The BackBlaze boxes are also SATA port multipliers.

I agree. I was just looking at it from a pure storage point of view. I simply use my SM 846 chassis for media storage for plex. So for my media, speed is not necessary, but you have a valid point.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Churchill]

These iStar units have always been BTO(Build to Order) Newegg probably got enough demand for iStar to build a bunch and ship them to NewEgg.

I've been eyeing these units for MONTHS in how to use this unit and where the heck I'm going to put it. So far I haven't had any ideas. The noise and heat from this sucker is going to be awful. 45 spinning drives is going to cause an awful shedload of heat to come out of these units.

Sigh...

 

[MiniKnight]

When the hell did iStarUSA start making 45 bay top load chassis?

So iStarUSA made the old backblaze pod at like 1/3rd the price?

@Churchill port multipliers eeegh

 

[Churchill]

So iStarUSA made the old backblaze pod at like 1/3rd the price?

@Churchill port multipliers eeegh

You set your expectations and live with them. I'm OK with port multipliers. This would be my Backup drive from hell and beyond. I would offload all media that I would not use in a daily system and shuffle all that data to this system.

In essence my UnRAID system would move to an all SSD approach for primary and then backup would be this system.

 

[MiniKnight]

Ah that'd make sense.

 

[SycoPath]

A looong time ago I played with an 8 port SATA multiplier and some 36GB WD Raptors. Bandwidth was horrible. It was SATA1 era. Your going to be limited to the bandwidth of a single SATA lane unless it's internally partitioned into segments, and you'll need an eSATA connector for every segment.

 

[Rain]

You can somewhat mitigate the SATA port multiplier issue by properly segmenting your arrays as @SycoPath suggests. If you make sure heavy IO to any one array/pool of disks uses at most one disk per port multiplier, the performance won't be that bad. Less than using SAS expanders (even with SATA disks), sure, but certainly usable if done correctly. There are nine port multipliers, 5 disks per.

I'm not sure I would shell out $500 for this because I'd be comfortable with used equipment on eBay (where the value is better, especially for SAS2 equipment), but considering the cost of other new 45+ 3.5" chassis, I can certainly see why this would be palatable to some people.

 

[CyberSkulls]

Where are you finding the 846 chassis for $100-$125 shipped? I've never seen them that low. Last one I bought was $129 + shipping.

I do agree speed could become a bottleneck if for some reason you need an insane amount of speed to all the drives all the time. For just plain storage I don't see how speed could become an issue unless your running fiber to everything seeing just how fast those Linux ISO's can transfer

All joking aside, I was trying to look at the pics and I would hope I'm wrong but it looks like the hard drive has metal on metal contact with the chassis? That probably wouldn't be good for vibration. Could just be a crap picture and they are all insulated with rubber this or rubber that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[dragonme]

worst part of port multipleiers and my 8 drive esata box usses them, is you loose smart monitoring ....

 

[CyberSkulls]

I don't know much about esata controllers but that can't be true for all of them. Backblaze uses similar boards in their chassis and from what I've always read, they rely heavily on smart data.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[CyberSkulls]

I've bought from them before but never seen their shipping below like $60. Not that it really matters as I have plenty. I don't use the SAS2 backplanes but I did a similar deal as you and bought two complete SAS2 chassis of a guy on eBay and stripped them for parts, sold the SAS2 backplane, drive caddies, PDU, and SAS cables back on eBay then scrapped the chassis. If I can make a buck, I'll do it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[wiretap]

worst part of port multipleiers and my 8 drive esata box usses them, is you loose smart monitoring ....

It might depend on the port multiplier.. my Sans Digital 8-bay TowerRAID works fine with SMART monitoring parameters.

 

[dragonme]

i have a tower raid 8 myself and I get no smart data from it.. its serveral years old so I dont know if they are using different 1x cards but the sil image 2 esata card does not pass smart at all for me

anyway.. at the price of the istar chassis it seems to me there are better options.