@TLN @Marsh I was not aware that server pull U.2 drives were that cheap. This certainly changes things and opens up a new avenue. My initial thought was to use a big array of SATA SSD to increase IOPS and usable capacity. If I were to use U.2 drives for around the same price as SATA SSDs I would be able to can the requirement for a massive amount of hotswap bays. I would get more IOPS and less complication due to having less drives. With less drives hotswap becomes less of a pressing issue since it's easy enough to service a few drives compared to 16.
Using U.2 drives would change some parts of the calculus though, mainly the platform I was intending to use. I had initially planned to use a Ryzen 3950X on one of ASRock's upcoming X570 server motherboards. I may end up going with a TR or Epyc platform instead if using U.2. I will need to do a bit of research on the bits.
This build will be for ESXi. I want to stay away from fiber SAN or iSCSI if possible. It will just be local storage on the machine. The VMs themselves are not mission critical -- it's mainly for prototyping stuff. U.2 drives are overkill for the read/write requirements I need (I only need about 500-1,250 MB/s sequential storage and 10G networking), but if they are the same price for the same aggregate capacity, and simplify things I'd go with that.
@zer0sum I appreciate your suggestion! I was one of those people who were eagerly waiting for the CS381, then to be completely underwhelmed. I want to have some love for Silverstone as I used their chassis quite a bit back in the day for HTPC builds, but it seems their design decisions are still questionable to this day (I cringe a bit thinking of the custom ducts I had to build then for my old Silverstone builds a decade back).
Using U.2 drives would change some parts of the calculus though, mainly the platform I was intending to use. I had initially planned to use a Ryzen 3950X on one of ASRock's upcoming X570 server motherboards. I may end up going with a TR or Epyc platform instead if using U.2. I will need to do a bit of research on the bits.
This build will be for ESXi. I want to stay away from fiber SAN or iSCSI if possible. It will just be local storage on the machine. The VMs themselves are not mission critical -- it's mainly for prototyping stuff. U.2 drives are overkill for the read/write requirements I need (I only need about 500-1,250 MB/s sequential storage and 10G networking), but if they are the same price for the same aggregate capacity, and simplify things I'd go with that.
@zer0sum I appreciate your suggestion! I was one of those people who were eagerly waiting for the CS381, then to be completely underwhelmed. I want to have some love for Silverstone as I used their chassis quite a bit back in the day for HTPC builds, but it seems their design decisions are still questionable to this day (I cringe a bit thinking of the custom ducts I had to build then for my old Silverstone builds a decade back).
