Netapp DS4243 Disk Array Shelf @ $90 shipped

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NaCl

New Member
Dec 15, 2018
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Yeah. I'm still crying on the $160-$170 sales I heard about from before with the 32gb flash drive. I tried messaging a few sellers of those EMAZ/EZAZ drives on ebay with a best offer and they wouldnt budge below $195. They must be trying to pawn off some of these self same shucked easystores ;)
Could be. Some mention they were pulls while others say they're brand new OEM drives.

I also read somewhere, think on Reddit that those netapp enclosure work fine with the easystores. Im not 100% positive, but i think they said they dont have the 3.3v issue.
Can confirm they work swimmingly. Finally got familial duties taken care of and was able to fire up my DS4246 w/a few shucked EMAZ drives. No issues at all.
 

RicBorg

New Member
Apr 21, 2019
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I scored a DS4243 with drives from Ebay but now need a Mini SAS to QSFC to connect it to my P822 card, does anyone knows if i only need one cable or need two for both IOMs ?
 

Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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I got 3 of netapp ds4246, probably 2 more than I need but they came as a package deal. I got one of them hooked up to my windows pc via QFSP-mini sas cable and it worked perfectly fine. I plan to get ReFS with Storage Spaces mirroring to store my archives there. While I am filling in the shelves with drives and loading up data, I plan to use other two to experiment for an alternative solution. In both cases, the goal is archival storage where disks will be stopped.

I have a few questions:
- HBA X2065A-R6 SAS seems like a legit option since finding a QFSP to mini-sas cable is not easy. Are there any other benefits?
- I am hoping that I will get 12Gb support from these disk shelves when I upgrade the hba and IOM. 6Gbs could be a bottleneck for 24 modern SAS drives. Is the upgrade path open?
- Any cheap options for mounting them to the rack cabinet? Current going price for original rack kits are $50 but I think any ordinary L bracket style may be a good fit. I don't have experience about racking so not sure what to do here.
- Do we know if there any size limits on the drives? Can it support 4TB or higher capacity drives.
- Is there any benefit of having a second IOM for one of these shelves? IIUC, they meant to be used by netapp appliance for redundancy purposes but I am not sure if it can be also used for increasing throughput by enabling a second bus.

Thanks for the help.
 

NaCl

New Member
Dec 15, 2018
25
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I got 3 of netapp ds4246, probably 2 more than I need but they came as a package deal. I got one of them hooked up to my windows pc via QFSP-mini sas cable and it worked perfectly fine. I plan to get ReFS with Storage Spaces mirroring to store my archives there. While I am filling in the shelves with drives and loading up data, I plan to use other two to experiment for an alternative solution. In both cases, the goal is archival storage where disks will be stopped.

I have a few questions:
- HBA X2065A-R6 SAS seems like a legit option since finding a QFSP to mini-sas cable is not easy. Are there any other benefits?
Uncertain what your bar for 'not easy' wrt locating is, but I consider its presence on Amazon to be pretty easy to find. I use these -> (Mini SAS HD 8644) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MCYWM98 (MiniSAS 8088)https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AAHQJB2 w/out issue.

They are pretty proud of them, unfortunately.

- I am hoping that I will get 12Gb support from these disk shelves when I upgrade the hba and IOM. 6Gbs could be a bottleneck for 24 modern SAS drives. Is the upgrade path open?
The bigger concern is the backplane. There have been mixed results, even when using the 'anointed' revision, for 6Gbps upgrade (IOM6) in the DS4243 units. I wouldn't 'hold my breath' as it were.

- Any cheap options for mounting them to the rack cabinet? Current going price for original rack kits are $50 but I think any ordinary L bracket style may be a good fit. I don't have experience about racking so not sure what to do here.
These L brackets are what I went with and are working just fine. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C4TDHNG) )note that there are 3 sets for that $80.

- Do we know if there any size limits on the drives? Can it support 4TB or higher capacity drives.
Straight-up SAS, no empirical data. However, I _am_ using mine w/WD100EMAZ and it works very well. These are, ostensibly, the white label 10TB red drives. I {c,p}ulled them from EasyStore enclosures. The 3.3v sata power mod is not required when used in these enclosures btw/fyi.

As another data point, I have also used these same drives w/the SAS interposers w/out issue.

- Is there any benefit of having a second IOM for one of these shelves? IIUC, they meant to be used by netapp appliance for redundancy purposes but I am not sure if it can be also used for increasing throughput by enabling a second bus.
Not outside of a multi-path application which IIRC/AIUI, requires SAS either natively or SATA -> SAS via the interposers.
 
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Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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Thanks a lot for the great pointers. I was scared about some of the L brackets as some of the cheap ones broke off under the weight of these shelves. I will get the ones you pointed.

I can find sf8088 cables all around in recyclers hence this particular cable is less easy to find on the cheap side.

I want to use multipath as long as it provides extra bandwidth. I use windows server and sas drives and both support multipath. I checkout the documentation but couldnt figure out what the benefits of multipath are.

Getting in data in and out from this thing would be painful.At 3 Gbs speeds, taking 240TB out would 1M seconds, 11.5 days!
 

BeTeP

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Mar 23, 2019
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It's 3Gbps per lane. There are 4 lanes in the connector. So even in the worst case you get 12Gbps from HBA to the SAS expander chip in the IOM.
 

Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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The guy has sold over a hundred of them. Old listing here: NetApp DS4246 Disk Array Shelf W/ 24x SAS Trays 2x IOM6 SAS Expansion Array | eBay

These are noticeably quieter than all of the DAS units I've used before (StorageWorks MSA60/D2600, Rackable Systems SE3016).

The trick is to replace the controllers with a pair of HB-SBB2-E601-COMP. Advantages are 6gbps SAS and normal SFF-8088 connections. It's a direct fit replacement for the NetApp controllers that use QSFP for the SAS connections (why?)

This may not be the case for more recent shipments; however, when I bought mine from them a couple weeks ago, shipping was $26 and it was quite literally pulled from the rack with cables still attached and tossed in a box. Zero padding whatsoever from this seller. Had to unbend a couple bits, but it was okay.
Are we certain that this is supposed to work? I replaced the IOM6 controller on a DS4243 but the unit didn't come online (disk ready lights didn't get on).
 

DanielWood

Member
Sep 14, 2018
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Are we certain that this is supposed to work? I replaced the IOM6 controller on a DS4243 but the unit didn't come online (disk ready lights didn't get on).
IOM6 is already 6Gbps, so all you gain with the Dell controller is SFF-8088 connectors.

As for it working, make sure you dont mix and match any controllers(Full power cycle is needed, BTW). Also, if you are using single-path SATA drives without the SAS interposers, you can only use one controller anyways. Top controller seems to be the "prime" controller.
 
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Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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IOM6 is already 6Gbps, so all you gain with the Dell controller is SFF-8088 connectors.

As for it working, make sure you dont mix and match any controllers(Full power cycle is needed, BTW). Also, if you are using single-path SATA drives without the SAS interposers, you can only use one controller anyways. Top controller seems to be the "prime" controller.
Yes I want to work around the cabling problem. I also have a few Xyratex 1235 and more controllers so if I can get that work, it would be easier for me daisy chain them or try multipath.

I do have SAS interposers and same drives works fine on Xyratex 1235 and the same controller. I tried again with the hard reboot but no avail. The unit does not come online, drives do not power up (I can see the power usage being low). To be precise, this is the compellent controller I am using:

cfd3894f-1da2-400c-9110-bda8268c2b9e-1-6151a8a38fe47e257a53b850a946c21f

I noticed that this controller has 3 ports but IOM6 has only 2 ports. I am curious if there is a mismatch here, perhaps same DS4243 don't work with the compellent controllers. Is this the correct controller we are referring?



Btw, DS4243 seems like much better enclosure than Xyratex 1235 if you can find it, especially local to avoid the shipping charges. As far as I see:

1. DS4243 is much quieter. I turned on 2 of the fans on DS4243 by attaching only two of the power supplies to keep the power usage low and it is perfectly chugging along with low fan rpm. Xyratex 1235 running at elevated RPMs even when I connected both power supplies.
2. DS4343 consumes only slightly more power, around 10-15 watts, at idle while it supports twice more disk. That is probably due to the fact that but units run the same number of power supplies.
3. Xyratex 1235 beeps if you don't plugin all the power supplies and I was not able to permanently suppress it. DS4243 is perfectly happy with single power supply being connected.

I wish I can get the Xyratex controller working so I don't have to get those expensive cables and probably daisy them with different units.
 

Davew

New Member
Oct 12, 2020
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Yes I want to work around the cabling problem. I also have a few Xyratex 1235 and more controllers so if I can get that work, it would be easier for me daisy chain them or try multipath.

I do have SAS interposers and same drives works fine on Xyratex 1235 and the same controller. I tried again with the hard reboot but no avail. The unit does not come online, drives do not power up (I can see the power usage being low). To be precise, this is the compellent controller I am using:

cfd3894f-1da2-400c-9110-bda8268c2b9e-1-6151a8a38fe47e257a53b850a946c21f

I noticed that this controller has 3 ports but IOM6 has only 2 ports. I am curious if there is a mismatch here, perhaps same DS4243 don't work with the compellent controllers. Is this the correct controller we are referring?



Btw, DS4243 seems like much better enclosure than Xyratex 1235 if you can find it, especially local to avoid the shipping charges. As far as I see:

1. DS4243 is much quieter. I turned on 2 of the fans on DS4243 by attaching only two of the power supplies to keep the power usage low and it is perfectly chugging along with low fan rpm. Xyratex 1235 running at elevated RPMs even when I connected both power supplies.
2. DS4343 consumes only slightly more power, around 10-15 watts, at idle while it supports twice more disk. That is probably due to the fact that but units run the same number of power supplies.
3. Xyratex 1235 beeps if you don't plugin all the power supplies and I was not able to permanently suppress it. DS4243 is perfectly happy with single power supply being connected.

I wish I can get the Xyratex controller working so I don't have to get those expensive cables and probably daisy them with different units.
I have exactly the same experience.
3 netapp shelves, all with iom6, swap out the Iom6‘s for the compellent part and shelf doesn’t initialise.
im wondering if it’s a firmware version thing.
I’m also wondering if it might be something to do with the shelf ID number. I’ve not bothered checking that. I’ll try setting it to lowest and see what happens.
 
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JoshDi

Active Member
Jun 13, 2019
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Yes I want to work around the cabling problem. I also have a few Xyratex 1235 and more controllers so if I can get that work, it would be easier for me daisy chain them or try multipath.

I do have SAS interposers and same drives works fine on Xyratex 1235 and the same controller. I tried again with the hard reboot but no avail. The unit does not come online, drives do not power up (I can see the power usage being low). To be precise, this is the compellent controller I am using:

cfd3894f-1da2-400c-9110-bda8268c2b9e-1-6151a8a38fe47e257a53b850a946c21f

I noticed that this controller has 3 ports but IOM6 has only 2 ports. I am curious if there is a mismatch here, perhaps same DS4243 don't work with the compellent controllers. Is this the correct controller we are referring?



Btw, DS4243 seems like much better enclosure than Xyratex 1235 if you can find it, especially local to avoid the shipping charges. As far as I see:

1. DS4243 is much quieter. I turned on 2 of the fans on DS4243 by attaching only two of the power supplies to keep the power usage low and it is perfectly chugging along with low fan rpm. Xyratex 1235 running at elevated RPMs even when I connected both power supplies.
2. DS4343 consumes only slightly more power, around 10-15 watts, at idle while it supports twice more disk. That is probably due to the fact that but units run the same number of power supplies.
3. Xyratex 1235 beeps if you don't plugin all the power supplies and I was not able to permanently suppress it. DS4243 is perfectly happy with single power supply being connected.

I wish I can get the Xyratex controller working so I don't have to get those expensive cables and probably daisy them with different units.
I have a Xyratex 24 bay shelf with 2x IOM6. To turn off the beeping, you need to disconnect the LED board on the left side of the rack. Let me know and I can dig up the instructions I used.

I also did a fan mod on all 4 of my PSUs so that they run nice and quiet. I use 4 PSUs so that I could get better HDD cooling and picked them up pretty cheap on eBay. To do this you need to splice some wires since the PSUs use different fan connectors and not in the standard 3/4pin configuration
 
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JoshDi

Active Member
Jun 13, 2019
246
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I have exactly the same experience.
3 netapp shelves, all with iom6, swap out the Iom6‘s for the compellent part and shelf doesn’t initialise.
im wondering if it’s a firmware version thing.
I’m also wondering if it might be something to do with the shelf ID number. I’ve not bothered checking that. I’ll try setting it to lowest and see what happens.
I've heard of similar issues with NetApp shelves. Even though these are all made by Xyratex,NetApp adds some pretty strong firmware lockouts if it detects any non standard NetApp configuration.

Maybe try unplugging the LED ribbon cable on the shelve and see what happens.
 

gregsachs

Active Member
Aug 14, 2018
559
192
43
I have exactly the same experience.
3 netapp shelves, all with iom6, swap out the Iom6‘s for the compellent part and shelf doesn’t initialise.
im wondering if it’s a firmware version thing.
I’m also wondering if it might be something to do with the shelf ID number. I’ve not bothered checking that. I’ll try setting it to lowest and see what happens.
The only real benefit of the Dell IOM vs the netapp is the SFF-8088 connection instead of QSFP+ and the 3 ports vs 2, correct?
 

gregsachs

Active Member
Aug 14, 2018
559
192
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Yes, that is the major difference. However, there are many reports online that the NetApp IOMs run custom firmware with more lockouts than the compellent part. It also depends on if you are using HBA/JBOD or RAID

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/goolg3
The IOM6s I have in a ds2246 have worked with all the 2.5" drives I've tried, but that is probably only about 10 different ones?
I have them hooked to a 9286-cv8e but using JBOD mode..