Rackable 16bay JOBD SAS/SATA enclosures.

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RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
837
28
28
Singapore
Seems someone is selling off a few Rackable 16 bay JBOD enclosures.

Connectivity via 2x SFF-8088 (3GB/s) cables

$199 here.
$195 here.

Multiple units of each available it seems. I would be tempted but I would imagine shipping to my part of the world would make it prohibitive.

RB
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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IIRC those have been selling for a bit on ebay. The big caveat is that they have an expander and are not super easy to replace with new parts such as power supplies and etc.
 

mmmmmdonuts

Member
Mar 22, 2012
36
0
6
I just got one in a few days ago but haven't had time to set it up. The guy shipped pretty quickly and it does come with 2 SFF-8088 cables. Just remember that popular SAS cards like the IBM-M1015 are SFF-8087 so you need to purchase an adapter for about $30 as well (waiting on this now). There are no instructions but I will report back on how it works with Gea's all-in-one system with openindiana.
 

odditory

Moderator
Dec 23, 2010
381
59
28
You get a chassis, power supply, drive sleds, SAS expander, and even a SAS cable. That's a deal.
Old SAS-1 expander with compatibility issues according to a pretty long thread at [H] -- I won't touch anything thats not SAS-2 these days especially when it comes to expanders, not worth it for many reasons - been there/done that/got the t-shirt. Too many compatibility headaches in certain combinations during my testing years ago.

But by all means.. Have at these things for $199 -- enough people seem to be buying em.
 

samsp99

New Member
Jan 20, 2013
5
0
1
Old SAS-1 expander with compatibility issues according to a pretty long thread at [H] -- I won't touch anything thats not SAS-2 these days especially when it comes to expanders, not worth it for many reasons - been there/done that/got the t-shirt. Too many compatibility headaches in certain combinations during my testing years ago.

But by all means.. Have at these things for $199 -- enough people seem to be buying em.
I recently purchased one together with an 8888elp for my home server. I wanted to be able to have a lot more storage than my case enabled, and using many drives internally was turning into spaghetti junction, and didn't seem very robust from a connector standpoint.

I looked at the external jbod systems, but was not impressed with the esata or USB connectivity.

My first solution was to try a dell fs12 from eBay. Its a 2u rack mount system built for a data center customer, that is showing on eBay in a few different configs. Mine is a Dual xeon l5420, 16gb of fb dimms, dual psu, intel s5000pal MB, perc 6/I, 12 hot swap sas/sata bays connected to a newisys sas expander. There were 2 main problems - heat and noise. The default fans could be attached to the wings of a 747, based on the volume & noise they make. The psu modules also were loud due to 40mm fans and poor airflow design. I had it in a spare bedroom, and even at idle, if you go in after a few hours, the room was noticeably warmer than the rest of the house.

I tried replacing the fans, mb, CPU, psu, etc and ended up with a Franken-build, but it was still not spouse friendly.

My second attempt is to use one of these rackable systems and a raid card. It's pretty solidly made, not unattractive, and includes a sas expander. So far it's not quiet, but that's fixable with a dremel and some 120mm fans. for $300 + shipping for enclosure, raid card, cable, trays & screws, it seemed like good value.

I am not concerned too much about it only supporting sata 2, as for physical disks they can't really make sustained use of a faster interconnect. I seem to be using clusters of 4 disks in raid 5 config. I have each on a different channel from the expander, it will be interesting to do some perf analysis.

So far it's not had issues with wd red 2tb's, seagate 2tb barracudas, 1 tb barracudas or 500gb barracudas, going from newest to oldest drives.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
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the old hp MSA is not a bad chassis for the $$$.

MSA60/70 is a dumb version of the MSA2324(),MSA2312() which is a dumbed down version of the dl320s storage server (oem windows 2003 storage server license).

If you stare at the 3 msa devices you'll see how you could swap the guts around to make each version into another. Q6600 can fit into the DL320s but the 8gb ram limit is just that. might not be bad for a windows 2012 file server with some de-dupe action. Mine came with SAAP/ILO as well as OE windows 2003
 

samsp99

New Member
Jan 20, 2013
5
0
1
I was looking at the HP array's but was unclear on how the caddies work. They always seem to be integrated with the drives, so can you just get the trays and use standard sata drives. There was a carrier specific fiber channel unit that interesting. The bang for the buck seems really good for the rackable units.
 

britinpdx

Active Member
Feb 8, 2013
367
184
43
Portland OR
Tried drives that are larger than 2TB yet?
I can confirm that 3T drives will work in the SE3016 chassis.

Here's what MSM reported when I added the 3T drives to the SE3016 (SE3016 connected to an IBM5014). Drives recognized as 6Gbps but of course the SE3016 expander is only 3Gbps capable ..



Adding both drives to a Raid0 array ..



And a quick test with ATTO ...



For under $200 shipped to my door I'm happy :D

The chassis reports high temperatures in MSM, but from the general reports that I've read on the web this is not unusual.

I did have to quiet it down a little, given that this is for home use only, replacing both the chassis and the power supply fans.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
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So that is SATA-1 ? SAS @ 3gbps, sata at 1.5gps. I wonder if it supports NCQ?

can you throw some SSD's in that thing and show us how it performs at queue depth <>4 - also if you have BBWC enabled, you should raise the size up to the max so it's at least 3-10x more than the cache. 4GB for 256meg cache. 16GB for 4meg cache. Otherwise the results are skewed by read/write caching possibly.

MSA2000's are about $499 (dual sas, 4 ports, 3gbps sas to 4 servers). MSA60/70's are the same chassis. The DL320s storage server is the same chassis with a xeon 3070 (Q6600 can be swapped in) but limited to 8gb ram, however you can throw a M5014 (cachecade) or P812 (4 external sas plus 2 internal sas).

DL320s storage server are $199 with P400/256bbwc,no drives,4gb ram, Xeon 3070, redundant power supplies(!!), dual gigabit, ilo2,saap on ebay.

Odd thing is the server costs less than the MSA. The MSA2000 (2312/2324) is just the MSA60/70 with different controller
 

rnavarro

Active Member
Feb 14, 2013
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I just picked up one of the $200 DL320S boxes...I too wonder why the whole server is less than the MSA....oh well now I just have to fill it with drives and get it to the colo :)
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I just picked up one of the $200 DL320S boxes...I too wonder why the whole server is less than the MSA....oh well now I just have to fill it with drives and get it to the colo :)
Pictures!!! Would love to see if these can be easily retrofit.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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I've got one sitting around. Interesting thing: The cpu is a E6800 or so. You can literally shove a Q6600 in place if you run an OS that can microcode patch. 8gb of ECC max is weak.

Our main problem was the thermal shutdown and the P400 battery cable was too long should be a short one.

I have running with a $199 P812/1gbFBWC (P410 works great too, or LSI M5014 (cachecade!).

If you stare at the modules for the MSA60 and MSA2312 you'll see how the parts all come together.

Warning: The thermal envelope is heavy with this unit. I have 12 146gb 3.5" drives in the model that is rotting - When in use, it will run real hot since it wasn't meant to be a server. DISABLE THERMAL SHUTDOWN. About 100F the whole machine went into thermal shutdown - while my G4/G5/G6/G7 were happy. I think it's a bios bug that set the thermal cutoff way too low. 100F is hot, but it can take it.

Great little box, it was replaced by the DL180 G6 (sucks), and then the DL380 G6 as the choice for storage server. I'd be very surprised if you don't find a windows 2003 storage server key on the lid ;)

remember the F8 raid util - don't use it. Use the HP SPP ACU utility, that way you can say drive 1-12 -> first raid-10, then drive 1-12-> next bit raid-5 , then drive 1-12 -> last bit raid-0, the F8 utility to setup raid will assume to make a raid set of out ## drives. IE first raid set drives 1-2 raid-10, next raid set drives 3-6 raid-5, last set raid 0. This is not nearly as well performing as one big set of drives (like how intel ICH does it).

Any questions ask - i've been using these for massive D2D shares for about 6 years. All servers and 60+ desktops do a nightly full compressed backup 7 days a weak to the poor gal. After the warranty gave up, we pulled the 500gb drives out and 1 dead, 3 near imminent but not (many bad sectors), and the rest were good. It was kind of odd since the bad ones were all on one side. Almost like it was torqued or racked improperly.

The reason I did the P812/P410 was esxi 5 doesn't like the P400 (LSI1078) with large partitions, while the PMC-adaptec P812/P410 could present the entire 12*2TB lun to esxi 5. Ever since the upgrade i've been running this guy in a VM (2008R2), and also running vcenter in a VM. It has enough mojo to do both and then some.
 

rnavarro

Active Member
Feb 14, 2013
197
40
28
I've got one sitting around. Interesting thing: The cpu is a E6800 or so. You can literally shove a Q6600 in place if you run an OS that can microcode patch. 8gb of ECC max is weak.

Our main problem was the thermal shutdown and the P400 battery cable was too long should be a short one.

I have running with a $199 P812/1gbFBWC (P410 works great too, or LSI M5014 (cachecade!).

If you stare at the modules for the MSA60 and MSA2312 you'll see how the parts all come together.

Warning: The thermal envelope is heavy with this unit. I have 12 146gb 3.5" drives in the model that is rotting - When in use, it will run real hot since it wasn't meant to be a server. DISABLE THERMAL SHUTDOWN. About 100F the whole machine went into thermal shutdown - while my G4/G5/G6/G7 were happy. I think it's a bios bug that set the thermal cutoff way too low. 100F is hot, but it can take it.

Great little box, it was replaced by the DL180 G6 (sucks), and then the DL380 G6 as the choice for storage server. I'd be very surprised if you don't find a windows 2003 storage server key on the lid ;)

remember the F8 raid util - don't use it. Use the HP SPP ACU utility, that way you can say drive 1-12 -> first raid-10, then drive 1-12-> next bit raid-5 , then drive 1-12 -> last bit raid-0, the F8 utility to setup raid will assume to make a raid set of out ## drives. IE first raid set drives 1-2 raid-10, next raid set drives 3-6 raid-5, last set raid 0. This is not nearly as well performing as one big set of drives (like how intel ICH does it).

Any questions ask - i've been using these for massive D2D shares for about 6 years. All servers and 60+ desktops do a nightly full compressed backup 7 days a weak to the poor gal. After the warranty gave up, we pulled the 500gb drives out and 1 dead, 3 near imminent but not (many bad sectors), and the rest were good. It was kind of odd since the bad ones were all on one side. Almost like it was torqued or racked improperly.

The reason I did the P812/P410 was esxi 5 doesn't like the P400 (LSI1078) with large partitions, while the PMC-adaptec P812/P410 could present the entire 12*2TB lun to esxi 5. Ever since the upgrade i've been running this guy in a VM (2008R2), and also running vcenter in a VM. It has enough mojo to do both and then some.
Hey Mrkrad!

Good to know about the thermal envelope on this guy! I'm actually going to be filling it with a bunch of leftover 1TB samsung disks that run pretty cool, and I won't be using it as a full on server....just an iscsi target for another ESXi box that does the heavy lifting....so hopefully it can cope with that!

I snapped plenty of pictures last night of the unbox, setup, internals, front, back etc. So I'll post those soon.

When I first booted it up it started loading windows then it hung. So I was just going to skip that altogether and install linux but that didn't go so hot either. Ubuntu Server x64 12.04.2...hung on boot, Ubuntu Server x86 12.04.2...hung on boot, Ubuntu Server x86 10.04.4 (of which this server is on the official HCL)....hung on boot, Ubuntu Desktop live boot x64 12.10...hung on boot, Centos 6.x....hung on boot

I was just about at my wits end but then I reflashed the BIOS, same version not an update, and all of the OSs started booting...sweeet
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
HP SPP FTW :)

what i do:
run HP SPP - boot it, auto firmware update.

then install server 2008 R2 (no key), go to c:\hp\swpackages\setup.exe run it, add the FTP repo and it will grab newer patches etc. takes a while. then if finds anything new , auto-patches. It will also install all the cool drivers and management bits if you choose and configure them.

HP SPP rocks! :)
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
52
48
q6600 was no go. said not recognized cpu.

Can you show me that molex, the full cable and where it is plugged into. I hacked into the power plug on the right - 6 pin PCI-E like and found it was wired +5/GND/+12/GND then +12V,+5,GND,+5V or something like that. I made my own 2-in the rear ;) and put 4 ssd's back there hanging off the second port.

btw , even though the P812 is rated at 29 watts, (i have no external ports used), it does work fine in that server. I picked up a P812 which includes flash back write cache 1gb and SAAP 1.0 key for a little over a hundred bucks which was a steal for a p410 with a huge PMC-sierra expander built in (4 external, 2 internal).

The P410 also works with that motherboard and gives a healthy increase in performance. The P812 definitely gives the increase. Raid-50 is stable as heck with 2TB sata drives borrowed from a P2000G3 ;)

i'd appreciate if you could do a close-up of that molex. where it goes into the motherboard and the wires