I read the article of using the HP SAS Expander here.
However some things are still not clear to me.
I would like to know a bit more about this since I plan on doing something similar. I bough 2 x Supermicro Superchassis SC847E16-R1400UB for a very good price (about 700$ each instead of the >1600$ you'd find it on amazon or newegg for instance) but unfortunately this chassis only allows UIO motherboards and has to use UIO cards (since PCIe slots are mounted parallel to the motherboard plane, instead of the "conventional" perpendicular way). Still a 36 HDD bay for that price is quite good. To the problem: I wouldn't want to spend lots of money into an (old) lga1366 or G34 motherboard when the newer alternatives cost less (and consume less power).
Therefore I'd like to adopt a solution like the one it was described in the article: using the Supermicro 36-bay chassis for HDD storage using the HP SAS expander, while server CPU/MB/RAM will be in another chassis. This will allow me to use standard and newer motherboards (E-ATX, ATX) for instance lga2011 (socket R). I might even take a SWFX supermicro chassis but I think that's a bit too expensive (and I don't need 4 CPUs), so the Fractal Design Define XL should be fine (though you can also reccomend others that can be very silent).
In the Supermicro Chassis (storage):
- 36 hot-swap SATA HDDs (not all of them yet) - will not buy any further HDD until quality comes back to a decent quality - there are too many complains on newegg just to say one
- 2 x HP SAS Expander (1 should only be able to hold 24 drives)
- 2 x 1400W power supply (I know: it's crazy, though it came along the case for "free")
- 1 x Mainboard ATX/E-ATX providing power
- 2 x UIO Riser cards that can go in PCIe x8/x16 slot
I would've liked to do as the article describes: using the special PCB to provide only power and not use any motherboard, though it may a bit difficult to import it here.
Now for where the "real" server hardware will reside (Fractal Design Define XL or anything else you might suggest):
- 1 x dual socket motherboard (Supermicro lga2011 / G34)
- 2 x not-too-expensive CPUs
- 4 x 8GB Registered ECC RAM: for now I don't need more and budget is a bit tight, will buy other sticks later on
- PCIe ethernet controller from INTEL: probably 3-4x(single port 1gbps) or 1-2x(dual port 1gbps)
- SATA CONTROLLER ?? HP SAS EXPANDER ?? EXTERNAL INTERFACE TO THE HDD POOL ??
As you see I'm a bit confused. Can you explain how do you connect the HP SAS Expander to the actual server (on the other end of the cable) ? Which cables to use and which card(s) to put on the real server to communicate with the "storage chassis". Should it be two others HP SAS Expanders plus one or two SAS controllers (very costly: about 2x300$ plus 2x300$) ? Which ones do you reccomend ? Alternatives to the HP SAS Expander ? Is there any less priced solution ? This will be used at home so if I can keep the budget under control it would be better.
Performance should not be too exigent: 100MB/s-200MB/s should be fine (ZFS under FreeBSD and/or Solaris 11).
I wouldn't like to move too much from the Fractal Design XL case since I already own 3 and a 4 would be a problem
However I began to like Silverstone cases (the horizontal ones) which seem ideal for HTPC. You might suggest one for use as HTPC (should support ATX motherboards, have at least 6 PCI/e ports on the back and maximum size should be 53cm [width] x 18cm [height]) since I think it's kind of better if I put the media server under the TV and free one of the XLs. I own a similar sized one (SilverStone Grandia GD05) but that only has 4 PCI/e slots on the back and supports only microATX mainboards. Don't know if I should open another threwad for that.
EDIT: it seems this kind of solution actually is more costly (need to use 2 x HP SAS Expanders more) than using an UIO motherboard, though I'll be seriously limited in expandibility in the latter case. Would like to hear if anybody here knows an alternative.
However some things are still not clear to me.
I would like to know a bit more about this since I plan on doing something similar. I bough 2 x Supermicro Superchassis SC847E16-R1400UB for a very good price (about 700$ each instead of the >1600$ you'd find it on amazon or newegg for instance) but unfortunately this chassis only allows UIO motherboards and has to use UIO cards (since PCIe slots are mounted parallel to the motherboard plane, instead of the "conventional" perpendicular way). Still a 36 HDD bay for that price is quite good. To the problem: I wouldn't want to spend lots of money into an (old) lga1366 or G34 motherboard when the newer alternatives cost less (and consume less power).
Therefore I'd like to adopt a solution like the one it was described in the article: using the Supermicro 36-bay chassis for HDD storage using the HP SAS expander, while server CPU/MB/RAM will be in another chassis. This will allow me to use standard and newer motherboards (E-ATX, ATX) for instance lga2011 (socket R). I might even take a SWFX supermicro chassis but I think that's a bit too expensive (and I don't need 4 CPUs), so the Fractal Design Define XL should be fine (though you can also reccomend others that can be very silent).
In the Supermicro Chassis (storage):
- 36 hot-swap SATA HDDs (not all of them yet) - will not buy any further HDD until quality comes back to a decent quality - there are too many complains on newegg just to say one
- 2 x HP SAS Expander (1 should only be able to hold 24 drives)
- 2 x 1400W power supply (I know: it's crazy, though it came along the case for "free")
- 1 x Mainboard ATX/E-ATX providing power
- 2 x UIO Riser cards that can go in PCIe x8/x16 slot
I would've liked to do as the article describes: using the special PCB to provide only power and not use any motherboard, though it may a bit difficult to import it here.
Now for where the "real" server hardware will reside (Fractal Design Define XL or anything else you might suggest):
- 1 x dual socket motherboard (Supermicro lga2011 / G34)
- 2 x not-too-expensive CPUs
- 4 x 8GB Registered ECC RAM: for now I don't need more and budget is a bit tight, will buy other sticks later on
- PCIe ethernet controller from INTEL: probably 3-4x(single port 1gbps) or 1-2x(dual port 1gbps)
- SATA CONTROLLER ?? HP SAS EXPANDER ?? EXTERNAL INTERFACE TO THE HDD POOL ??
As you see I'm a bit confused. Can you explain how do you connect the HP SAS Expander to the actual server (on the other end of the cable) ? Which cables to use and which card(s) to put on the real server to communicate with the "storage chassis". Should it be two others HP SAS Expanders plus one or two SAS controllers (very costly: about 2x300$ plus 2x300$) ? Which ones do you reccomend ? Alternatives to the HP SAS Expander ? Is there any less priced solution ? This will be used at home so if I can keep the budget under control it would be better.
Performance should not be too exigent: 100MB/s-200MB/s should be fine (ZFS under FreeBSD and/or Solaris 11).
I wouldn't like to move too much from the Fractal Design XL case since I already own 3 and a 4 would be a problem
However I began to like Silverstone cases (the horizontal ones) which seem ideal for HTPC. You might suggest one for use as HTPC (should support ATX motherboards, have at least 6 PCI/e ports on the back and maximum size should be 53cm [width] x 18cm [height]) since I think it's kind of better if I put the media server under the TV and free one of the XLs
. I own a similar sized one (SilverStone Grandia GD05) but that only has 4 PCI/e slots on the back and supports only microATX mainboards. Don't know if I should open another threwad for that.EDIT: it seems this kind of solution actually is more costly (need to use 2 x HP SAS Expanders more) than using an UIO motherboard, though I'll be seriously limited in expandibility in the latter case. Would like to hear if anybody here knows an alternative.
Last edited:
