SuperMicro 4U 24-BAY Chassis - Gotcha's??

[5mall5nail5]

Thanks - pinged him

 

[bwfan]

Good afternoon,


I am looking to graduate to a Supermicro CS846 chassis. Will this combo below work with 3 TB WD red drives, SATA. I plan on loading up all 24 bays and replacing the stock fans with noctua PWM fans and the PSU with the SQ for quieter operation.

1 x Supermicro X7DVA-8 MB
1 x AOC-S2208L-H8iR raid card
1 x SUPERMICRO SUPERCHASSIS CSE-846-E16-R1200B, with BPN-SAS2-846EL1 backplane.

Thanks in advance.

Oh and this will be running on Ubuntu server 16.04 LTS!

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[BlueFox]

You're going to need a newer motherboard. That thing really is ancient (~12 years old) and the newer versions of the 846 chassis do not support the socket 771 retention mechanism as far as I'm aware.

 

[bwfan]

You're going to need a newer motherboard. That thing really is ancient (~12 years old) and the newer versions of the 846 chassis do not support the socket 771 retention mechanism as far as I'm aware.

Bluefox,

Do you have any suggestions on a board? I already have the 3 of these boards, all in non SM cases so the LGA771 retention should not be an issue I think.

Thanks

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[bwfan]

Here is a picture of the chassis. No lga771 mounts inside. But my cooling for the CPUs is already secured.

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[Terry Kennedy]

Do you have any suggestions on a board? I already have the 3 of these boards, all in non SM cases so the LGA771 retention should not be an issue I think.

I've been using the X8DTH-iF in SC836 cases for years. The advantage of that board is that all 7 PCIe expansion slots are x8 (in x16 physical sockets) so there are no constraints on shuffling cards around for the best airflow. The -6F version of that board has an integrated SAS controller (8 ports in 2 SFF-8087 connectors) so you could run your backplane without an add-in disk controller if you wanted.

It would only make sense to buy an X8 board if you could get one at a good price. CPUs and cooling fans should be very inexpensive as well. Otherwise you may as well go for a newer generation board / CPU.

Lots more here.

 

[Stefan75]

Hi,
BPN-SAS-846A
It's the same than BPN-SAS-846TQ, it has no expander.
But instead to have 24 single SATA/SAS ports to connects, you have 3 SFF-8087 ports.
Séb.

Hi
Nice list
The BPN-SAS-846A I have has 6 SFF-8087 connectors.

 

[bwfan]

I've been using the X8DTH-iF in SC836 cases for years. The advantage of that board is that all 7 PCIe expansion slots are x8 (in x16 physical sockets) so there are no constraints on shuffling cards around for the best airflow. The -6F version of that board has an integrated SAS controller (8 ports in 2 SFF-8087 connectors) so you could run your backplane without an add-in disk controller if you wanted.

It would only make sense to buy an X8 board if you could get one at a good price. CPUs and cooling fans should be very inexpensive as well. Otherwise you may as well go for a newer generation board / CPU.

Lots more here.

Thanks Terry!

Due to budget changes and lack of SAS2 at a good price on eBay I had to look into a 846TQ backplane chassis instead. I just picked up 2 x Adaptec ASR 52445 raid controllers for cheap. I assume any SFF-8087 w/sgpio and SATA breakout connectors should work with the ASR and this backplane?

Cheers,
Mark

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[Terry Kennedy]

Due to budget changes and lack of SAS2 at a good price on eBay I had to look into a 846TQ backplane chassis instead.

I did the "bazillion SATA cables" on my original RAIDzilla prototype some 15 years ago and it drove me nuts, even though I custom ordered them in the exact lengths I needed and there were only 16 of them. But if you need to do that to make the budget work, I guess you have to. Try to get the skinniest breakout cables you can, but you'll need to get creative to avoid kinking them while maintaining good airflow across the drive bay.

I just picked up 2 x Adaptec ASR 52445 raid controllers for cheap. I assume any SFF-8087 w/sgpio and SATA breakout connectors should work with the ASR and this backplane?

I'm not familiar with that controller, but from a quick look it seems to be a RAID controller (in LSI terminology, an IR and not an IT controller). Do you plan on creating multiple RAID volumes? Most controllers don't let you span a single RAID volume across multiple controllers.

Any forward breakout cable (SFF-8087 on the controller side, individual pigtails on the drive side) with SGPIO should work. As I said, I've always used A-series backplanes so I don't know if there is anything special you need to do on the backplane to use the SGPIO connectors. Supermicro's documentation should cover it.

 

[bwfan]

I did the "bazillion SATA cables" on my original RAIDzilla prototype some 15 years ago and it drove me nuts, even though I custom ordered them in the exact lengths I needed and there were only 16 of them. But if you need to do that to make the budget work, I guess you have to. Try to get the skinniest breakout cables you can, but you'll need to get creative to avoid kinking them while maintaining good airflow across the drive bay.

I'm not familiar with that controller, but from a quick look it seems to be a RAID controller (in LSI terminology, an IR and not an IT controller). Do you plan on creating multiple RAID volumes? Most controllers don't let you span a single RAID volume across multiple controllers.

Any forward breakout cable (SFF-8087 on the controller side, individual pigtails on the drive side) with SGPIO should work. As I said, I've always used A-series backplanes so I don't know if there is anything special you need to do on the backplane to use the SGPIO connectors. Supermicro's documentation should cover it.

I grabbed 2 as I need one as a spare for when one fails. I won't be using both controllers at the same time. It will be a single raid volume. Running Ubuntu server 16.04 strictly to server my massive home media collection to Plex.

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[benjamato]

I grabbed 2 as I need one as a spare for when one fails. I won't be using both controllers at the same time. It will be a single raid volume. Running Ubuntu server 16.04 strictly to server my massive home media collection to Plex.

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How did that ASR-52445 work out with the SAS846TQ backplane? I am in a similar situation now where I want to transition from SATA to SAS disks to repurpose my old Plex server and there appear to be several ways to accomplish it with changing backplanes, using different HBA/RAID cards and using either backplane or breakout cables. I now have 27 2TB SAS disks ready to fully populate the server. It's old now with an H8DME-2 mobo and two 2419EE with 64GB of ram and the SAS846TQ already in place using three PCI-X SAT2-MV8 cards. I mainly just want to use these SAS disks for the least costs in this old server and was thinking that a single ASR controller with 6 breakout cables might be the way to go after reviewing this thread and looking at current costs. I'm also interested to know what breakout cables you went with that worked well with that ASR card.

The cheapest scenario so far is using a SAS846EL1 with SAS9200-81 in IT mode and backplane cables for about $75.