WTB: Server Hot Swap Chassis

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pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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I'm not familiar with the type A of Supermicro. The only thing that I'm worried is that the RM23212 will not support drives larger than 2tb.
The Chenbro chassis runs fine with drives larger than 2TB. I have 8x3TB sitting in mine right now. I know of several others that also have these chassis with larger drives in and they have had no problems with them either. I think you may be getting confused with the early model Supermicro Expander Backplane which was only SAS1 capable and limited the drive size to 2TB :)
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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@K D My Ultrastars idle between ~35-38 and get up to ~45 when being heavily tasked in my modded Chenbro Chassis. While not the chilly ~25-35 you are getting on your 5400 RPM drives, it's still well inside rated spec for the Ultrastar. Just from a simple observational point of view, I have noticed that my Ultrastar's actually run at their quietest, around the 42 degree mark. I suspect the reason for this might be optimal lubrication temperature. This will of course probably vary given the variables of age, density, model etc at play :)
 

Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
Apr 12, 2017
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haha, I have been offline for a few days working on my basement remodel. I apparently missed alot. Most of my issue is that I don't have alot of experience with servers. I have built hundreds of computers over the years (side job I do), so I am very comfortable with the build, but servers are a very different beast with different concerns. When I originally built this server, I approached it the same as I would any desktop build that I build for myself. I bought a case on the less expensive side that meets my needs, nothing flashy or super fancy.

Now that I have stuff running on these boxes, I don't want to bring them down unless I really need to. My current case is ill suited for that and am wishing I had spent the money on a decent hot swap case. I had not realized that expanders were even a thing, because I am currently using fan out to SATA cables for my connections :)

Maybe what I will do, is keep lurking around ebay and see if I can find a 16+ hotswap case and post it here to see if someone can see any issues with compatibility with modern drives. There is alot out there...

I didnt know it would be so easy to setup an empty chassis as a disk shelf either, so maybe that would be an option, just less ideal...
 

Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
Apr 12, 2017
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I will probably also be using sata drives. All of my current drives in my storage server are. I really don't think that I would be getting much benefit from SAS at the price premium.
 

CyberSkulls

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Apr 14, 2016
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I understand your concerns. The thing I really like about disk shelves is let's assume it's upgrade time. With disk shelves in the mix, you only upgrade the host aka one machine and your disk shelves remain 100% intact and untouched.

So in the past when I had multiple servers I did one at a time start to finish. Now I just have one to do and disk shelves simply attach to the new updated host(s).


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CyberSkulls

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I will probably also be using sata drives. All of my current drives in my storage server are. I really don't think that I would be getting much benefit from SAS at the price premium.
I also use all SATA drives as well. So although some of my JBOD chassis have dual SAS expanders, with using SATA drives, I only utilize one of them.


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Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
Apr 12, 2017
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I understand your concerns. The thing I really like about disk shelves is let's assume it's upgrade time. With disk shelves in the mix, you only upgrade the host aka one machine and your disk shelves remain 100% intact and untouched.

So in the past when I had multiple servers I did one at a time start to finish. Now I just have one to do and disk shelves simply attach to the new updated host(s).


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Perhaps I will look into this further then. I would like to get all of my storage drives in there if I did this. I might just keep my OS drives in the server since I am running those off of a separate controller anyway.

I would need a case, a RAID controller with External ports, power supply, Fans (of course), and one of those jbod power connector thingies, a proper backplane, so on so forth. That could get pricy, and I would have to make sure everything was compatible.. I saw someone posting a case before that had a bunch of disk bays pointing upwards, maybe I should look to see if I can find something like that...
 

CyberSkulls

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Apr 14, 2016
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Perhaps I will look into this further then. I would like to get all of my storage drives in there if I did this. I might just keep my OS drives in the server since I am running those off of a separate controller anyway.

I would need a case, a RAID controller with External ports, power supply, Fans (of course), and one of those jbod power connector thingies, a proper backplane, so on so forth. That could get pricy, and I would have to make sure everything was compatible.. I saw someone posting a case before that had a bunch of disk bays pointing upwards, maybe I should look to see if I can find something like that...
I also leave my OS drive in the main chassis. In my current set up that's unRAID running off a thumbdrive on my host machine. I have a HBA on the host machine with external ports that connect to my JBOD's.

The chassis you refer to as disks pointing up are top load. As an example, I have some HGST 4U60's that have 60 hot swap bays per 4U chassis that face up.

And ya this stuff can get expensive but what a lot of these posts talked about is the Chenbro RM23212 that comes with the (3) SAS2 backplanes for about $110. Toss in your $50-80 power supply, a $10 Supermicro power board, then connect it up to the external HBA in your host machine. So that set up I just mentioned is about $200 ready for hard drives assuming you already have a host machine with a HBA that has external ports.


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Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
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I also leave my OS drive in the main chassis. In my current set up that's unRAID running off a thumbdrive on my host machine. I have a HBA on the host machine with external ports that connect to my JBOD's.

The chassis you refer to as disks pointing up are top load. As an example, I have some HGST 4U60's that have 60 hot swap bays per 4U chassis that gave up.

And ya this stuff can get expensive but what a lot of these posts talked about is the Chenbro RM23212 that comes with the (3) SAS2 backplanes for about $110. Toss in your $50-80 power supply, a $10 Supermicro power board, then connect it up to the external HBA in your host machine. So that set up I just mentioned is about $200 ready for hard drives assuming you already have a host machine with a HBA that has external ports.


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well I guess that I could start with an 12 slot chassis, build it and see how it goes, then get another and repeat when I need to go above 12 drives.
 

Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
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FS: X9DRD-iF Supermicro SC847 Bundle $750

I see this here, and am thinking that this might be an interesting option for a chassis. Does anyone know if I would have compatibility issues with my hardware?

Chassis (Rosewill RSV-L4500): Rosewill RSV-L4500 Black Metal/ Steel, 1.0 mm thickness , 4U Rackmount Server Chassis, 15 Internal Bays, 8 Included Cooling Fans-Newegg.com
MOBO(SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA): SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 Intel C202 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard-Newegg.com
RAID: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-16i
 

CyberSkulls

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Apr 14, 2016
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I guess I don't even know what to ask the seller.
I assume your saying you would like to use the 847 as just a JBOD chassis? If so you'll just need to run cables out of the chassis to your SAS card in your main chassis such as 8087 from your backplanes to 8088 connected in the expansion slots. You'll also need some type of fan controller or the 847 will run fans at full speed which is insanely loud.

If that wasn't what you asking, please explain a little more on how you would use that specific chassis and we will try to help.


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Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
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Do you happen to know what that sas backplane would look like? would it have 9 8087 ports on it, or would it use some sort of an internal expander (this is where I get lost) with fewer ports?

If it is using 8087 connectors, and will work with my 9260-16i, I could just move my entire system into that box (for fewer overall boxes running and not having to route external cables.
 

CyberSkulls

Active Member
Apr 14, 2016
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Do you happen to know what that sas backplane would look like? would it have 9 8087 ports on it, or would it use some sort of an internal expander (this is where I get lost) with fewer ports?

If it is using 8087 connectors, and will work with my 9260-16i, I could just move my entire system into that box (for fewer overall boxes running and not having to route external cables.
Just based on the description I would imagine it is a single 8087 off the main 24 bay backplane and a single 8087 off the rear backplane both having onboard expanders. Unless he changed them for some reason. I would confirm with the OP but that would be my best guess based on the limited info provided.

If that's the case then it would take up 2 of the 4 physical ports or 8i of the internal 16i.


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Roaming Builder

Roaming Builder
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Just based on the description I would imagine it is a single 8087 off the main 24 bay backplane and a single 8087 off the rear backplane both having onboard expanders. Unless he changed them for some reason. I would confirm with the OP but that would be my best guess based on the limited info provided.

If that's the case then it would take up 2 of the 4 physical ports or 8i of the internal 16i.


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OK perfect. I'll draft an appropriate post on his this evening. I just didn't want to pollute is For sale thread with what many would consider me being foolishly ignorant to be trying to make such a purchase. I appreciate all you your (and eveyone elses) help on this. It is a new area for me and it has been difficult to distill all of this information into knowing what to purchase, and how to to it. This community is really wonderful, and the lack of trolls is remarkable this day and age!
 
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CyberSkulls

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OK perfect. I'll draft an appropriate post on his this evening. I just didn't want to pollute is For sale thread with what many would consider me being foolishly ignorant to be trying to make such a purchase. I appreciate all you your (and eveyone elses) help on this. It is a new area for me and it has been difficult to distill all of this information into knowing what to purchase, and how to to it. This community is really wonderful, and the lack of trolls is remarkable this day and age!
Ya this community is pretty cool. You'll notice posts about super in depth clustered file systems someone is using at work to "has anyone ever used this cable?" And rarely does anyone make you feel stupid or like you don't belong no matter how simple or difficult the question may be.

I came here years ago by accident searching on Google. Lurked around for years and finally began posting on topics I knew about. I'm not an IT professional by any stretch of the imagination. My background was 20 years in chemical and industrial manufacturing management. This was always a hobby and I retired very young so with a lot of free time I like to learn new things while playing with really cool technology. And if I have an issue I know someone here can help.

I think you will really like it here and make sure @Patrick sends you cookies. All new members get free cookies :)


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schro

New Member
Apr 9, 2013
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Nice to hear. I didn't see any specs on the signal speed but read some negative comments on other 8087-8087 cables about only running at SAS1 speeds. So I assume your getting full speeds out of the cable without connection/communication issues?
Not sure how to check it, so it's running at whatever the default is (which I assume is SAS2). It has been stable thus far running 8 3tb Ultrastars.

Did you connect the backplane to the jbod board with an i2c cable or how does it work?
The monoprice cable is connected to an 8087 connector on the backplane and the 8088 connector is plugged into an LSI card on another machine. No i2c cables connected that I know of.

The box with the drives (and no system) has a Supermicro JBOD-CB2 board in it.