Norco Question

lcdguy

n00b
Joined
May 29, 2005
Messages
47
I have a question on this. I am looking to build a norco fileserver. I am looking at the 3U 3216. My question is i currently have a dell Perc 5i. I was wondering if there is a way to hook all the drive bays up to the one card. Or would it be cheaper to purchase another used perc 5 instead of an expander. And finally will the perc 5i fit in a 3u case. (since the card plus cables and sit pretty high up.

Also WHS or Freenas/Openfiler.
 
yeah..... but with that many drives raid 5 may not be the best choice.

it might be, but a raid 6 array or some other type of array might be better....


i like WHS, i have had my motherboard die on my WHS and it was nice to be able to pull the drive and plug them into my other rig and have them readable.

I like the addins that are available
 
i got a bit of an update. I checked with a vendor i deal with. he can get both the ck12803 and 12804. He is checking about the 36 port bad boy sas expander. I am hoping to use the one controller with some sas cables. Also i don't run riad 5 or 6. I run raid 10 ( i like having the insane redundancy). The pricing on the expanders are 300 and 275 Canadian. The the price on the 24 port internal expander i am tempted to get one of those and the 4220 norco enclosure. i know perc's don't ahve a great track record for large number of attached drives i would assume it could handle 20 drives.
 
ok so i did some checking and it looks like the perc5i supports up to 32 drives per array. and since most norco cases don't go over 20 i should be fine. My next question is sourcing a SFF8484 to SFF8087 Sas cable. Since the connectors on the raid card are SF8484 and everything else is now SFF8087 or 8088 now. I found this one on newegg's site. Do you think it will work or are sas cables directional.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103190

Thanks, ( i really want to get this project off the ground). In the end of this card end's up not working i am also considering a 3ware 9690sa-4i.
 
ok so i did some checking and it looks like the perc5i supports up to 32 drives per array. and since most norco cases don't go over 20 i should be fine. My next question is sourcing a SFF8484 to SFF8087 Sas cable. Since the connectors on the raid card are SF8484 and everything else is now SFF8087 or 8088 now. I found this one on newegg's site. Do you think it will work or are sas cables directional.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103190

Thanks, ( i really want to get this project off the ground). In the end of this card end's up not working i am also considering a 3ware 9690sa-4i.

Adaptec made both a SFF8484->SFF8087 and a SFF8087->SFF8484 SKU, and both are differently priced so I'm going to with the assumption that it is directional.

I'll be getting a HP SAS expander by the end of the week and I have a set of supposed SFF8484->SFF8087 cables here already, so I can tell you this weekend whether the PERC 5i seems to work with it or not.
 
Chenbro should work with the Perc5/i because they both use LSI chips; whereas the HP uses a PMC expander chip.

Also Icdguy, BlueFox has two of the Chenbro SAS Expanders for sale so i would contact him.
 
ok so i did some looking and came across this online company. www.pc-pitstop.com. they seem to have the elusive cable i am looking for (SFF8484->SFF8087) Now the other question is should i get 2 cables and an external adapter so if i wanted i could get another norco later on and add more drives onto the one controller.
 
If you have the chenbro or HP SAS expander they both have an external port, so there is no need for an adapter.
 
i thought only the 12803 and 13601 have the external jacks the 12804 seems to only have internal ports. Maybe that's why the 12803 is $25 bucks more than the 12804. well then i guess i am looking at the 3U one with a 12803.
 
well now i am stuck between a rock and a hard place. Bluefox has given me a good price on the expander but so has my vendor. it looks like i will be looking at the 4220 afterall. :). Although it's going to feel a bit naked since i only have 9 drives on hand to put in the bad boy. But i am hoping that with the 36 port expander i will be able to later on get another 4220 and add them to the sas channel.
 
bit of a snag i have discovered. It looks like WHS is out since from the reading i have done it seems to not like hardware raid cards. Since my riad card does not have the capcity to act like a HBA there is no point in using any of WHS advanced drive clone features since it would just have the one large volume. So the next question is would a vanilla version of 2k4r2 be a better choice. I have played with both openfiler and freenas but do not like them since i am not very comfortable with linux in a catastrophic drive array failure on recovery.
 
i got a bit of an update. I checked with a vendor i deal with. he can get both the ck12803 and 12804. He is checking about the 36 port bad boy sas expander. I am hoping to use the one controller with some sas cables. Also i don't run riad 5 or 6. I run raid 10 ( i like having the insane redundancy). The pricing on the expanders are 300 and 275 Canadian. The the price on the 24 port internal expander i am tempted to get one of those and the 4220 norco enclosure. i know perc's don't ahve a great track record for large number of attached drives i would assume it could handle 20 drives.

whered you find the chenbros at and how much where they?
Ive been thinking about making the same switch with my perc 5i

good luck
 
it's through an old corporate vendor i used to deal with the owner. It's called desktop computers. They are bsed out of canada so i am not sure if he ships to the us or not. the prices were the following.

Ck12803 - $300
CK12804 - $275
CK13601 - $297 (special order only)

Those prices are in canadian funds.

I will let you know how it goes since i ordered the equipment today. Right away i will be populating it with my 8 1TB drives but i would like to slowly start to add 2TB drives to the array and eventually phase out the 1TB drives. so that on my raid 10 i'll have about 20TB of usable space which should suffice my needs for backups, dvd storage and vmware storage.
 
yes actually. i though i had posted that update already. but here goes.

I have ordered everything (except the additional 12 HDD to fill this puppy up. That will come later as i use storage. I am torn on the OS to use though. I am not sure if i should use my technet subscriptiosn for WSS2008 or WHS as i have been playing with WHS and really like the backup feature.

As for the parts i had to order them from 3 different vendors. since no single vendor had everything i was looking for. the biggest chunk of stuff should be arriving mid week as it had to be shipped across the country and i wasn't paying for air shipping.

Final Equipment

Norco 4220 Case
Corsair 850W HX powersupply
AMD X2 7550
Asus Nvidia based M-ATX Mobo
8x WD 1TB Black Editions (will expand to another 12 once i get more cash)
5x SFF 8087 to 8087 SAS Cables
1x SFF 8484 to 8087 SAS Cable
Chenbro CK12804 SAS Expander
Dell Perc 5i SAS/RAID Card
2GB G.skill Pc-6400 DDR2 Ram
Either WHS or WSS2008

I will post pictures once this stuff starts to come in.
 
well i got my norco case. Eveything looked good until i looked closer. I had some issues with the case being damaged. which was odd since the box was fine. I am trying to either get a new case shipped from ncix or given a significant discount. Also i have found the top panel is stuck (one of the push down tabs won't push down.) the other weird thing i don't get. My 2U norco case has metal rackmount handles. The 4u norco ahs plastic ones WTH.
 
right but i didn't buy the 4020 (wishing i had) i got the 4220 and it has plastic handles. Worse case scenario i go to home depot/rona/lowes and just get some replacement heavy duty handles.

On the other issues. the top panel was not stuck. i didn't check for screws since every rackmount case i have ever worked on that had the clips on the top panel was also not screwed in place.
 
update as to my damaged case. I have to wait for the courier (purolator) asses my claim which could take up to 30 days. I am now debating to bother with this hassle or just use the damaged case since as far as i can tell it's just superficial. The internal electornics appear un damaged. also as another note. It seems that the new norco rackmount cases are coming with plastic handles. (both my rpc230 and my rpc-4220 have them)
 
Back
Top