Next iteration of SFF NAS

So, don't know if you saw my SFF FreeNAS build, but it was a neat way for me to learn FreeNAS and ZFS with a little bit of tweaking but nothing crazy in terms of the modifications and custom work. 40TB RAW in 17L.

Well, that one is 18 months old and I'm moving into a much smaller living space, so it's time to try again. The goal for this iteration is 40TB RAW in less than 4L while still running a Z2 array (Z1 would be insane at modern rebuild durations).

Initial idea for the system is going to be 10x Seagate 4TB 2.5" drives on their sides underneath the motherboard with 3x 60mm fans blowing on them for ventilation, the same motherboard and ram from the last build (ASRock C2550D4I and 32GB of unregistered ECC), but going from the SFX PSU to a 160w Picopsu. This will require sequential spin-up, which ASRock has kindly added to the mobo's bios since I built the last system. Even then, 5V is going to be darn tight.

Any ideas for cases? I don't think there is anything out there built for this setup, but if there is a box that is of the right dimensions (~185mm width, ~175mm depth, ~120mm height), I might be able to make it work. Guess I could always print a prototype and see where we stand.

I have not see anything, but have been looking for something similar.
I have been debating building a case that has 8x 3.5 Hotswap bays and 4x2.5 hotswap bays. Anyways subbed for interest.

You can make it smaller by switching to seagate's 5TB drives and using 8 instead of 10 in four stacks of two beneath the motherboard, with the connectors facing in toward the center. This will increase the width but cut down the height considerably. Factoring in motherboard height, 25mm on one side for fans, 20mm between each stack of drives for cables, and a few mm between each drive for air flow, I get a rough estimate of about 3.5 liters (220mm * 195mm * 95mm).

I could, but 5TB means SMR vs. PMR and then I wouldn't get the 2 drives of redundancy for Z2

edited to add: well, I guess I could still get Z2, but it would be at the expense of 10TB of RAW space vs. 8TB.

Silverstone CS-01HS is the closest you are going to get prebuilt most likely. Has room for 8 x 2.5" drives. I just set one up I am currently using an old 840PRO for the OS drive and 4x5TB Seagate drives. It is a bit larger than you are looking for at 210x210x320. It is a pretty nice case though and the hot swap bays work pretty well.

If you are buying new drives you can get the Seagate Portable drives. They are usually like 30-40% cheaper and you can remove the drives from the case pretty easily.

oh yeah, totally shucking backup pluses to get the ST4000LM016 drives

I rewrote this for you quite a few times, I believe I have now the best configuration for a custom case.

Pile the ten disks on top of each other, leaving a 4mm air gap between them. That's 186mm high. Make this disk chamber 81.5mm wide (instead of the mandatory 70mm), this allows a Flex ATX PSU vertically behind the disks. Use Silverstone CP11 SATA cables to have enough space for two slim 80mm fans in front for airflow. The PSU is 40mm, the disks are 100mm, you need to split the remaining 30mm between cabling and PSU, I think the CP11 is low profile enough even for 15mm fans, if not, 10mm fans are available, check this thread. The PSU blocks the air exiting in the back but you can leave holes to the left for the air to leave.

The motherboard is vertical on the right, I guess it needs 1U aka 44.45mm. This makes the case 186mm high, 170mm deep, 125.95mm wide which is just below 4L -- but you have a real PSU hiding in there. The big question is whether the 186-150=36mm is enough for the PSU cables to turn.

Once I run down some specs on the drives themselves, I'll get the requisite # of them (just need to confirm no SMR... even the hybrid SMR/PMR drives that seagate is making now will crush resilvers in FreeNAS, that's what I'm trying to avoid). I'll hook them up to the bronze silverstone SFX psu I used in the last iteration and throw a clamp meter over the 5v line. Get sequential spin up working and see where we stand on 5v peak and sustained load -- that should tell me if the pico will be a viable solution


edited to add: it appears that the 2017 versions of the backup plus are actually sporting ST4000LM024's instead of ST4000LM016's which means SMR is starting to creep into the gene pool..... Might have to start hitting ebay and pawn shops, lol.

Power test complete (Klein clamp meter logging the whole time). The system never went over 6.00A on the 5V line with sequential spin up enabled, tested scrubs, resilvers, plex, etc.

So, moving on to the next stage. Going to swap out the SFX psu for a pico 160-xt (only one which gives a decent amount of 5v headroom) and a 10A/12V brick and run the tests again in a couple weeks. If all goes well, then it will be time to design the drive mounting aluminum brackets and get them cnc'd

For the sake of simplicity, I think I'm just going to re-use the Neutronium case (lian-li q-02) rather than build something new... running out of time to get this together before the move date arrives. Still not a bad reduction in volume, 18L to 7L (if it works).

I used to build my own tiny enclosures for my NAS, using intel thin-itx motherboards. Then I bought a u-nas nsc-800 case, and haven't looked back. It's the closest you're going to get to a synology or qnap like form-factor (saving you 1000's of dollars). http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17617

True, but I prefer the ECC ram (and passive cooling) of the avoton boards -- the one I've got doesn't require an expansion card to support 10 drives either, which is pretty nice). It's not a supermicro, but it's something, lol!

Pico finally arrived.

Some quick soldering and we're off on the shakedown cruise. Boot w/ staggered spinup was no issue (surprisingly for 10x drives with a 1.2A spinup label, lol), will let it settle for a while and then scrube, then do a resilver and see if it holds up. Yep, that's a Pico 160-XT (with a 8.33A 12vdc brick) running 10x 2.5" drives

Already have the drive mounting brackets for the Q02 designed and did a fit test w/ prototypes, so I will send them to the CNC once we're sure the power side of the house is up to snuff.

Going to be very tight in the Q02 and I have a feeling I'm going to have to ensure that the pico has direct cooling from a case fan to keep it working!

Got everything buttoned up... holy cow is that an installation nightmare.... have to build the HDD brick inside the case (mounting bracket is too big to get in case with HDDs attached), had to rebuild a fan bracket to get the 120mm and 80mm fans pointed at the right things, mobo goes in last...

HDD temps are right around 30C and CPU tems are between 45-50C. We'll see how it holds up

interesting ideas,

if ever i am well enough maybe i can throw a case together again. these card board mockups are a mess of mine

Made some final tweaks: a pcie-slot bracket for the power connector, added thumbscrews to the internal side of all the drive mounts (or ease of drive swapping, if it ever becomes necessary), and swapped out the black and the red SATA cables for matching blue ones because I have CDO.

I'll close this for now, feel free to PM me if you've got questions on build considerations, mechanics, etc.