• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Chassis options?

S

Shaun_Dark_Lord

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
74
Hi All

One of my NAS boxes at work had a major paddy yesterday - It was due an upgrade, so I've decided to give it some serious attention.

At the moment, it's a 3U box with 8 SATA drives. I'd like to go to at least 20 3 1/2" drives, while stsaying rack mounted. I can just abour squeeze a 5U box into the rack, but 4U would be easier.

The SuperMicro SC846TQ-R900B looks like the obvious choice - But what are the alternatives?

Thanks

Shaun
 
Found this case;

5deangledopen.jpg


http://www.pcicase.co.uk/rackmount.ihtml?pid=779&step=4

Looks quite nice - Gonna give them a call to find out price.............
 
Shaun_Dark_Lord said:
Looks quite nice - Gonna give them a call to find out price.............
Click to expand...


Don't waste your time, here, I'll help you $5,000-6,000 :p


As for the case recomendation, you can't find anything better priced than the Norco 4020.
 
Shaun_Dark_Lord said:
Saw a case very similar to that called an "X-Case 420";
http://www.xcase.co.uk/p/445733/x-case-rm-420---20-drive-sata-ii-hotswap---inc-rails-optional-psusuks-lowest-priced-multidisk-4u-.html

Looked OK, but the price concerned me a bit - seemed too cheap...........

Think I'll go for this;

http://www.pcicase.co.uk/images/rackmount/c5eangle.jpg

http://www.pcicase.co.uk/files/rackmount/ipc-c5e-xp.pdf

Will throw in 24 1TB WD drives, two Areca 1680ix-16 controllers with 4GB cache on each - should be good.
Click to expand...

That's another $4000 case. Apart from the Norco 4020, you won't find anything decent under $1000. You may also want to reconsider the 1680ix-16 if you are using WD drives. Also, where did you manage to find a 4gb stick of ECC DDR2? Only one I've found so far was going for $700. Might also want to get the battery backup if you get the increased cache.
 
I'm spending around £6500 on other components - don't really want to scrimp on the case / backplane.

The case I've gone for is £1300 - which is a bit less than $4000

What's up with the 1680ix-16 with the WD drives?

4GB sticks of ECC DDR2 are available from Dabs.com over here in Blighty.
 
That's still quite a lot. Was it the Supermicro one? Ockie had one of those, but if you spent that much on it, it would be cheaper to fly across the pond and pick one up here (or maybe I can ship one to you? :p). It's less than half that here. As for the Areca controller, they are very picky about drives, and the SAS one more so than the SATA ones. As far as I know, only the Seagate NS drives work with it without issues. My 1280ML isn't nearly as picky, but it still doesn't really like WD drives (even if you do the TLER fix, nothing is guaranteed).
 
I haven't ordered anything yet - I do like the WD drives, as they've given me no problems in the past. And I do like the upgrade options on the Areca............

The Seagate drives are £20 more per drive - £480 total - That's pretty much the cost of upgrading to the 1280ML's but then I loose the ability to add external storage.............

How good are the Seagate NS drives?

The 1TB NS drive costs £20 more than the 1.5TB AS - Am I to assume that the NS is the enterprise/RAID version?
 
Shaun_Dark_Lord said:
I haven't ordered anything yet - I do like the WD drives, as they've given me no problems in the past. And I do like the upgrade options on the Areca............

The Seagate drives are £20 more per drive - £480 total - That's pretty much the cost of upgrading to the 1280ML's but then I loose the ability to add external storage.............

How good are the Seagate NS drives?

The 1TB NS drive costs £20 more than the 1.5TB AS - Am I to assume that the NS is the enterprise/RAID version?
Click to expand...
Why would you need 2 1280MLs? They are 24 port, not 16 each, so one will suffice for a 24 bay case. You can always get a second controller that is external only (1210ML/1220ML). 1280ML + 1220ML = same number of internal and external ports as 2 x 1680ix-16 (on the 1680ix-16, if you use the external port, the last 4 internal ones are disabled as far as I know). The NS drives are the enterprise version of the AS drives and are just as good, if not better. Also, with the WD drives, unless you get the RAID edition ones, you'll need to do the TLER fix for each one.
 
Blue Fox said:
That's another $4000 case. Apart from the Norco 4020, you won't find anything decent under $1000. You may also want to reconsider the 1680ix-16 if you are using WD drives. Also, where did you manage to find a 4gb stick of ECC DDR2? Only one I've found so far was going for $700. Might also want to get the battery backup if you get the increased cache.
Click to expand...

double rank: http://shop.kingston.com/PartsInfo.asp?ktcpartno=KVR667D2D4P5/4G
single rank: http://shop.kingston.com/PartsInfo.asp?ktcpartno=KVR667D2S4P5/4G
 
Blue Fox said:
Why would you need 2 1280MLs? They are 24 port, not 16 each, so one will suffice for a 24 bay case. You can always get a second controller that is external only (1210ML/1220ML). 1280ML + 1220ML = same number of internal and external ports as 2 x 1680ix-16 (on the 1680ix-16, if you use the external port, the last 4 internal ones are disabled as far as I know). The NS drives are the enterprise version of the AS drives and are just as good, if not better. Also, with the WD drives, unless you get the RAID edition ones, you'll need to do the TLER fix for each one.
Click to expand...

I want a decent level of redundancy - therefore two RAID controllers. I mentioned two 1289MLs, as you'd said they work better with the WD drives.

I only buy the RAID edition WD's - Does the 1680ix have a problem with them or not?
 
Shaun_Dark_Lord said:
I want a decent level of redundancy - therefore two RAID controllers. I mentioned two 1289MLs, as you'd said they work better with the WD drives.

I only buy the RAID edition WD's - Does the 1680ix have a problem with them or not?
Click to expand...
Well, you can get 2 x 1231ML instead and 1 x 1220ML then (same number of internal/external ports). As for the WD RE drives, I'm not 100% sure about them and the 1680ix series. You might try asking over on 2CPU.
 
Think I'll just go for the Seagate drives - Spoke to my account manager, and he reduced them down to the price of the WD's.

Sooo - Think I'll be ordering this;

c5eangle.jpg


2* Areca ARC-1680ix-16
2* Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC R KVR667D2D4F5/4G
2* Areca ARC-6120-BAT-1
24* 1TB (1000 GB) Seagate ST31000340NS
2* 300 GB Western Digital WD3000HLFS
2* Intel Quad-Core Xeon L5335
1* Intel Server Board S5000PSL
2* Crucial 4GB (2X2GB KIT) CT2KIT25672AF66
1* Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad Port Server Adapter
 
The case arrived this morning - It's very heavy without anything in it!

The backplane uses SFF-8087 connectors, so cabling should be nice and neat.

I should have all the components next week, so will give my final verdict on the case then.
 
Ouch, you spent an assload on that case. I would have recommended a Supermicro if I knew your budget for a case was that high.
 
To me, it's worth an assload - I need reliability as much as I need capacity and scalability - Four PSU's in a chassis of this size is pretty impressive.
 
Why'd you get a 5000 series board and clovertowns instead of a 5400 series with harpertowns? L5410s should be cheaper then L5335s and they're faster.
 
I've used a lot of 5000's in my server builds - That means i) I know they work flawlessly in Netware 6.5. ii) I don't have to stock too many spares.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top