Interesting cheap JBODs available

Not really, but you could install a SAS2 expander in it, I think that is what you mean.

But your going to loose management and control of the enclosure, dunno if that even works for anyone, to detect fan failures, overheating.
 
Yea thats what I meant. You know of any that would fit without cutting on the front of it?
 
Bought one of these in a kit off of eBay that included the LSI-8888ELP and a SAS cable. I'm running it on WHS v1, which is a pain in the ass to use 3TB HDD's on anyway, so the LSI-8888ELP will be fine for now with 2TB HDD's.

Question for anyone who can tell me:
I forgot to buy the screws, so I'm looking at different auctions. Do I need "Undercut Low Profile" screw heads, or are the standard flat head ones fine. Here are two auctions with the differences:
Standard: Clicky

Undercut Low Profile: Clicky

Can someone who bought one of these confirm which one (or both) will work?
 
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Question for anyone who can tell me:
I forgot to buy the screws, so I'm looking at different auctions. Do I need "Undercut Low Profile" screw heads, or are the standard flat head ones fine. Here are two auctions with the differences:
Standard: Clicky

Undercut Low Profile: Clicky

Can someone who bought one of these confirm which one (or both) will work?


Sorry I can't answer regarding those ones, but see my post on the previous page of ones that I purchased which work:

Here you go: (Pick one)
http://discountechnology.com/Counter-Sunk-Screws-6-32-x-0-25-for-Dell-trays-x-100
http://discountechnology.com/Counte...25-with-100-degree-angle-for-Dell-trays-x-100

I ordered both as I wasn't sure which angle I needed and I was shipping to Canada so didn't want to have to order twice - however BOTH fit just fine and screw flush.

Cheers,
Mark
 
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Woah shipping charges are CRAZY to Canada for those screws. $20 for regular or $34 for priority. And they don't offer an option to ship using USPS instead of FedEx. I will continue to search for them elsewhere unless someone else can confirm the ebay listings I posted.

Thanks MarkL for the info, but $20 to ship a $10 purchase is just insane.
 
Bought one of these in a kit off of eBay that included the LSI-8888ELP and a SAS cable. I'm running it on WHS v1, which is a pain in the ass to use 3TB HDD's on anyway, so the LSI-8888ELP will be fine for now with 2TB HDD's.

Question for anyone who can tell me:
I forgot to buy the screws, so I'm looking at different auctions. Do I need "Undercut Low Profile" screw heads, or are the standard flat head ones fine. Here are two auctions with the differences:
Standard: Clicky

Undercut Low Profile: Clicky

Can someone who bought one of these confirm which one (or both) will work?

I bought http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-MCP-410-00005-0N-Screw-100PCS-Hotswap/dp/tech-data/B004P4ZGRO
$8 for 100 pcs since I have supermicro server case and es3016
 
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Hi,
This is exactly what I was looking for. Cheap and half size form factor! I am pretty much a newbie in storage server side of things, so please help me:
I would like to buy 4 of these boxes and plug them into a single server. I'm thinking of running a FreeNAS server - to serve media for my 4 htpcs (running XBMC) around the house. I have a brand new, still unopened SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCM-F-O, which has 2 (x8) PCI-E 2.0 in x8 slots and 2 (x4) PCI-E 2.0 in x8 slots and 2 (x4) PCI-E 2.0 in x8 slots.

Now the questions:
  1. Like I mentioned before, I want to buy 4 of these boxes and connect them all to one server. I have more than enough drives to fill these up straight way. Can this be done? Can these be connected to a single server? (I'm pretty sure they can, but I need to double check - that's how inexperienced I am in these things, sorry if it sounds stupid).
  2. From all the research I've done, I'm thinking of buying this HBA: LSI LSI00276 PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SATA / SAS 9201-16e Host Bus Adapter. My reasoning:
    • I do not want hardware RAID and probably never will.
    • LSI as a maker is good choice (from what I could gather from the internets over the years). They're good quality, good compatibility, etc. Or am I wrong?
    • This card has 4 x SFF-8088 mini-SAS connectors. Thats exatcly what I need to connect these 4 boxes, right?
    • This card enables me to connect all the boxes (all 64 drives!) on a single PCI-Express 2.0 x8 port on the motherboard. Using a single port saves other ports for whatever else - expansion (second HBA) or NICs or somesuch.
  3. Or is the fact, that I'm connecting so many drives to a single PCI-Express 2.0 x8 port actually a bad thing? Will this impact the performance too much, bottleneck, or create some other problems? Would I'd be better of with 2 cards or more? Bare in mind, I'm gonna be using this server to stream HD media to multiple htpc on a 1Gbit network, but thats about it. I would love to saturate that Gbit connection, though. (I really lack basic experience in these things).
  4. I read in numerous places, that ZFS and SAS expanders are a bad idea. Is this really that huge of a problem and still not fixed, that using these boxes with this card makes me unable to use zfs? Like I said, I wanted to try out FreeNAS.
  5. If the answer to previous question is that I'm unable to use zfs with this card, what other card/cards/combination of hardware could I buy to solve this problem and be able to use these 4 boxes plugged to a single server?
  6. Maybe for whatever other reason you think I'm better of with any other card(s) - price/quality, anything, please let me know. And why.
  7. If this is the card for me: provantage.com has it $100 cheaper than newegg.com. I never bought from them, how is provantage? It's quite a better deal though.
  8. Methiks, I'll be needing 4 of these cables from monoprice: 2m 28AWG External Mini SAS 26pin (SFF-8088) Male to Mini SAS 26pin (SFF-8088) Male Cable - Black. These should be long enough. Are these right type of cables?
  9. I've read people here talking about daisy-chaining these boxes. Does that mean I could connect all 4 boxes to a single SFF-8088 mini-SAS port on an HBA?
  10. If the answer to previous question is yes - I could plug oll 4 boxes to a single SAS port, I would understand the positives. I could buy a cheaper card, probably. But what would be the disadvantages of doing so, if any?
  11. I'm a windows guy and pretty much never tried anything else. I am very anxious to try out FreeNAS or any other flavor of ZFS (zfs is what I'm after for here). Although, I would very much like to be able to get back to windows if my endeavors to "cool land" fails miserably (a possibility). Will this setup be windows-proof?

Thanks in advance.
 
Instead of getting the LSI card you listed you can save some cash by getting an IBM M1015 off of eBay ($75 each) or two and one of these 2 port external SAS connector which will get you 4 external ports but if you are daisy chaining these into one big ZFS pool then you should only need 1 card. If you are looking for more performance then you can get 2 cards. If performance is your objective I would still go with 2 cards instead of the single 4 port card you have listed.

Keep in mind there are a few things about these cases:

  1. They are loud, so hopefully you have a server closet for these
  2. They have a single power supply, so with that many spinning drives it could be a problem
  3. They do the job, but they are NOT going to get you SuperMicro quality

We are using one of these in production for our VMware PHD Virtual backup storage and it's been working fine for over 6 months. It's not fast, but since we're just using them for backups it's not a huge issue. This was also an unplanned need for space for us and it saved us about $1400 by using SATA 2TB drives instead of needing the Dell branded 1TB SAS drives.

The single PSU would be my biggest worry if you plan to spin that many disks at once.
 
I'm quite happy with my SE 3016 ($200 incl shipping from MrRackables), that I bought a few months ago based on this thread. It runs 9x3TB RE4s (lot of 10 nib for $990 on ebay) in a RAIDz2 and a z1 for about 17TB of formatted storage off one connector on a Sun-branded 9211-8i. (<$150 on ebay)
The other (IR) connector on the card runs to a Vantec F4 4x2.5" hotswap (<$40 @ NewEgg) with 2 i520s and 2 i330s ($0.66/GB, ebay) via a Monoprice 8087 to 4x SATA breakout cable, because I do want 6G/S connections with SSDs.

The box that [H] built.
 
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@brianmat, thank you so much for for answers and suggestions.

Instead of getting the LSI card you listed you can save some cash by getting an IBM M1015 off of eBay ($75 each) or two and one of these 2 port external SAS connector which will get you 4 external ports but if you are daisy chaining these into one big ZFS pool then you should only need 1 card. If you are looking for more performance then you can get 2 cards. If performance is your objective I would still go with 2 cards instead of the single 4 port card you have listed.
I was planning on getting 2 of M1015s (I already have 2x AOC-SASLP-MV8 for x4 slots, that I used in my old setup in a Norco case), or maybe even getting 4 of M1015s just to avoid mixing (I know they would not be up the full potential in x4 slots). I found these boxes only yesterday and was in disbelief that they could be that cheap. I spent more than 24 hours just now reading and looking for the explanations, what the hell is up with them. I could not find any that made me want want them less, on the contrary. But I digress, I found these boxes and I saw, that I need these kind of "other/external" connections. I didn't even know I could get M1015s and use that brackety thing :) That.s awesome. I have read tons about M1015s - they're dirt cheap and everyone praises them.
2x M1015s + 2x Supermicro CBL-0168L-LP SAS 216EL2 thats about $250, which is about twice as cheap as the LSI card.
As for performance, I want to saturate 1 Gbit lan, that's about it.

Keep in mind there are a few things about these cases:
  1. They are loud, so hopefully you have a server closet for these
  2. They have a single power supply, so with that many spinning drives it could be a problem
  3. They do the job, but they are NOT going to get you SuperMicro quality
The single PSU would be my biggest worry if you plan to spin that many disks at once.
  1. Loudness - I'm gonna cut the backs and put larger and quieter fans, 3 if need be. Some wrote they did something about PSU fan as well.
  2. I think the boxes each come with a PSU included (or am I misunderstanding what you mean). I maybe wrong, but I think, the PSUs that come with them are meant to be enough to power 16 drives in that box. My plan is to daisy chain PSUs with Add2PSU probably. if it is ok, doing it like that - comments welcome and needed. I don't know, maybe these boxes must be turned on before the server is turned on - please let me know. If Add2PSU is ok - awesome.
  3. They look pretty damn good to me :) Especially after using Norco 4220. Half size form factor - love it. The most important thing, imho, that drives in these are getting way better cooling than the ones in Norco cases. I think I can plainly see that at least half of the front panel on the caddies are almost completely "open". IIRC someone said, that all he did was change the fans to same size quiter ones, without cuting the back and putting the quiter, but larger ones. That's very comforting. Anyway, for me to use as a home media server, I could not ask for a better solution, imho. At least, I have never seen/found a better until now.
I am even thinking about changing all 4 PSUs in all 4 cases to some better 80 Gold series, if I get them cheap/on sale some day. What you think?
 
I was pointing out that the power supplies are single PSUs and now redundant PSUs. Since our backup storage goes to tape every 2 days this wasn't a production concern for me, but that is in my opinion a pretty big single point of failure.

If you are streaming movies and such I wouldn't worry about saturating 1GbE unless you are streaming multiple blu ray rips at the same time. Even then I don't think it will be a problem.
 
I think most of us, whether SOHO or SMB, are gonna have these plugged into a UPS, maybe even a decent one with fairly clean power. This tends to add a statistically nontrivial positive to the MTBF of a typical PSU.

jus sayin... :D
 
But, if you look at 4 of these filled with drives (per the info in #248) then there could be potential issues if the whole drive cage goes out due to a power supply failure. Even in a SOHO or SMB environment a UPS will not fix this situation. Just something to think about.
 
But, if you look at 4 of these filled with drives (per the info in #248) then there could be potential issues if the whole drive cage goes out due to a power supply failure. Even in a SOHO or SMB environment a UPS will not fix this situation. Just something to think about.


Might justify one as a cold spare in that scenario, no?
I totally get your point though. A $$ system requires redundant PSUs and there's not a lot of way around that, nor should one be looking for one. :p
 
Nice. I'm starting to look for a new server for home as mines run out of space. How loud is that when it's powered up? Hopefully it's not a jet engine. Does it look like you can replace the fans in it?
 
OK, scratch my last question. Serves me right for not reading first. :p

But, would a LSI SAS3801E work for this? It already has 2 external 8088 ports. I'll just be doing software RAID most likely. And, since it has 2 ports, I could even get another one later on to plug in. It looks like it should work without a problem. I'm going to be streaming movies, so the bandwidth should be OK. Just will have to swap out the fans, and maybe the PSU in there.
 
Has anyone had luck changing out the PSU for this? The mounting for it isn't standard, so I don't think superglue would be a good idea. ;-)
I switched out the 2 80mm fans for some quieter ones, and that did seam to help a lot. Now I just want to get rid of the power supply whine.
 
Has anyone had luck changing out the PSU for this? The mounting for it isn't standard, so I don't think superglue would be a good idea. ;-)
I switched out the 2 80mm fans for some quieter ones, and that did seam to help a lot. Now I just want to get rid of the power supply whine.

replace PSU 40mm Fan with lower RPM :).....as I did

if you need to mount regular PSU, mount it with industrial/heavy strength double sided tape 3M. the tape color is reddish.
you have to figure out the cables..
 
What determines hard drive capacity compatibility? The expander or the RAID card it's plugged into?

Thinking about these boxes for my upcoming storage server revamp and I'd like to be able to use 3 and 4 TB drives in JBOD with WHS 2011.
 
What determines hard drive capacity compatibility? The expander or the RAID card it's plugged into?

Thinking about these boxes for my upcoming storage server revamp and I'd like to be able to use 3 and 4 TB drives in JBOD with WHS 2011.

your HBA/RAID card must supports 3T and 4T drive. :p
 
replace PSU 40mm Fan with lower RPM :).....as I did

OK, I picked up a 40x40x10 SilientX fan this morning. Get the case of the PSU off, and swap it out. The pins won't fit on the header. So, I ran the cable outside of the PSU, and plugged it into one of my other fans. It powers up for about 5 seconds, then dies. I'm guessing that it's stopping because it doesn't see the fan.

So, cantalup, what fan did you get? or did you just change out the header somehow?
While it was running it was nice and quite. ;)
 
OK, I picked up a 40x40x10 SilientX fan this morning. Get the case of the PSU off, and swap it out. The pins won't fit on the header. So, I ran the cable outside of the PSU, and plugged it into one of my other fans. It powers up for about 5 seconds, then dies. I'm guessing that it's stopping because it doesn't see the fan.

So, cantalup, what fan did you get? or did you just change out the header somehow?
While it was running it was nice and quite. ;)

cut the cable and do little soldering :D.

PSU will shut down when does not sense fan rotation(yellow cable) . this assumes that the fan is not functional.
 
cut the cable and do little soldering :D.

PSU will shut down when does not sense fan rotation(yellow cable) . this assumes that the fan is not functional.

How come I knew you were going to say something like that. :rolleyes: Guess I get to brush up on my soldering skills. :D
 
I'm planning a 48 drives storage server for this year, with 2 Norco 4224 and 2 HP expanders, but I'm wondering if 3*SE3016 wouldn't cost me far less even considering the high cost of importing them to France.

2 Norco + 2 expanders + 2 PSU => ~1350&#8364;, maybe 200&#8364; more if I need an HP controller to upgrade the expanders.

3*SE3016 ~450&#8364;, let's say 450&#8364; more for shipping and taxes, the difference still almost pays me the server guts (that I can put in a case I have lying around).

What do you think ?
 
Well I got bored after reading this thread...

Heres the webpage for the prodcut before it was pull off line in 2009 they were released in 2007
http://web.archive.org/web/20091010...ble.com/products/storage/omnistor/se3016.html

I doubt there are any real manuals for this thing it looks like it's meant to be for the most part dumb device that's part of a larger storage array solution not an individual part. The data sheet is 4156.pdf which likely covered the all external storage expansion products but its more of a product sales guide then anything useful.

Just like the storage server datasheets
http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4157.pdf
http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4158.pdf

Websites info is mostly useless
OmniStor SE3016: Half-Depth SAS Expansion Storage Solution
The OmniStor SE3016 provides a SAS-attached external expansion solution, in a 3U half-depth rack-mount chassis, with 16 SAS or SATA-II hot swap disk drives. Host servers may daisy chain up to six SE3016 systems per server controller card, which provides a rack-density up to 432TB.

Product Highlights: •SAS-attached external expansion storage
•Half-depth 3U rack-mount chassis
•Up to 16 SAS or SATA-II hot-swap disk drives per system
•Up to 16.0TB of storage capacity (SATA II) per chassis
•Up to 32 disk drives and 32.0TB of storage capacity per 3U of rack space
•Connect up to three SE3016 systems to a single server host per SAS daisy chain, or up to six per RAID adapter

Model SE3016
Chassis Profile 3U half-depth chassis
Chassis Mount Half-depth back-to-back for double density, or 2-post from center mount
Host Interfaces Two external SFF-8088 mini-SAS interfaces (front cabled)
Disk Drive Options Up to 16 hot-swappable 3.5" SAS or SATA II drives or SSDs
Max. Capacity Up to 16.0TB (with 1TB SATA II drives)
RAID Support Compatible with server-based SAS RAID and JBOD cards
Power Supply Auto-switching 100-240 VAC or -48 VDC
Dimensions (H x W x D) 5.25" x 17" x 15.5"
 
Hello all,
I have been trying to figure out a performance issue with one of these units. It is connected to a 8888ELP card, and has 16x1TB drives in a Raid6 configuration. The 8888ELP has another SAS expander(chenbro) connected to it with 12x1TB drives in same Raid6 configuration. I set them up as seperate virtual drives just for testing. If I combine all of the 28 drives into one raid set the best I get is around 17MByte/s write performance. WHen I seperate them like I mentioned about I get about 300MB/s on the set that is connected to the chenbro set, but can never go over 10MB/s on the rackable unit. I tried the unit just by itself and same thing I can never go over 14MB/s even with a raid0 set. I have the latest FW installed on the 8888elp card. My sas expander in the rackable unit has something similar to a date code starting with 2002, anyone has any ideas or recommendations? My appreciations and thanks in advance.
 
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So I just received one of those, a little bit unexpected but it was on eBay in Europe so I could avoid 500$ of shipping. I had no time to prepare so I can't plug the thing since I have an M1015 card, no SFF8088 connector. The cheapest (and most direct) route seems to be a 1m 8087=>8088 cable, should I order that or is it not recommended ?
 
that should work. i got an adapter bracket that has an 8088 socket on the outside part of the bracket and an 8087 socket on the pci-e card itself. a very short 8087/8087 cable then goes between m1015 and adapter. works fine.
 
So I just received one of those, a little bit unexpected but it was on eBay in Europe so I could avoid 500$ of shipping. I had no time to prepare so I can't plug the thing since I have an M1015 card, no SFF8088 connector. The cheapest (and most direct) route seems to be a 1m 8087=>8088 cable, should I order that or is it not recommended ?

Who was selling them on eBay in Europe or was it just a one off you saw? I've just ordered the 1U server and 2 3U chassis from Unix Surplus in the US, cost $330 shipping to the UK which wasn't too bad, certainly the total cost of about £650 for the server plus 32 drive bays was a lot cheaper than anything I could buy here. But if someone's selling them in Europe I'd be interested to see if the cost is any cheaper than getting them from the US.
 
It was a one off but now the seller is telling me he might have others, I guess he ordered several from the US. It was 280&#8364; + 55&#8364; UPS shipping from Italy, I was the only bidder. 330$ is not too bad, the other trouble though is taxes.

http://cgi.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...eName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

danswartz : yes I considered this (with 2 8087 and 2 8088) and at first only found expensive ones but after lots of ebay searching I see one can be had for a reasonable amount, and cheap 8087-8087 cables too, so I will probably buy that for my next enclosures, although for that first one I went to the cheapest route of a 8087-8088 cable from HK.
 
Hmm, so he's selling it at &#8364;335 incl shipping, the guys in the US are selling at $325 incl shipping. So in £'s that's roughly £282 (Eur) vs £212 (US). Even with 20% VAT at customs that would add £40. OK don't feel so bad now, thought I might have missed on a much cheaper deal.

Anyone using one of these with a Dell 6Gbps HBA SAS card? I've got one of them to replace the LSI 8888 as it can't handle >2TB drives.
 
Did you order on the website or eBay ? If on the website does shipping costs appear during the process or did you inquire ?
 
I contacted them via one of their eBay auctions, a guy called Justin, really helpful. He agreed to swap the LSI RAID card included with the 1U server and replace with a 2nd CPU and an extra 8GB RAM. For the 3U drive chassis the shipping cost to the UK was $130 with the chassis costing $195. I ended up ordering direct with UnixSurplus rather than through eBay, guess that saved them on the eBay costs but still paid via Paypal.
 
OK thanks, when I have some money for my next one I'll see what they offer then.
 
I've finally received the 8087<=>8088 cable from HK. The JBOD works fine, however the hairdryer noise is astounding. I can replace the 80mm fans easily, are they making most of the noise ? And are the drives cooled enough with less powerful fans ? I also have a 40mm fan (currently used to move air on my M1015) but I feel it's too slow for the PSU so I'll order another one.

Also, some of the caddies are very hard to operate, I worry they'll break, have you had this problem ?
 
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