Interesting cheap JBODs available

Still somewhat noisier with different fans but much less so. Some of the caddies do tend to be picky, but I am only using 6 of the 16 so I didn't mind. Same reason as not worrying about cooling...
 
Aesma said:
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 ?
Click to expand...

Changing the 80mm fans does help quite a bit, but the PSU fan (Which is internal) runs at 10K RPM, and makes a lot of noise too.

I personally replaced the 80mm fans with 120mm ones (Had to Mod the case a bit). In my case, all I did was drill new holes for the 120mm fitting, and left the "opening" for 80mm size. I didn't have anything on hand to cut away that much sheet metal. Still works fine, and still moves a lot of air.

I also replaced the PSU fan with a 40mm Noctua Fan and now my SE3016 is whisper quiet. It's in my living room along with my server and HTPC, and you can't hear it at all when sitting on the couch several feet away.

Note: You have to Mod the 40mm replacement fan too, as a non-standard connector is used by the original PSU fan. All you need to do is cut off the old connector from the old fan, and splice/wire it up to the new fan. Soldering it would be best, but I just spliced the wires and used electrical tape, and it still works perfectly fine. Just match the black and red wires to their same colours, and the blue and yellow ones to each other. You need to have the replacement fan plugged in using the original connector, otherwise the Expander won't power up.

As for some of the Caddies being hard to operate, I have that too with some. I believe they are just really stiff. I just work them really hard if they are stiff. I'm not too worried about breaking them, as they seem pretty solid. I'm hoping eventually they'll loosen up a bit. If I do break any of them, I'm pretty sure you can find replacement caddies on eBay for dirt cheap.
 
dalek, thanks. do you have a link to the PS fan you bought? that is the single loudest thing in my IT corner right now :)
 
danswartz said:
dalek, thanks. do you have a link to the PS fan you bought? that is the single loudest thing in my IT corner right now :)
Click to expand...

Hey Danswartz, this is the fan that I bought:

Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX 40mm Quiet Cooling Fan

It's a bit pricey ($14 in Canada), but it had the best performance characteristics of 40mm fan's that I could find. Apparently 40mm is NOT a popular fan size!

You can Fractal Design, and GELID ones too, but their specs are: 1) Louder (Higher dBA), and 2) Lower CFM, at least for the ones I found. So even though I wanted quiet, I also wanted as powerful as I could get.

Drive temps seem good, and the air coming out the back of the case is not too hot, which is a good sign.
 
Ah thanks. I see the same unit on amazon for $15.37. If I find another $10 to spend, free shipping too...
 
Thanks for the answer. I'm good with my hands and have the tools (dremel) as I've been doing mods for a long time, not for aesthetics but performance or noise, for example shaping a wooden floor board into a retention system for a custom waterblock :d Don't have much time home at the moment though, that's why I'll just switch the 80mm fans to start.

As for drive temps, they're not being reported in MegaRAID, and the thing alerts me about that.
 
I replaced the 80mm fans, those are really big and heavy ! 4.6W, more than several common 120mm fans combined.

The strident PSU fan noise is still there and louder than I expected, but at least there is less air noise and I think that's what made my ears bleed. I ordered a 5&#8364; fan with free shipping as this is a cheap project, no Noctua allowed !

I'm thinking that PSU fan is really unnecessary in a home environment though, it must be designed for extreme conditions, I'm contemplating using the 3-4CFM 40mm I have and drilling holes in the PSU cover.
 
I have to second what they say. Just swap out the fans, and you'll be good. I still hear mine, but I'm using a cheaper 40mm fan so it's a bit louder then it can be. Once I rack it in my closet, I don't think I'll be able to here it in the same room.
 
Aesma said:
... I'm thinking that PSU fan is really unnecessary in a home environment though, it must be designed for extreme conditions, I'm contemplating using the 3-4CFM 40mm I have and drilling holes in the PSU cover.
Click to expand...

I would most definitely say that A PSU fan is required. You don't necessarily need to get the best performing 40mm fan, but you need SOMETHING at least.

These cases can heat up pretty rapidly if not cooled, especially if you end up filling the rack up with 16 drives. Because all the fans are at the back of the case, those 16 drives need to reply on air pressure sucking in air through the front, past them, out the back.

While the PSU fan won't help cool the HDD's directly, it will help keep your VERY IMPORTANT power circuitry alive. That tiny little PSU is a 500 watter (I think anyway, 500 watts at minimum), with one tiny little 40mm fan to keep it cool. Look at the average PSU for a desktop, and most are cooled by a 120mm fan, and even the passive ones have MASSIVE internal heatsinks.

I took mine apart to swap the 40mm fan, and there aren't any heatsinks to speak of inside of it. If you look at compact Server rackmount PSU's, they all use super powerful fans that run at 10k RPM or higher sometimes. Also keep in mind Server Racks are usually kept in a climate controlled room with A/C, that cools the air, in addition to whatever fans the case has.

So, don't forget to give the PSU fan a little love too :p
 
I meant that specific fan is unnecessary, sorry. Since then I have opened the PSU (how many screws can you put on such a small thing ?) and it's a 450W unit, although with the drives I'm using I should be under 200W (I will measure that later). It's my first "server" PSU, and it is indeed cramped, but I do see a big heatsink, copper colored, with a pad to make it dissipate on the PSU cover. The fan was covered by the SAS cable so I'll pay attention when putting the PSU back to prevent that from happening.

Once I had removed every screw and the fan, I realized I actually don't have a 40mm fan but a 60mm, so I'm left looking stupid. Then I remember I have this resistor thing provided with a fan or a PSU, that will drop the speed of a fan. I splice cables and indeed it works, the fan stays noisy but tolerable, and should be even better once in the case. But alas, that resistor is getting burning hot, so I'm not sure that's a good idea.

BTW that fan says 12V 0.6A, that's a whopping 7,2W, for such a tiny thing ! By comparison the fan I ordered is a 0,6W and the Noctua is a 0,5W.
 
I bought 2 of these units

Can anybody tell me if I could connect this unit to a HP P410 unit? Or could perhaps someone suggest an nice cheap alternative?
 
Obiwantje said:
I bought 2 of these units

Can anybody tell me if I could connect this unit to a HP P410 unit? Or could perhaps someone suggest an nice cheap alternative?
Click to expand...

Yes you should be able to use your controller card with the SE3016, however, since it looks like the HP 410 only has internal connectors, you'll need to snake the cable out the back of your case before you can connect it to the SE3016.

Also, you should consult the documentation on the HP 410, to check its verified compatibility list for Expanders. Most manufacturers have that listed on their website under product documents.

A nice cheap alternative would be something like an IBM m1015 (Which is a rebranded LSI 9211 with IBM firmware installed). These can be had on eBay for very cheap, and some models are able to be re-flashed with the LSI 9211 firmware for added functionality.
 
P410 will limit you to 2TB drives.

You need a 8087-8088 cable like I bought, or a backplane doing the conversion.
 
I picked up a 9201-8i and a Dell 6GBps HBA card for under 100 each on ebay. The dell card worked great in omnios since its LSI based.
 
I got the serial port working. The trick was that the cable connecting the front panel 8P8C modular connector to the SAS expander board is connected incorrectly. If you take the (rainbow colored) ribbon cable where it plugs in to the header connector labeled RS232 on the SAS expander board and rotate it 180 degrees and plug it in, the front panel connector will work with a Cisco 8P8C to DB25 or DB9 adapter.

The console responded at 115Kbps 8n1 and had no login required.

If you look at the other ribbon cables connecting to the SAS expander, you'll note that all of them have the cable go over the top before looping back into the connector. By contrast, the ribbon cable for the serial port has all the wires go directly in to the connector from the side the cable comes from. When you add in that the header connector on the ribbon cable for the serial port is not keyed, I can only assume this was connected incorrectly on purpose to prevent end users from using the serial port, while still being easy for the manufacturer's support personnel to switch around so they could get at the serial port.

I will post photos later.
 
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Aesma said:
P410 will limit you to 2TB drives.

You need a 8087-8088 cable like I bought, or a backplane doing the conversion.
Click to expand...

P410 support 3TB, has been running for months with 7 3TB .
you need to upgrade the firmware that support HD larger than 2TB...
 
somethingwitty said:
I got the serial port working. The trick was that the cable connecting the front panel 8P8C modular connector to the SAS expander board is connected incorrectly. If you take the (rainbow colored) ribbon cable where it plugs in to the header connector labeled RS232 on the SAS expander board and rotate it 180 degrees and plug it in, the front panel connector will work with a Cisco 8P8C to DB25 or DB9 adapter.

The console responded at 115Kbps 8n1 and had no login required.

If you look at the other ribbon cables connecting to the SAS expander, you'll note that all of them have the cable go over the top before looping back into the connector. By contrast, the ribbon cable for the serial port has all the wires go directly in to the connector from the side the cable comes from. When you add in that the header connector on the ribbon cable for the serial port is not keyed, I can only assume this was connected incorrectly on purpose to prevent end users from using the serial port, while still being easy for the manufacturer's support personnel to switch around so they could get at the serial port.

I will post photos later.
Click to expand...

Score. Is it too early to say I want to have your children? :D I had to turn hardware flow control off.

Now to see if I can get it to turn on when power's restored.
 
Does anyone have any wattage information on these SE3016 units?

I'm trying to keep from adding to much 24/7 consumption to my home rack. Right now my plan is to upgrade using a 4u case (the norco one with the 12 front drive bay adapters). I could use a PICO psu if I did it that way and really limit power consumption, but its hard to beat the value on these units!!

Also. can you bypass the expander and just use a few 8088 cables instead? I think using an expander with SATA disks is a no-no with ZFS right?

Thanks!
 
JeffBlair said:
Score. Is it too early to say I want to have your children? :D I had to turn hardware flow control off.
Click to expand...
Thanks, but I don't want any more kids. My youngest two are finally graduating high school next week.

Yeah, hardware flow control had to be off.

JeffBlair said:
Now to see if I can get it to turn on when power's restored.
Click to expand...

I haven't figured this one out yet either, but it is on my list.
 
somethingwitty said:
I haven't figured this one out yet either, but it is on my list.
Click to expand...

Yeah, after playing with it for a bit, I couldn't find it either. And, I've never been able to find any docs on the commands out there. I'm sure it can be done, just need to know what flag to change in there.
 
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JeffBlair said:
Yeah, after playing with it for a bit, I couldn't find it either. And, I've never been able to find any docs on the commands out there. I'm sure it can be done, just need to know what flag to change in there.
Click to expand...
I figured it out. On the little power board (about 1.5 inch square mounted to the bottom of the chassis) there is a jumper J3. If you connect the two pins of J3 to the first two pins of J1 where the front panel power switch normally connects, the system will power on a couple seconds after applying power.
 
Here are the photos I promised. Click on them for larger images.

This is the way the serial cable is connected as shipped:

This is the way the serial cable has to be connected to work:

This is the power board in the bottom of the chassis: You can clearly see J1 and J3 labeled on the board. If you jumper the two pins of J3 to the left (in the photo) to the two pins of J1, the unit will power on a couple seconds after applying power.
 
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Could you post a larger pic of the power board? I see the J3 and J1 jumpers, but I don't see how you connected them. Or, did you just take out the 2 wires from the connector, and hook them up to J1?

edit:
Never mind, I found the full sized one. Guess I have to figure out a good way to jumper them.
 
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JeffBlair said:
Could you post a larger pic of the power board? I see the J3 and J1 jumpers, but I don't see how you connected them. Or, did you just take out the 2 wires from the connector, and hook them up to J1?

edit:
Never mind, I found the full sized one. Guess I have to figure out a good way to jumper them.
Click to expand...
I'm probably going to leave the front power switch disconnected and just use a two pin cable from J3 to where the power switch is connected on J1. But I do plan to connect the power LED back up.

But all that has to wait. I'm headed out of town for a week. I will update when I am back and able to work on it some more.
 
Any long term ZFS users for this DAS?
Just asking has there been any problems or such with ZFS + SE3016 combination?

Cheap boxes indeed and easy to silence?
 
I've been running this combo for almost a year now with zero issues. I haven't yet done the PS fan mod, since it's a hassle, but I do now have the parts for it...
 
somethingwitty said:
I'm probably going to leave the front power switch disconnected and just use a two pin cable from J3 to where the power switch is connected on J1. But I do plan to connect the power LED back up.

But all that has to wait. I'm headed out of town for a week. I will update when I am back and able to work on it some more.
Click to expand...

For some reason this isn't working for me. I've got it jumped from J3 to where it's connected on J1 for the power(2 pins farthest from J3). Sometimes it'll power on, but if I leave the power off for a little bit it won't turn back on once I put power to it again.

I would really love to rack this thing, but I don't want to have to keep turning it on and off all the time manually.
 
s0lid said:
Any long term ZFS users for this DAS?
Just asking has there been any problems or such with ZFS + SE3016 combination?

Cheap boxes indeed and easy to silence?
Click to expand...
easy to silence the noise for me...


danswartz said:
I've been running this combo for almost a year now with zero issues. I haven't yet done the PS fan mod, since it's a hassle, but I do now have the parts for it...
Click to expand...

running since last year.. with 40mm and two 120mm fan replacement.
this is pretty solid,

dusty...... after running a year without a hitch (hmm actually one slot has some issue on connector, need to push hard to make the HD detected.)

vgC3EIL.jpg

Ij3ERfl.jpg
 
Would this be a good solution for cheap long-term storage using snapraid? I have the drives to populate it,

Any reason why there haven't been any sales on this for a while on ebay? Is there something better out in this price range?
 
Strmtrper6 said:
Would this be a good solution for cheap long-term storage using snapraid? I have the drives to populate it,

Any reason why there haven't been any sales on this for a while on ebay? Is there something better out in this price range?
Click to expand...

Don't know if there's anything out there better priced since I haven't looked lately, but I personally use one of these with FlexRAID (Very similar to SnapRAID), and it works like a charm.

I know quite a few people from [H] have picked one up for their own setups. They are pretty cheap, and not as good as Supermicro and so forth, but they work and seem to be fairly reliable.

Just a warning, the build-in fans are quite loud (2x80mm at rear of case and 1x40mm inside the PSU - the 40mm is the loudest). If sound levels will bother you, then you're going to want to replace the fans. There is room to mount 120mm fans on the back but you'll need to Mod the case. The 40mm PSU fan is also using a non-standard plug, so you'll have to lop off the plug from the original 40mm fan and splice it onto the new fan (or make an adapter using spare extensions or something).

After modding it, it's pretty damn quiet, and the heat temps are still OK.
 
I am looking at this unit as an expanded array to my DL320s
I currently have a P812 and LSI 9211-4i installed in the machine.

Does this array support Sata II speeds? The reason I ask is that my DL320s is SAS 3GB, but only Sata 1.5. I have a serious bottleneck with the current setup.

I want to get the best speeds possible

Some of the documents say it supports Sata II, but not sure if that means it will operate at Sata II speeds.

Thanks for any help
 
dalekphalm said:
Don't know if there's anything out there better priced since I haven't looked lately, but I personally use one of these with FlexRAID (Very similar to SnapRAID), and it works like a charm.

I know quite a few people from [H] have picked one up for their own setups. They are pretty cheap, and not as good as Supermicro and so forth, but they work and seem to be fairly reliable.

Just a warning, the build-in fans are quite loud (2x80mm at rear of case and 1x40mm inside the PSU - the 40mm is the loudest). If sound levels will bother you, then you're going to want to replace the fans. There is room to mount 120mm fans on the back but you'll need to Mod the case. The 40mm PSU fan is also using a non-standard plug, so you'll have to lop off the plug from the original 40mm fan and splice it onto the new fan (or make an adapter using spare extensions or something).

After modding it, it's pretty damn quiet, and the heat temps are still OK.
Click to expand...



Thanks for the info.

I'm already running a PowerEdge 2950, a home built Norco RPC-4224, and a rack mount APC UPS. I doubt it will raise my noise level too much.
 
Any word if this works well with ZFS such as FreeNAS? I would love to build something like this in to my setup but saw someone mention that ZFS and expanders don't work well... Any truth to that?
 
To be accurate: the knock (which I'm not sure I believe was ever proved 100%) pertained to sata drives behind expanders. I am running 6 nearline sas drives in my se3016, so not worried...
 
I run one into my ESXi all in one, OI/napp-it with a pass-through HBA. I have a local and cloud backup to be safe, but haven't seen any issues so far.

I currently have 8 WD 1TB blacks in it, my #5 (or #4 if you start with 0) slot is weird to seat (left to right, top to bottom) and the power LED isnt as bright as the others. That's really my only complaint.

I left the stock fans in mine, I have my rack in my porch cap room in my basement.

For me the cable that comes with the chassis isn't long enough for the shelf to be front facing in my rack.
 
Hey guys,

I got one of those a while back but didnt have the time to play with it.

I wonder whether it would be possible to replace the backplanes with SAS 6Gbs ones ...
I havent dabbled with Chenbro or other backplanes yet but i would assume with a 19" Server the actual backplanes should have (almost) identical length, right? So do you guys think it would be possible to replace the 4 existing ones with (4x1, 2x8, 1x16) backplanes from supermicro or chenbro? or any other ones?

Or is that a fools idea;) ?

Thanks,
Thomas
 
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The backplane in mine works at 6gb SAS/Sata without any issues (well connected to Highpoint 2720SGL and 9211-4i controllers)
When connecting using the SAS 8088 connector the drives are limited to 3gb Sata

I am transferring all of my info from my single drives to the raid 0 array (yes I know about data loss, but I have a method to my madness)

Here is my setup and my plans
HP DL385 G6 Server (6core Opteron, 8gb ram, WHS 2011, drivebender)
OS is loaded on 64gb C300 (minisata)
Backup drive is 80gb Intel SSD X25-m
LSI 9211-4i is connected to the onboard 4 bay backplane in the server
Rocketraid 2720SGL is connected directly to 2 of the backplanes in the SE3016
HP P410 Raid controller is connected directly to the 2 backplanes in the SE3016

4 x 1tb Hitachi 7200rpm sata 2 drives in raid 0 (Main WHS drive pool for now)
4x1tb WD Blue, 4x500gb WD Blue, 3x1tb hitachi All drives Sata 3(These will be the WHS new drive pool)
4x2tb WD Black Sata 2 drives = raid 5 or 6 (whole server backup, only used once a month)
2tb hitachi sata 3 (removable drive with critical info, pics, documents, etc, stored in safe just in case)

I am using WHS 2011 due to knowing it already and the ease of setup for myself. I have no desire to learn something else, at least not now.
 
So basically the backplane is fine only the expander is 3G?
Thats great to know, thanks.
So all I'd need are some longer cables to hook the backplane up directly... or use a cheap expander as they did on sth for their warehouse build (iirc)... gotta look into that:)

Edit: Hm i see cheap and expander doesn't match - so cables it is;)
 
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s0lid said:
Any long term ZFS users for this DAS?
Just asking has there been any problems or such with ZFS + SE3016 combination?

Cheap boxes indeed and easy to silence?
Click to expand...

I've only had mine for a few weeks but have been testing extensively via my BR10i, several terabytes of data copied over and repeated scrubs, probably read in the hundreds of terabytes from it with absolutely 0 problems. I do have a strange performance problem though, in the thread I just posted, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with zfs.
 
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