Interesting cheap JBODs available

One of the best quiet and at same time, kind of high CFM fans are the Noctua. They are also available in non-PWM fitting the SE3016. I have seen numerous Norco's cooled down by them and they are pretty though to cool.

Anyone tried to open up the PSU in the SE3016 and use the main 80 (or swapped 120mm) fans to cool it in addition with the disks?

I have not tried this, and would not recommend it unless you have this in a climate controlled room. The PSU puts out a fair bit of heat, and even without the top of the enclosure on, the rear case fans will have a hell of a time cooling both that AND the HDD's themselves.

The only way I can see that working, is if you installed very high CFM/RPM fans, and then it would defeat the purpose, as it would still be loud.

Installing the 40mm Noctua fan in the PSU really is the best option. It's not that much work, only takes a couple minutes to disassemble the PSU. You just need to splice some cables (with a soldering iron preferably, but you can just use twisted wires and electrical tape instead if you're really lazy).
 
Excuse the noob question as I am not so keen on these type of data systems.

How would one use this? I have a Dell T310 server that I want to add a bunch of 500GB-1TB drives to as testing storage.
 
Excuse the noob question as I am not so keen on these type of data systems.

How would one use this? I have a Dell T310 server that I want to add a bunch of 500GB-1TB drives to as testing storage.

Basically the SAS expander allows you to add an additional 16 HDD's to your system, as if they were local drives.

How exactly they show up would depend on what type of interface card you use, an HBA (Host Bus Adapter), or a RAID card. HBA's just pass the HDD's through to the OS, whereas RAID cards allow you to configure them as RAID Arrays and be presented to the OS as one (or more) larger disks.
 
So what RAID card would work with one of these that doesn't break the bank,

I plan to install ESX or Hyper-V on my T310. I just want to be able to spin up a VM if needed for Testing. I will have a few VM that I care about (need reliable, I figured raid) the rest of the test ones just need to work and if the drive fails or something not to concerned about.
 
So what RAID card would work with one of these that doesn't break the bank,

I plan to install ESX or Hyper-V on my T310. I just want to be able to spin up a VM if needed for Testing. I will have a few VM that I care about (need reliable, I figured raid) the rest of the test ones just need to work and if the drive fails or something not to concerned about.

I really couldn't tell you which one would work specifically with your server chassis, but I'd recommend something like:
For an HBA:
IBM m1015 (Flashed to IT mode)
or LSI 9211

or RAID:
LSI 9280

There are others that would work as well. You can find all of these used on eBay for generally good prices. Keep in mind that RAID does not specifically mean more reliable. It depends on your specific setup.
 
Got this enclosure up and running today. The way you guys were talking I expected worse noise from the fans. They're much tamer then I was expecting. Its hardly audible next to my GPU farm. I could see how someone would want to quiet it down in other setups though.

MegaRaid Utility Says the enclosures "product revision" of 0228. the Insides of mine look different then the ones at the beginning of the thread. There's an extra board and the power buttons are more centered.

Like this
qRrALWo.jpg
 
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I'm gonna stick with JBOD and my Drive bender setup for now. Ended up getting an IBM LSI Logic SAS3444E for now, I don't have 3tb drives currently so at $19 shipped it will work for now. I'll upgrade later..

e. Ebay seller accepted my $125 offer making a total of 152.72 Shipped for the se3016.

Which seller did you buy from? I've been looking at getting another one of these.
 
Nice.

Has anyone setup an actual MB inside one of these yet?

It's gonna be a tight fit with all the cables you need in there. miniSAS cables aren't the most flexible cables out there. Also, you may want to take out the power supply and put in a different one. In the original PSU, there are two 2x2 12+5V and a 24 pin ATX power. There is also a 4x2 (looks to be EPS12V) connector, but when I measured it there were no voltages. Now, only if the Intel NUC has external PCIe... (well, Thunderbolt, but that limits the cards you can use).
 
Sorry if this has been covered and I missed it. Some (including me and a friend now) have had trouble getting the trays to slide in and out easily and have had trouble with the drives connecting unless you push hard on the tray. I realized you need to use 3 screws per tray, not 4 like you would think.

If you look closely at the trays you can see that you use one screw on one side and two on the other. There are two sets of three screw holes each using the middle hole on one side and the front and rear hole one the other. One set of holes sets the drive in toward the backplane just a little bit more than the other set (about 1 screw thickness). Use the middle screw hole on the left side and the front and rear screw holes on the right side (viewed from the front,drive bottom/PCB down). This appears correct based on the inscription on the bottom of the tray front, also makes sense why the sellers/recyclers only include 48-50 screws.

If you use the front and rear holes on both sides (4 screws) you tweak the tray since they're not exactly across from each other. The trays won't slide in easily and the connectors on the drive don't line up correctly with the backplane. You can see this when you look at the back of the tray front vs the front of the drive.

The other thing I've seen is the plastic light pipe(s) can come out of the side of the tray preventing the tray from screwing down flush to the drive, making the whole assembly wider than it should be and making it hard to push in.

Using the correct three screw holes and making sure the light pipes are in their groove has completely fixed the problem, no trouble with drives not showing up or being hard to slot/unslot, on all slots in both of my enclosures. Hope this helps someone...
 
Instead of going through pages of of post just wanted to ask a simple question.

What are most you all running on this type of setup? FlexRAID or ZFS? I apologize if I misunderstood.
 
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I will be using a M1015 (in IT mode). Due to only having one server (older computer) at the moment, I need it to stay in a Windows environment.

From what it sounds like, when I connect this to my M1015 it will show up as one large drive or single drives? Can FlexRaid take advantage of all the drives through the se3016?
 
I will be using a M1015 (in IT mode). Due to only having one server (older computer) at the moment, I need it to stay in a Windows environment.

From what it sounds like, when I connect this to my M1015 it will show up as one large drive or single drives? Can FlexRaid take advantage of all the drives through the se3016?

If in IT mode, then it'll show up as single drives. Even in IR, it'll show up as single drives as well, if no RAID was done in the configuration utility.
 
If in IT mode, then it'll show up as single drives. Even in IR, it'll show up as single drives as well, if no RAID was done in the configuration utility.

:D. IR or IT is identical when drives are not configured ...

Tested on Windows (7) and Linux(Centos). Did not need to flash to IT when single drives are needed.

RAID performance on M1015 is useless :p, OS based RAID is the most useful while using the card.
 
I just finished replacing my 40mm fan with a noctua but I am running into issues with it shutting down after 10 seconds. I'm assuming because the fan speed isn't being reported. I have a red, black, white and blue cable on the old fan. Does anyone know which one reports that the fan is active and a way to fix it?

Original 40mm PSU fan - http://imgur.com/K8JeDwB

Thanks!

EDIT: Fixed. Soldered the blue wire to the noctua yellow wire. Everything good now.
 
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Has anyone else had luck with the console port?

I tried somethingwitty's method of flipping the RS232 connector internally, but I haven't been able to get a console up. I've been using a cisco concole cable but I've also tried a DE9 to rj45 adapter (not rolled). I've also tried numerous baud rates, but all using 8N1 with hardware and software flow control disabled.

Any input is appreciated. I'd love to monitor this enclosure with one of my Lantronix ethernet serial adapters.

Cheers
 
I'd have to look again, but I just have a DB9 to rj45, and use a CAT5 cable. I can't remember the connection settings right off.
But, there's not a whole lot of info in there. You can see the drives in there, and that's about it.

Has anyone figured out how to auto-power on after a power outage?
 
No, I never did. This is why I retired the se3016 (it is now in spares...) Had a power-fail for 2 hours while I was not home. All the servers and such came right back up. The storage didn't, since the JBOD was powered off. I was totally off the air until I got home from work and hit the ON button. Maybe there's some trick to it, but this is a sorta production box, so I wasn't interested in slicing and dicing it...
 
It would seem to me that you could probably rig up a one-shot circuit with a 555 timer to provide a power-on pulse when your server comes up and a power-off pulse when your server powers down. You could also skip the power-button circuitry and short the PWR ON and GND pins with a relay. If the relay coil were powered by your server (via USB or something else) the power would shut off when your server went down.

If you really want to go crazy program a microcontroller do control your power switch and add ethernet to make the storage rack WOL capable. You could go crazy with something like this (http://www.domstyle.net/blog/2013/02/18/dropping-dropbox-hardware-hacking/)

The power-down issue more what I am interested in because I'd like my UPS's to last as long as possible. While my servers are set to shut down after ~10 minutes of power outage, the disks keep on spinning and drawing power.

@JeffBlair do you recall if you used the standard RJ45 -> DB9 pinout or the cisco / alltell / sun console rolled adapter? I know it's not terribly useful but the fact that it's there means I have to get it working.
 
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No, I never did. This is why I retired the se3016 (it is now in spares...) Had a power-fail for 2 hours while I was not home. All the servers and such came right back up. The storage didn't, since the JBOD was powered off. I was totally off the air until I got home from work and hit the ON button. Maybe there's some trick to it, but this is a sorta production box, so I wasn't interested in slicing and dicing it...

easy pie .
just use Arduino to autorestart , ardunio nano/pro mini.:)
coding autorestart in arduino is easy as 1 2 3 :)
 
I'd have to look again, but I just have a DB9 to rj45, and use a CAT5 cable. I can't remember the connection settings right off.
But, there's not a whole lot of info in there. You can see the drives in there, and that's about it.

Has anyone figured out how to auto-power on after a power outage?

just use a little imagination and simple solution. my solution is using arduino for auto restart when the power is back online
 
Posted from another thread in case you all are subscribed to this thread. Any help would be appreciated.

I seem to be having a little issue with my SE3016 not recognizing drives when they are installed. On the front plate of the SE3016, I see the drive receives power but never gets the blue link light. Has anyone seen this before? Is my SE 3016 going bad? Does this with different hard drives. Also it seems to be random with the bays.
Thanks!
 
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I seem to be having a little issue with my SE3016 not recognizing drives when they are installed. On the front plate of the SE3016, I see the drive receives power but never gets the blue link light. Has anyone seen this before? Is my SE 3016 going bad? Does this with different hard drives. Also it seems to be random with the bays.

Since they bays seem random I'm not sure if this will help, but it could eliminate some things.

- Try fewer drives and see if you still have problems. Maybe a thermal or power supply problem?

- Try swapping the SAS expander cables inside. This could help you determine if you have bad or loose cables or possible some of the ports are going bad on your expander.

- Occasionally the light pipes don't line up on mine and/or the LED's just don't work. Do the drives still work on your host but just don't light up in the expander?

- Try the same drives in different bays to rule those out as the culprit
 
Posted from another thread in case you all are subscribed to this thread. Any help would be appreciated.

I seem to be having a little issue with my SE3016 not recognizing drives when they are installed. On the front plate of the SE3016, I see the drive receives power but never gets the blue link light. Has anyone seen this before? Is my SE 3016 going bad? Does this with different hard drives. Also it seems to be random with the bays.
Thanks!

Make sure you installed them in the trays correctly. Only takes 3 screws and the ends of the side rails should be just shy of the end of the drive.
 
Since they bays seem random I'm not sure if this will help, but it could eliminate some things.

- Try fewer drives and see if you still have problems. Maybe a thermal or power supply problem?

- Try swapping the SAS expander cables inside. This could help you determine if you have bad or loose cables or possible some of the ports are going bad on your expander.

- Occasionally the light pipes don't line up on mine and/or the LED's just don't work. Do the drives still work on your host but just don't light up in the expander?

- Try the same drives in different bays to rule those out as the culprit

Thanks for your reply.

What SAS expander cables would you recommend? Something like this? I thought about replacing them but I wasn't sure if any just SAS cable would do it. I opened the top and reseated the cables but didn't notice any change.

Sorry this may sound stupid but to clarify. I should be plugging the cable from my RAID card to the IN part of the SE3016, correct? The OUT should not have anything plugged into it.

It doesn't see them at all on the host but I can hear the drives spin up (receiving power). What's the chances that the connection on the backplane is bad?

Does anyone use this on a FreeNAS device?
 
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Thanks for your reply.

What SAS expander cables would you recommend? Something like this? I thought about replacing them but I wasn't sure if any just SAS cable would do it. I opened the top and reseated the cables but didn't notice any change.

Sorry this may sound stupid but to clarify. I should be plugging the cable from my RAID card to the IN part of the SE3016, correct? The OUT should not have anything plugged into it.

It doesn't see them at all on the host but I can hear the drives spin up (receiving power). What's the chances that the connection on the backplane is bad?

Does anyone use this on a FreeNAS device?

It should be plugged into the Out on the SE3016. The In port is for if you're stacking more than 1 of them to daisy chain them.
 
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@JeffBlair do you recall if you used the standard RJ45 -> DB9 pinout or the cisco / alltell / sun console rolled adapter? I know it's not terribly useful but the fact that it's there means I have to get it working.

It's just a standard RJ45->DB9 adapter. But, for it to work, you have to flip the adapter inside of the SE3016 case. Just follow the wires, and flip it 180.
 
Forgive me for asking what may be a simplish/basic question, I'm just getting started with SAS hardware (I've been running esata > sata port multipliers in an old computer case but it's "flakey" at best) and have read all 20 pages of this thread.
I'm not sure what HBA to get. My needs are simple, in that I want straight access to the drives.
the computer that will be running it is a Dell PowerEdge R710 with a sas6i/r running the internal (6 3.5") drives.
I do have sitting on the shelf a Dell SAS 5/e but from my reading that doesn't support JBOD and I'd have to set each disk as it's own raid0 to have the 5/e see it, which I'd rather avoid in case I ever have to hook a drive up to a different machine for recovery or some such.

I'd like something that could handle all 16 drives, but rarely will more than 2 or 3 drives be sending data at a time (this is basically on a home media server) so throughput shouldn't really be an issue.

Is anyone able to give a recommendation?
 
It is just internal , correct?

Any LSI SAS2008 based HBA running in IT mode. An LSI SAS 9211-8i , an IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode.. numerous others. M1015's can had for about $100 off ebay but i do believe there have been some cheap knock-offs.

If you are going to pay full retail you might as well go with the LSI SAS2308 chipset, like on the 9207-8i.
 
Not sure what you mean by internal, the HBA would be internal, the rackable would be obviously a seperate chasis from the R710

It is just internal , correct?

Any LSI SAS2008 based HBA running in IT mode. An LSI SAS 9211-8i , an IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode.. numerous others. M1015's can had for about $100 off ebay but i do believe there have been some cheap knock-offs.

If you are going to pay full retail you might as well go with the LSI SAS2308 chipset, like on the 9207-8i.
 
Also is anyone able to confirm that the Dell SAS 5/e can't see the disks if they're not in a raid config?
 
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