Add more storage to a Lenovo TS140?

[travanx]

If I have used up all of the SATA ports on my Lenovo TS140 (5 Total drives) is there a way I can add another storage volume without buying a whole new server? Has anyone done this with the Lenovo servers? What did you use? Off the top of my head I am looking to add Six 4TB or 6TB drives in RaidZ2.

 

[Arwen]

Do you have a free PCIe slot?

If so, you can buy an external chassis for disks, (the chassis should include power
supply and cooling). Then use a SAS PCIe card with external connector(s), and
external cable(s) to the external chassis. Ideally the chassis uses a SAS port
expander. Thus, the connection between TS140 & external chassis uses the more
stable SAS protocol and potentially longer cables.

Please don't use an external chassis with SATA port multipler. They tend not to
work well, and are limited to 5 disks. Plus, they require both OS and SATA host
controller support.

Note that many people here don't recomend external trays, (even if they are SAS
connected). People get nervous because the external chassis / trays have separate
power cords and external data cables. Thus, subject to potential cable issues,
(knocking one loose can cause the ZFS pool to become off-line).

 

[travanx]

As I spent most of the day trying to read more into this, thanks for that info as I was possibly going in that direction of a 5x 3.5" external case. Now thinking I just get a Rosewill 4u case and transplanting the TS140 internals to a new case with a new PSU, PSU adapter and LSI 9211-8i.

 

[mihai]

As a word of warning, I tried this Rosewill case, with FreeNAS, with eSATA and it did not work.

What happened is that the drives got recognized and I could create a raid array with them, but they failed no more than 30 minutes later, repeatedly.

 

[Len_Nas]

I have 13 drives total 20TB with my TS140 I3. You will need a converter for power supply. About $10 on Amazon.

I built it all in a Fractal Design R4 case with extra hard drive cages, Seasonic power supply and fans. No issues, runs great and Freenas 9.10 is excellent. Always wanted to do a write up on this build, but never got to it.