Can a Chassis be Too Big?

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scruzloose33

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I picked up six 8 TB Western Digital red/white (not sure yet) drives on a Black Friday deal and decided it was a good time to finally build out my NAS. Given that I only have six disks right now and the total capacity in a RAIDZ2 is more than I will need for a while, I don't expect to need more than 8-12 drives for quite some time. I have a dedicated server room in my house that has plenty of space for a large and noisy rackmount server. Is there any downside to getting something like the 24-bay SuperMicro SuperChassis CSE-846TQ-R900B and only using a quarter of the drive bays? That seems like a pretty nice price for the chassis since I can pick it up locally and I figured it would future-proof my chassis for a very long time. I also like the thought of a larger rackmount server so I have more mobo options that can support at least 64G of RAM. The larger size also probably has airflow benefits compared to smaller form factor options like the Fractal Node 804 or the Define R6. Something like the 15-bay SuperMicro SuperChassis SC933T-R760 would probably make more sense, but why pay more for something smaller?

The NAS is going to be used for regular home use (VM/workstation backups, surveillance camera footage, Plex server, etc.). Am I crazy for considering such a large chassis?

Thanks,
Shane
 

Ericloewe

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I mean, if the future you're proofing for isn't complete fantasy, there isn't a real downside that isn't immediately obvious (more weight, more bulk).

Just make sure that unused drive slots have dummy disks in them, otherwise your disks will be starved of airflow. You'll need to acquire these if the chassis doesn't include them.
 

scruzloose33

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After some more thinking, I think that massive of a chassis is really unnecessary for my home use and I will never make use of the majority of the bays. The one below is not as large, but the 16-drive capacity still gives me plenty of room for growth. It also comes with more than the chassis (processor, RAM, etc.), so may give me most of what I need to get started (I could potentially even use some of the 1 TB drives for another vdev). Any concerns with this server?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...-RAM-12x1TB-4x64GB-SSD-9690SA-8E/352349196129
 

Ericloewe

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The platform is fairly old, but it should be fine.
 
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