How to pick Supermicro case?

[katit]

I'm sure many people will be interested. I scanned eBay for 2U and 3U cases and there is a lot available for $200 shipped. With power supplies. There is complete systems with motherboards for little more.

All this looks good, but how can I tell if it is going to work for me? I guess I need to look at MB form-factor. If I picked X10SL7-F for my build, it's micro-ATX

Does it mean I can fit any bigger case?
Should I look at cases with power supplies on a side?
2U cases will fit all the drives I will ever want, should I still go with 3U for some reason?
Are those caddies hot-swappable and easy to connect? Do they fit standard 3.5 hard drives?

Any other pointers or suggestions on how to tell if case will or will not work?

Example:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-...182?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5676a44f6e

From the look of it - I like it. Plenty of HDD slots. But the motherboard is larger than X10. Does it mean I can use this case without a problem?

 

[Ericloewe]

Smaller motherboards fit fine in larger chassis (except perhaps for obscure form factors). Anything else would be asinine.

Should I look at cases with power supplies on a side?

What do you mean?

2U cases will fit all the drives I will ever want, should I still go with 3U for some reason?

Not really.

Are those caddies hot-swappable and easy to connect?

Yeah. Hot-swap support depends on the rest of the system though. Never attempt it with live data unless absolutely necessary and you have previously validated that it works.

Do they fit standard 3.5 hard drives?

Some take 2.5", some take 3.5". Depends on the model, naturally.

 

[katit]

What do you mean?

Some cases I see have PS installed right on center of the case, not on a side.

Another question rails. Are they needed? Most cases sold don't have them. Can I mount it in a rack without them?

 

[JDCynical]

Another question rails. Are they needed? Most cases sold don't have them. Can I mount it in a rack without them?

Most racks and chassis can be mounted directly to the rack.

As someone who has mounted systems with and without rails, spend the money for rails if you can, it makes life a heck of a lot easier for things like fan replacement or rearranging the systems during upgrades, etc.

 

[Robert Smith]

2U cases are normally cooled with 80mm fans, which are good but somewhat loud.

Bigger case may make sense if you are trying to build a quiet system.

 

[maglin]

So you can check out the 3U case I got. It came with 6 San Ace 80mm fans that are not PWM controlled. I'm waiting on some more hardware to get here before I fire it up. If you are buying a SuperMicro mother board it should work. I had to use the stand off locations marked D minus one for mine. I have one mounting point with nothing securing it because the case didn't have that one location in the right spot. Which had I not looked I would have grounded out my board or something not good I'm sure as It was right under the NB/SB not sure which it is.

I think any Server Case you get will have at least 2 power supplies in it and they are redundant. You don't have to run all of them but it sure doesn't hurt you to. I have 3x 700w PSU's that plug into a PSU fail over controller. Also my SAS2 backplane is quite a ways from the back of the enclosure. So you might want to get a 1M SFF-8087 cable if you are running a M1015 card otherwise you shouldn't have to worry about it.

And I wouldn't worry about hot swapping HDD's. It's possible if you are running all the PSU's it wouldn't be a problem but I think when you plug in one the slight voltage drop can cause issues. Also know that some enclosure's are designed for rack cooling and don't have many if any fans in them. At work we have 6 VERY LARGE heat exchangers for our multitude of server's and SAN's. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of money.

In the end it's up to you to research the enclosure to ensure it will work for you. I've noticed on the X8 systems the enclosure model isn't mentioned. I would go with a X10 system anyways just for the power savings, but some of those systems with 72GB+ of ECC RAM in them are pretty sexy and tempting.

 

[katit]

Ok. Right now I have a chance to get this chassis(brand new) for <$300 shipped. To me they look great and even it's not GOLD - fine with me, it's 1+1 800W PS. Does it mean I can run only one power supply at a time? Or how does it work?

http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/2U/826/SC826E1-R800U.cfm

Also, I think if fans too loud I can slow them down a little (resistor) because it is going to be NAS server with very low load and heat output. There won't be too much CPU activity and X10 board..

I will have 6 drives to begin with, but manual says don't run "empty" caddies? Is that OK to have it half empty?

What do you guys think?

 

[Robert Smith]

It is a redundant hot-swap power supply. You can replace a failed one without shutting the server down.

Normally you run two power supplies. Running one is considered degraded state, kind of like running RAID1 with half of the mirror gone.

The power supplies slide in, and there is a special connector at the end that plugs into a backplane that manages hot-swap logic and breaks out individual cables to the motherboard and other components.

Empty caddies can be run with plastic boxes that emulate hard drives for airflow reasons.