Mini XL Upgrade - Reasonable?

[Constantin]

Hi there,

I currently own a mini XL whose 8 hot-swap drive bays are filled with 3GB WD Reds and HGSTs in a Z3 pool. The array has been performing well but the upper drive temperatures have reached 50*C under load. Thanks to mrichardson03, I learned how to upgrade the rear 80mm fan to a Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 and set the Asrock controller to make it run at 80% permanently. Thank you!

I no longer get temperature alarms via email but I'm also underwhelmed by the mini XL case performance re: cooling. Plus, at 80% output, that 80mm fan is pretty noisy. So I've done some research and I wonder what the community would think about the following case/PS upgrade:
1) NZXT H440 case. It can hold eleven 3.5" drives natively and features three 120 mm case fans right in front of them.
2) Seasonic 650W power supply - to cover the current load and any server board upgrades / hard drive additions I may contemplate in the future.

For the time being, I would transfer the drives, server board, etc. from the XL to the NZXT case, leaving much of the cabling, power supply in the XL case. Does this seem like a workable idea?

 

[gpsguy]

If you decide to sell your MiniXL case, I'm sure there are users on the forum that would be interested in buying it.

 

[DrKK]

If I may, sir, instead of the NZXT H440, the case we all recommend, and is in the same price and size range, is the Fractal Design Define R5. This is certainly the full-size crowd favorite at FreeNAS.

It'll hold, what, at least 9 drives I believe, and the way the hard drive mountings work, and with the fans already mounted for the hard drives, the whole thing is whisper quiet and your drives will be 25C.

 

[Stux]

If you decide to sell your MiniXL case, I'm sure there are users on the forum that would be interested in buying it.

Your plan is reasonable and I would not be surprised if you managed to get a good price for the case since they are made of unobtanium

 

[Constantin]

I really appreciate the responses and I'll be happy to put the XL up for grabs when I'm done with it.

I'm still leaning towards the H440 for this very particular application, i.e. keeping a lot of hard drives cool to maximize their longevity. Because the H440 was designed without consideration for a dual 5.25" bay, the front fascia features three stacked 120mm fans by default. They blow across all the 3.5" bays mounted directly behind them. However, aesthetic design considerations also made NZXT only fit the rig with one set of intakes, which may increase static pressure more than I would like.

The R5 features a better dual intake door but as I understand it (and I'm happy to be wrong!) the R5 ships with only one 120mm fan up front (with room to mount one more by default). However, mounting three 120mm fans up front would require some pretty extensive surgery or access to a lot more PC-building know-how than I currently possess. Plus, one would have to buy additional HDD trays / cage to come up to the same 3.5" HDD capacity as the H440.

I do like the individual HDD tray design in the R5 better, as they are easier to swap than the "dualie" trays found in the H440. However, if easy HDD swapping was really important to me, then perhaps I would be better served with a set of icy-docks combined with a chassis with either 6x or 9x 5.25" slots.

I read that the cable management in the R5 is better thought out and some people really like the removable panels, full-length air filters, and so on. All valid issues! It will remain to be seen how clean the cable install will be unless I go with a custom set of cables as advertised elsewhere.

 

[Chris Moore]

Dualie HDD tray... is that the one where you mount a drive on both sides of the tray?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Constantin]

Yes, exactly. There are 5 drive trays that suspend from the side of the case and another 3.5" compatible location on the bottom of the case divider. Since I don't know the site policy re: embedded images, here is a link to a side view showing the interior HDD bays inside a H440.

I'm not a huge fan of this approach because the air flow essentially only goes over one side of the HDD, whereas the R5 approach allows air flow around the entire body of the HDDs mounted in it. On the other hand, there are three 120mm fans available to pull air over the drives, which is far more cooling capacity than the current XL offers (one 80mm fan for all 8 drives).

Bottom line, I will have to do some more competent searches re: drive temperatures inside the H440 and the R5 to know better. If the R5 had a 3x 120mm front fan plate like the H440 and 8 interior 3.5" HDD mounts, it would be a no-brainer. Are there sites that offer such "modifications" for popular platforms like the Fractal R5?

 

[Chris Moore]

Since I don't know the site policy re: embedded images

Regarding embedded images, take a look at this: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...sdv-tln4f-esxi-freenas-aio.57116/#post-401275

PS. I like that chassis because of the way the drives mount. It gives a lot of space for drives. My only concern is the vibration that the opposing drives will transfer to one another, but I think they might cancel one another out.
I will probably stick with the rack servers I have though because I like having the hot-swap bays for quickly changing drives when I want to.

 

[danb35]

Since I don't know the site policy re: embedded images

They are preferred over links, and especially over links to other sites. That's what the "upload a file" button is mostly used for--or you can just paste the picture into your post.

 

[Constantin]

Hi everyone, I appreciate the insights. I didn't embed that image because I didn't own it and I'm sensitive to not stealing content and transfer/bandwidth from other web sites.

Anyhow, I pulled the trigger on the NZXT chassis today and funnily enough, someone was selling 16GB RAM sticks compatible with the Mini XL on ebay for $60 a pop tonight. So I bought some RAM too.

The delay in getting the RAM may allow me to pre-wire the enclosure and perhaps order a couple of custom sets of cabling for the HDD caddies if the OEM wire harness turns into a mess.

When I transfer the board, I presume that every HDD will have to remain on the same hardware SATA port it was on as before the move, right? Many thanks again!

 

[Chris Moore]

When I transfer the board, I presume that every HDD will have to remain on the same hardware SATA port it was on as before the move, right? Many thanks again!

No. ZFS doesn't care what port the drive is connected to as long as the OS can find it, it will mount the volume.
You will want to label the drives so you can see the serial numbers to make it easy to find the correct drive when one fails.
Here is an example:
The last four digits of the SN is usually enough.

 

[Constantin]

That's a great suggestion and good use for my label maker! Glad that FreeNAS is this flexible.

I do wonder why monitoring HDD temps is not built into the FreeNAS 11 GUI. It's a strange omission given all the other things they let you graph there.

 

[danb35]

I do wonder why monitoring HDD temps is not built into the FreeNAS 11 GUI.

It's a subject that's come up a few times; a forum search would likely find several threads about it. In short, the devs' position seems to be that there's no point to graphing it when the system can just send you an alert if/when they get too warm. I don't know that I'm 100% convinced of that, but it does make a lot of sense, IMO.

 

[Chris Moore]

In short, the devs' position seems to be that there's no point to graphing it when the system can just send you an alert if/when they get too warm. I don't know that I'm 100% convinced of that, but it does make a lot of sense, IMO.

I wouldn't say it needs to be graphed, but it would be nice if you could look at a properties page for the drive that showed you a few details of the drive health, like temperature, so you could go look if you were curious. I have a system at work that presents a nice page of details, I will see if I can get a screen capture.

 

[danb35]

Yeah, potentially a "nice to have" as long as it doesn't overly clutter things. And, of course, there are scripts floating around here that will graph temps if you want that. I think the devs are right, though, that the lack of GUI monitoring isn't a big deal; alerts will notify you if/when there's a problem. But I guess @BloodyIron thinks it's hostile of me to say so.

 

[Constantin]

It seems perfectly reasonable to have a variety of viewpoints on this. That said, the reporting tab covers all sorts of FreeNAS health-related reporting, such as how much the CPU is stressed, how the ARC is doing, etc. So it seems incongruous that something as important as disk temperature is being omitted from those graphs, if preserving data is the ultimate goal of the FreeNAS project.

Given the strong correlation between hard disk longevity and disk temperature it only seems logical that one would monitor that just as FreeNAS already logs CPU temperatures. Alerts are nice but they don't give you a sense of how pervasive a temperature-related issue is - all you know is that a threshold was reached. Plus, the alerts don't come to your attention unless you set them up and set up the email system.

Anyhow, I'll try to hunt down those scripts. I think I saw some for the SuperMicro boards, and I hope that there are similar scripts for the ASRock OEM board in the Mini XL. However, this sort of additional work is exactly what makes adopting FreeNAS a bit intimidating to folk like me that want to transition from consumer-grade hardware/software like Synology, QNAP, ReadyNAS, etc...

Thanks to everyone again for the hand-holding!

 

[danb35]

Plus, the alerts don't come to your attention unless you set them up and set up the email system.

...but if preserving data is your ultimate goal, you should set those up anyway. Under normal circumstances, a user isn't in the web GUI very often--just when they need to change something.

 

[Chris Moore]

Anyhow, I'll try to hunt down those scripts. I think I saw some for the SuperMicro boards, and I hope that there are similar scripts for the ASRock OEM board in the Mini XL. However, this sort of additional work is exactly what makes adopting FreeNAS a bit intimidating to folk like me that want to transition from consumer-grade hardware/software like Synology, QNAP, ReadyNAS, etc...

Here is a link: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-freenas-scripts-including-disk-burnin.52297/
There are scripts that will send you a daily report by email and one of the things it shows is the drive temp. This might give you what you want.

 

[Constantin]

...but if preserving data is your ultimate goal, you should set those up anyway. Under normal circumstances, a user isn't in the web GUI very often--just when they need to change something.

We are in violent agreement. For me, setting up FreeNAS was an incremental experience, i.e. it's not something I can do in one sitting because there are so many details that have to be considered, so much that has to be learned in the process. Perhaps now it would take me less time and I would be less likely to overlook important details like setting temperature alarms.

There is a lot of functionality in that GUI, so I appreciate the struggle between adding more complexity and detail vs. only presenting bare minimum of things that are "important".

 

[Constantin]

This might give you what you want.

Thank you! I appreciate the help. Not only will I use the scripts for the temperature updates but the stress-testing will be great to evaluate the new case. Thank you!