Running out of space

[jgreco]

Probably not quiet, but really it is hard to tell. The ethernet switches generate a dull roar and their redundant power supplies are very noisy. Hard to tell in a rackful of gear how noisy one bit of gear is.

I believe that all the fans except for the ones in the power supply are PWM driven. Typically the fans are incredibly noisy if they're fully revved, but if you configure the BMC to reduce speeds, you reduce both noise and energy consumption. Still, cooling a dense drive array in a small space is a challenge. I've written on the topic of the Supermicro and Norco 4U's in the past. They're going to need forced air. Period.

You can of course use an alternative chassis of some sort, but then you're probably not going to wind up with a nearly-free SAS expander as part of a backplane and nice drive trays for your drives. So it's damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-dont.

 

[cyberjock]

You can of course use an alternative chassis of some sort, but then you're probably not going to wind up with a nearly-free SAS expander as part of a backplane and nice drive trays for your drives. So it's damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-dont.

That's exactly where the OP looks like he's going.. :(

 

[Grantp]

The 836BA (I linked on previous page) does appear to be 6Gb reading the spec

Backplane

3U Direct Attached Backplane, features:
• 3Gb/6Gb support
• SES-2 Enclosure Management Support
• SAS/SATA support
• Four SFF 8087 connectors

I could hopefully get this for £400 tops looking and the way bids are going at the moment. Taking into account I am a home user just trying to put together a Media Server is this a viable option. I really am starting to confused and bogged down on what I am really looking for, I have just managed to get a M1015 for £35 used

 

[jgreco]

Yeah, I know...

Basically it gets real hard once you have a substantial number of drives. You can furiously paddle upstream, but it is difficult to find a good non-rackmount chassis with more than 9 3.5" bays. And if you're then using 3x5 "mobile racks" (usually ~$100/ea) to convert that to a 15 drive chassis, you're probably already at $400 or thereabouts.

 

[Grantp]

Yeah, I know...

Basically it gets real hard once you have a substantial number of drives. You can furiously paddle upstream, but it is difficult to find a good non-rackmount chassis with more than 9 3.5" bays. And if you're then using 3x5 "mobile racks" (usually ~$100/ea) to convert that to a 15 drive chassis, you're probably already at $400 or thereabouts.

Sorry jgreco is this response to my last post of to CyberJock's last comment?

I have come to realise that if I want more drives then I'll have to go down the rackmount route, I just want to get it right this time. If I have to spend the money to get what I want I will but as I say what something that will last few years and is expandable if needs be.

 

[jgreco]

The 836BA (I linked on previous page) does appear to be 6Gb reading the spec

Backplane

3U Direct Attached Backplane, features:
• 3Gb/6Gb support
• SES-2 Enclosure Management Support
• SAS/SATA support
• Four SFF 8087 connectors

I could hopefully get this for £400 tops looking and the way bids are going at the moment. Taking into account I am a home user just trying to put together a Media Server is this a viable option. I really am starting to confused and bogged down on what I am really looking for, I have just managed to get a M1015 for £35 used

Yeah sorry I was on crappy cellular so I didn't sit there and do deep research while replying ...

That 3U chassis: It has the newer high efficiency power supplies (yay!) but do be aware that the two 2.5" drive bays in the back are an option and quite likely not included. But the point you need to ponder is this: it does NOT have an SAS expander. So the 16 drives are brought out as four SFF-8087's on the back of the backplane, and then you need to find some way to attach them. Please download and inspect

http://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SAS-836A.pdf

So basically there's a few options here:

1) Get two M1015's, which gives you four controller ports of SFF-8087. The downside is that if you ever need to expand past 16 drives, you will have to re-think your attachment strategy because your M1015's are all full.

2) Get one M1015 and an SAS expander card like an Intel RES2SV240.

3) See if you can find just the BE16 or BE26 SAS expander backplane part for that chassis and replace it.

This assumes you need all 16 slots active. If not:

4) Get one M1015 (8 drives) plus a reverse SFF8087 breakout cable or two for your system board. Since you only have 6 SATA ports, that leaves two drive slots in the chassis without a controller.

So the short form is that this chassis is not the ideal candidate, but if it is sufficiently cheap it may still have lots of potential.

But the real question is what you plan to do about your pool. So right now you have 8 drives in two RAIDZ2's. Four disks in a RAIDZ2 burns two disks per vdev, so you are losing half your capacity. Ick. I know the volume manager *told* you this was "optimal" but it is "optimal" from a ZFS point of view, not a pocketbook point of view. You would likely not object to the mild performance hit of doing it differently.

Sadly, you cannot change your existing vdevs in your pool. That makes life harder. But if I were you, I might decide to go and get that sixteen drive chassis, buy 8 more 3TB drives, build a NEW pool of 8 x 3TB drives in RAIDZ2 or (better yet) RAIDZ3, for a new pool of 15TB. Then copy everything from the old pool to the new pool. Wait a week. Then export the old pool (marking the disks as new). And then use the volume manager to add an additional vdev of 8 x 3TB drives to your new pool. You'd end up with about 30TB of storage and it'd be pretty fast even with RAIDZ3, because you'd have two vdev's striped together. Wheee.

 

[aufalien]

See if IXSystems have some discounted items to sell.

They dev FreeNAS and may work out a deal to those who've been using and loving there warez :)