Seeking recommendations for rackmount build

[steveputman]

Hello (and happy new year!)

In the course of moving houses, I would like to transition from my existing 6-bay FreeNAS tower to a higher-capacity rackmount server, predominantly used for storing local backups and serving music (through Roon, if that's relevant). I'm also interested in playing around with VMs.

I am totally ignorant about server hardware so would welcome any recommendations you might have. Sizewise, 24 3.5" bays in a 4U chassis seems the most reasonable. Noise isn't a concern, as the rack is somewhat isolated. Not too fussy about budget, but inclination is to buy used where it makes sense (chassis, for example).

Based on the extremely helpful responses by @Chris Moore and others in similar threads, I am inclined to try to find a Supermicro chassis on eBay, but I'm a little concerned about getting the wrong thing (some of the listings don't seem to specify backplane type, for example). It looks as though I should look for an -A backplane to avoid the individual cables for each drive in the -TQ? And in addition to the chassis, new CPU, motherboard, memory, cooler, and data drives and boot drives, I will need one or more SAS controllers + appropriate cabling?

Thanks for any help!

Steve

 

[danb35]

You definitely don't want a -TQ backplane for a 24-bay chassis. I lived with it in a 12-bay, but that's way too much of a mess of cables with more bays than that. What you really want are the SAS expander backplanes--of course, those are more expensive. There's a good chance that your best route to this is going to be to buy a complete server, rather than look for just the chassis. This one looks like a decent example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro...h=item28709ef49b:g:IjAAAOSwqlxcEUYV:rk:4:pf:0
It has the expander backplane (the E1 in the chassis designation tells you that), it comes with a decent amount of RAM, two OK CPUs (the 2620s are kind of slow, but you have 12 cores), and a RAID controller you'd want to replace immediately with a proper HBA (budget under $100). $675 shipped sounds like a good deal to me.
Edit: see below, this isn't actually a good choice.

 

[SweetAndLow]

The E1 chassies are sas1 which is only 3gbps per channel(4) and imo that's a bottleneck. The E16 version is sas2 which is 6gbps per channel(4), much better and ok to buy imo. I would suggest the 846E16 or 847E16.

 

[danb35]

Ah, good catch. Yes, as a result the one I posted would make a poor choice. This would be better, though it's the A backplane. This would give you the chassis you want, and a motherboard you don't really care about. You'd need to add motherboard, CPU(s), RAM, and HBA.

Edit: Or this, while more expensive, looks like a nice, high-end, turnkey FreeNAS box.

 

[steveputman]

Thanks, @danb35, for the suggestions, and thanks @SweetAndLow for the clarification on the E1. Will have a look at these now.

 

[-MG-]

Edit: Or this, while more expensive, looks like a nice, high-end, turnkey FreeNAS box.

I'm considering updating my rig and was thinking of this same concept of using a retired server. Noise isn't a huge concern, but if I can replace them with something reasonable that this would work.

I have not dabbled in actual server hardware before. Should I expect this thing to be a power hog (is that due to the PSU's and if so are there better long term options out there?). Otherwise, you mentioned this is turnkey basically? Don't have to worry about flashing anything?

Would they have any issue with SSD support for me to have a few SSDs to run a few VMs out of?

 

[danb35]

Should I expect this thing to be a power hog

My system, which is very similar, draws about 300 watts at idle. That includes 18 disks, but it's not a low-power system (the Xeon E5-series chips aren't optimized for power consumption, AFAIK). The power supplies are very efficient, though, 80+ Platinum IIRC.

Don't have to worry about flashing anything?

You might need to flash current firmware to the HBA, IPMI, and BIOS. None of these is a particularly big deal, though the BIOS can be a bit of a hassle what with making a bootable DOS device to run the flash utility. IPMI firmware can be updated from the IPMI web interface; the HBA can be done from inside FreeNAS.

 

[-MG-]

Well somehow the link I looked at wasn’t what you were referencing. I was looking at this :

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/233035846005

Which looks like it has the SAS controller that was stated above as a bottle neck? I was comfortable at this price point and don’t need 24 bays. 12 easily covers me. Any ideas there?

 

[danb35]

Well somehow the link I looked at wasn’t what you were referencing.

No, it looks like that one's sold and eBay "helpfully" showed the page for a different system. You're right that the system you link has the SAS1 backplane, which you wouldn't want.

 

[steveputman]

No, it looks like that one's sold and eBay "helpfully" showed the page for a different system.

I bought the one that was originally referred to, so that's where that one went. Thanks again for the recommendation, @danb35: looks to be a perfect machine for what I was after. Being new to server hardware, I'm a little bit in awe of IPMI--powering on remotely from the network, whoa! (especially since my machine doesn't have the handles with the power button). By the way, I was able to flash the BIOS through IPMI.

Would they have any issue with SSD support for me to have a few SSDs to run a few VMs out of?

There are some brackets (I don't know whether they're typically included or not--mine were missing, so I'm having to track them down) that can fit some SSDs (under the motherboard, in the case of the 847, which will fit up to 4 additional 2.5" drives).

 

[danb35]

There are some brackets (I don't know whether they're typically included or not--mine were missing, so I'm having to track them down)

I was able to find them on eBay pretty inexpensively. If you check SuperMicro's web site (I think on the page for the chassis) you should be able to find the part number, which should make them pretty easy to find.