My current server just had its power suppy die in it, and since I'm buying hardware for it, I decided that I'm sick of the excessively large case and want to shrink the server. I have 2 supermicro brand 5x 3.5" hot swap racks that take up 3 5.25" bays each. They have 5 SATA connectors on the back and 2 power connectors. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405 here. I found http://www.raidage.com/products/iage840ml2.aspx this, and I like its formfactor etc. But I already have the hot swap racks and I dont think I need to spend more on racks... So I was thinking about making my own. I wanted to make an enclosure for the racks, and inside the encosure, get 3 of these http://www.raidage.com/products/cageaam1mih.aspx 2 of them would be for the array, and the last one, would be for the unused slots. I would hook the SAS ends of those to 1 of these http://www.raidage.com/products/zageh8788du.aspx and then the http://www.raidage.com/products/zageh8788du.aspx one of these in the PC and the internal SAS to SATA connectors to plug into my existing 8 channel raid card, and the motherboard. That would work correct, nothing preventing using SAS cables with a SATA card and drives? Thanks
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y204/CKOD/DSC04897res.jpg back when it was my primary, pic of the new heatsink, with wires disconnected still Exhaust duct on the back and intake box on the front, both halfway completed mods... No pics at the moment since I'm not at home, why you got an idea for something?
haha no sorry mate, just when someone says they got a home server its nice to see some pics! lol! Loads of room in those old chieftec dragons, full tower. Its glad i've got one moth balled at the parents house! lol!
Its a bit of a mess ATM, esp with the power supply ripped out and 8+ SATA cables running everywhere. Used to love it, but its just overly big now :-/ , the 6 external bays start above where the motherboard ends... I'd love to have just the top section of it with a mini ATX board inside of it with all the bays, for the server. still not sure about cutting it down, or going from scratch with the HDD racks. Either way, at the moment I want to put a power supply and both racks in and enclosure, put 3 fanouts to go from infiniband or external SAS to SATA and hook up the 8 drives of the array to 2 of the connectors, and the 2 unused ones and 2 ESATA ports to a third cable. The first two E SAS cables will go to my raid card, and the last one will break-out inside my PC to go to the motherboard SATA ports. or maybe a second card, I dont think regular internal SATA will take too kindly to going though 8 connections and a 1M+ of cable....
How about grabbing a Antec 900, the whole front is full of bays to rip out for HDD caddies! mmmmmmmm server! lol!
900 looks good, but dunno why, but I really want to have a separate enclosure for the racks found an external enclosure for the drives, http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat84xb.asp 8 5.25" bays, I'll use up 6, and be able to hold upto 10 drives. (only 8 at first, but thats All I need for now.) 200 seems like a lot, but it comes with a power supply, and SATA/SAS adaptors/cabling which would normally run $100-150 Plus I like it having a flat top rather then the vent on top which keeps me from putting stuff on top of it. I think I may get a shuttle to put the raid card in, and have a pair of shuttles on top of it, (obviousley another support, not both precariousley balanced Shuttle with 8-10 hard drives anyone?
Sounds cool, shuttle with an external link to HDD's. Cant help but think maybe a custom NAS is a better solution.
Ive been a bit of a shuttle fiend lately since got once for my legacy XP machine to run older apps that dont play nice with vista. I think my next main desktop/gaming machine will be a shuttle, to make for a trio of shuttles. Possibly the NAS on the far left, triple stack of shuttles and UPS on the left. I found a 6 bay enclosure on another website but they didnt have any details about it, and it was mroe expensive so decided to hold off on that. This will be network attached, Ive always had my server separate as backup/media serving.
Good news! I suck at counting, that enclosure I actually ordered has 9 bays... Which means... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405 x3 http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_port_multipliers/3726PM.asp 3 1 to 5 port multipliers, and one of these http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_raid_controllers/2314MS.asp Anyone ever seen a Shuttle with 16 drives?
Those x4 cables will work with SATA fine. This is from the mainboard of a server I get to play with: It is clearly labeled SATA 1_4 for SATA ports 1-4 on the southbridge. It looks like just about everything you posted is all just cabling so it should be fine. They only place I could see you having problems is trying to use a SAS backplane with a managment controller on a SATA host, but that does not appear to be what you want to do (please correct me if I am wrong). I'm also not sure about SATA port multipliers and backplane controllers on a SAS host. It will be up to how well the SAS host supports SATA, so you may have to check if you ever go SAS. But everything you have looks to be SATA. And here is some more server pr0n for you Burnout, this is the system that port in on (URLs because the pictures are pretty big): image 1 image 2
I got it pretty well handled now, the backplanes are Sata backplanes with 5 sata connection on each, I'm going to remove the fan and put the 1 to five expander where the fan was (still leaving room for airflow, and use some cute little 9inch sata cables I ordered to go from the expander to the rack. Then some Esata to sata cables to go to the infiniband to 4x Sata fanout that came with the enclosure. Infinband to ext. miniSAS connector on the SATA controller I ordered, which is listed as PM compatible. And of course some custom fan/duct work on the inside rather then 3 screaming 92's on the racks. Methinks I might try my hand at a cellulose fiber composite ducting.
For those who wanted to see pics... http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y204/CKOD/bittech/Front.jpg Front view, 15 lovely hard drive bays http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y204/CKOD/bittech/internals.jpg here you can see in the center the infiniband to sata breakout. and on the sides there is a sata port multiplier (1 to 5) and mounted to the top (you can barely see the connectors hanging out. Need some cable clips for cable organization, and possibly some sata cables of various lengths to keep it neat. Also I need some quieter 92mm fans for the bays.
