147 drives - what controllers?

[Todd Takehana]

I'm building a FrankenNAS with 147 drives, mostly all 3TB and 4TB HGST SATA drives. For the first 32 drives I've used 4 x Dell H200 in IT mode I've looked at higher density controllers, but the 16 and 24 port controllers get really expensive. Don't even mention a 45 Drives pod or a Backblaze Pod. I'm on a budget :)

My current motherboard is an Intel dual Xeon server board with 4 x 16x slots and 4 x 8x slots. I can set up another server, but that still only would get me to 128 drives with 8 x Dell H200/LSI HBA cards.

Any suggestions?

 

[Stux]

Sas expanders.

 

[danb35]

Sas expanders.

Yes, this, exactly. You could handle all your disks on a single HBA this way.

 

[Todd Takehana]

That makes sense. I wondered how the LSI 8 port HBA could handle 128 drives with only 8 ports.

Any suggestions on an good SAS expander?

 

[c32767a]

That makes sense. I wondered how the LSI 8 port HBA could handle 128 drives with only 8 ports.

Any suggestions on an good SAS expander?

https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/847/SC847DE2C-R2K04JBOD

It even comes with a free case.. :)

With that many drives, I would strongly suggest using an integrated JBOD case to add to your main enclosure. We built a bunch of 45 Drives Storinator chassis back when they used discrete cabling.. it was a long and annoying experience. The design worked OK but it was a pain to assemble and if any of the cabling has problems, you have to disassemble most of the case to fix. (fortunately, we have had few cable problems.)

 

[tvsjr]

More importantly, that case includes a thermal management solution, which is going to be at least as big an issue as getting all the drives cabled.

 

[Stux]

https://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/847/SC847DE2C-R2K04JBOD

It even comes with a free case.. :)

With that many drives, I would strongly suggest using an integrated JBOD case to add to your main enclosure. We built a bunch of 45 Drives Storinator chassis back when they used discrete cabling.. it was a long and annoying experience. The design worked OK but it was a pain to assemble and if any of the cabling has problems, you have to disassemble most of the case to fix. (fortunately, we have had few cable problems.)

And IPMI :)

Cool case.

Can just imagine the lights dimming when you power it up...