BUILD All-in-one Chassis or Server + Enclosure

[wraith]

Hi All,

I'm in the process of planning to move my server innards from a desktop case to a rackmount. I'm trying to consider all my options before making a purchase.

At the moment I see myself as having two options:
1) Purchase a chassis [4U?] that has everything inbuilt. I'm currently considering the Norco 4220. Details here. Cost is around AUS$500 [~US$400]. This should give me enough room for my current drives [10 in total] plus room for expansion. I've read @Stux build and he appears to speak rather well of Norco.
2) Purchase a smaller [1U?] chassis and connect an enclosure to it [if such an option is possible and practicable]. Someone is selling a second hand Supermicro 813M-M for around AUS$100 [~US$80]. Details here. Supermicro appears to be the duck's proverbials all over the forum. Plus the seller literally lives in the same suburb as myself. Getting a 4U Supermicro chassis in Western Australia is difficult and/or expensive. Plus it's cheap enough to work as a learning curve for rackmounts.

As such, I'm seeking feedback from the community as to any pro's, con's, feedback/advice etc for each option.

If I purchase the Norco 4220 is there any other potential issues I need to consider and resolve to ensure it fits into my rack?
Would the power supply from my desktop fit into a chassis or is this an item that is chassis specific? Looking at the Spec's for the Corsair RM550x in my case, and that the Norco accepts a standard ATX power supply, I currently understand I should be able to transfer the PS straight across. I'd imagine the 813M, being 1U, would have a custom power supply.
I've done some hutning for enclosures on ebay but can't find much. Or I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Everything appears to be for external USB hard drives

For those on Tapatalk my current system hardware is:
BOARD: Supermicro X10SL7-F [microATX]; BIOS v3.0; LSI 2308 f/w v 20.00.04
CPU: Pentium G3260
RAM: Crucial 16GB Kit (2x 8Gb) PC3-12800 ECC UDIMM [Model: CT102472BD160B]
HDD: vdev1: 2 x WD Red 1.0Tb [Mirror]
vdev2: 8 x WD Red 3.0Tb [RaidZ2]
PSU: Corsair 550W [Model: RM550x]
CASE: Fractal Design R4
FANS: 4 x Noctua NF-A14 PWM 140mm
2 x Fractal Define R3
Boot: 2 x Corsair 16Gb USB [Mirror]

Thanks in advance for your feedback

 

[jgreco]

The Norcos have kind of a poor build quality, and people like to replace the fan bulkhead with the 120mm one to "quiet it down", but when you do that, then there isn't a lot of pressure differential to do a good job of keeping your drives cool. Because of the way most rackmounts are designed in the modern era, for density above all else, the drives are invariably arranged as four-wide and stacked tight as possible. This means that to get proper cooling, there needs to be some actual pressure differential, and it has to be enough that it causes airflow around all the drives.

The Norcos generally accept standard ATX supplies. The Supermicros do not, but usually come with PSU. This means that when you're comparing prices of a Supermicro and Norco, many people forget to sum up the price of Norco+PSU.

It is possible to hook up an external SAS JBOD to a FreeNAS box, but most of the generic JBOD's out there are just Supermicro chassis without a mainboard in them, so at that point you're better off just getting the Supermicro chassis and putting the motherboard in it.

 

[Nick2253]

RAM: Crucial 16GB Kit (2x 8Gb) PC3-12800 ECC UDIMM [Model: CT102472BD160B]
HDD: vdev1: 2 x WD Red 1.0Tb [Mirror]
vdev2: 8 x WD Red 3.0Tb [RaidZ2]

16GB is undersized for the amount of storage you're looking at. I would recommend 24GB at a minimum. 32GB is probably more practical for your setup. If you're doing anything else with your setup (like VM, docker, etc.), you'll probably need more than that.

The Norcos...

I second all of this. Norcos just aren't in the same league as the SuperMicro chassis. I would strongly advise being patient, and waiting for a SuperMicro deal to show up on eBay/local vendor. You might have some luck contacting large corporations directly, and see what their old hardware disposal policies are; you might just be able to work yourself a deal on some second-hand stuff.

If you're really serious about packing a rack full of HDDs, then you need to be prepared for the trade-offs: typical rack storage is hot and loud, the opposite of what you really want in a home environment. If you've got a back closet or a basement that you can sequester your rack into that will cover the noise, then it won't be a problem for you. If you expect to be able to run this in a rack standing next to your desk, you're going to overload your eardrums or overheat your drives.

If you only need the 10 hard drives, you might want to look into the Rosewill Cases, if you can find them: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0091IZ1ZG They are much cheaper than the Norco, and while you lose the hot-swappable bays (and be honest, do you really need hot swappable bays?), the hard drive density is much lower, which translates into better cooling with lower noise.

 

[wraith]

Hi @jgreco / @Nick2253

Thanks for your feedback!

It is possible to hook up an external SAS JBOD to a FreeNAS box, but most of the generic JBOD's out there are just Supermicro chassis without a mainboard in them, so at that point you're better off just getting the Supermicro chassis and putting the motherboard in it.

Should I interpret "... an external SAS JBOD..." that one can't create a number of different vdev's in an enclosure?

16GB is undersized for the amount of storage you're looking at. I would recommend 24GB at a minimum. 32GB is probably more practical for your setup. If you're doing anything else with your setup (like VM, docker, etc.), you'll probably need more than that.

Agree! I have started messing around with VM's. I'll be purchasing an additional 16Gb and doing all my amendments at once. 32Gb is the max my SM board will support.

If you're really serious about packing a rack full of HDDs, then you need to be prepared for the trade-offs: typical rack storage is hot and loud, the opposite of what you really want in a home environment. If you've got a back closet or a basement that you can sequester your rack into that will cover the noise, then it won't be a problem for you. If you expect to be able to run this in a rack standing next to your desk, you're going to overload your eardrums or overheat your drives.

I have a 42RU rack that was put in not long after our family moved to our new house. It's setup in the garage so noise isn't necessarily an issue [although I don't want something that sounds like a plane taking off!]. And, no, not serious about packing a heap of drives, just trying to buy an item once. I'd rather slightly over-plan then under-plan.

I've also had a few days where the Aussie summer has pushed some of my drives over 40º and I'm assuming a well setup rackmount will provide better airflow then my case.

If you only need the 10 hard drives, you might want to look into the Rosewill Cases, if you can find them: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0091IZ1ZG They are much cheaper than the Norco, and while you lose the hot-swappable bays (and be honest, do you really need hot swappable bays?), the hard drive density is much lower, which translates into better cooling with lower noise.

I cannot find Rosewill cases anywhere in Australia, not even the east coast. The particular seller you linked to doesn't even ship to Australia. Australia isn't well looked after, it seems, by some of the server manufacturers.

I don't "need" hot-swappable bays, just thought they'd be easier to manage when a drive goes down rather then shutting down an entire server. Although, admittedly, shutting down a server won't be a hassle to our family. Interestingly, I'm having difficulting finding, nationally, many rackmount cases that aren't hot-swappable that support more than eight drives.

What about other manufacturers such as TGC [although @craigdt has already not recommended them]? Chenbro? Silverstone [seen a few very positive reviews for Silverstone's]? These are all brands that are much more readily available in the Australian market.

 

[jgreco]

Hi @jgreco / @Nick2253

Thanks for your feedback!


Should I interpret "... an external SAS JBOD..." that one can't create a number of different vdev's in an enclosure?

vdevs are not related to the arrangement or topology of physical devices. You could potentially create a vdev out of a local SATA drive, a local SAS drive, a local USB drive, a remote iSCSI drive, and a SAS drive in one of each of several external JBOD's. This doesn't make it a good idea to do so though, it would be fragile. It's suggested to keep all the physical drives for a vdev in a physical group, especially for external enclosures, so that an enclosure failure takes the entire vdev offline and stops the system from trying to do crazy repairs.

I cannot find Rosewill cases anywhere in Australia, not even the east coast. The particular seller you linked to doesn't even ship to Australia. Australia isn't well looked after, it seems, by some of the server manufacturers.

I'm sorry to hear that, I hear that your country is beautiful, not sure what server manufacturers have against it!

What about other manufacturers such as TGC [although @craigdt has already not recommended them]? Chenbro? Silverstone [seen a few very positive reviews for Silverstone's]? These are all brands that are much more readily available in the Australian market.

So on a scale of great to crap, for rackmount servers, in my opinion, you have

HP/Dell - great quality
Supermicro - good-to-very good quality
AIC-IPC, Chenbro - acceptable quality for infrequent swapouts etc, low-ish end commercial use, seen too many PSU and backplane failures
Norco - low end, home user - quality not that great, but you can definitely make a run of it if you have to
P-link/Skyhawk - cheapcheapcheap. If all you need is the sheet metal in an approximately useful shape, it's OK.

 

[wraith]

So on a scale of great to crap, for rackmount servers, in my opinion, you have

HP/Dell - great quality
Supermicro - good-to-very good quality
AIC-IPC, Chenbro - acceptable quality for infrequent swapouts etc, low-ish end commercial use, seen too many PSU and backplane failures
Norco - low end, home user - quality not that great, but you can definitely make a run of it if you have to
P-link/Skyhawk - cheapcheapcheap. If all you need is the sheet metal in an approximately useful shape, it's OK.

HP/Dell hardware is much easier to come across. Interesting, I went down this road [topic/thread here] and I got the distinct impression this wasn't the way to go. Was going to buy a HP server/chassis and modify/replace gear as needed. Do you have an opinion on IBM servers?

 

[jgreco]

The problem with HP/Dell gear is that it is prebuilt for a task, usually "heavy computing." So for example, if you go and get yourself a Dell R510, a 12-bay 2U affair, the build quality is marvelous, but it ONLY comes in a dual-CPU configuration in which the only supported CPU configuration is "two installed", and then you also have to have equal amounts of memory installed, so the base unit with disks will idle around 200W. In addition, the RAID controller built in will probably be a H710i (LSI 2208 IIRC), and the mainboard SATA ports are deliberately bricked in the BIOS, and there's no internal power available to add drives, though there are two powered 2.5" bays wired up to the SAS backplane.

I have no doubt that if I was going to run Windows Server on one of these that it'd be pleasant and zippy.

But this is suboptimal for a NAS, where you'd probably prefer a single CPU mainboard, with a faster UP CPU like an E5-16{20,50} or E3-1230, and you need an HBA, and it'd be nice to have some SSD expansion options for SLOG/L2ARC, and the options for boot devices on the R510 kinda suck, because there isn't a way to do SATADOM, but you *can* do internal USB, but that's hard to get at, and not reliable.

So, on a scale of great to crap, HP/Dell come out very high on the quality, but as for the things that make them a good choice for NAS, not so good. They're building servers for their preconceived notion that a dozen disks means a hell of a lot of CPU is going to be used, and that RAID is needed, and that it is going to be used in a certain type of role. Some of this can be fixed, some cannot.

As for why I'm picking on the R510 in particular...

We're refurb'ing nearly a dozen R510's here in the shop, and I've been trying to figure out how to do this on a non-budget. I can actually address most of the issues if I'm free to use a second HBA in IR mode and an Addonics card to hold some gumstick SATA SSD's, but that's a bit of a pricey option. I was blindsided by the whole "internal SATA disabled" thing. Grr!

 

[wraith]

Thanks @jgreco.

Is it practicable to buy a HP/Dell server and replace the motherboard and controllers? Drill new mount holes if the motherboard is custom?

I've seen a number of Dell PowerEdge and HP Proliant servers on Gumtree. There's even a HP C3000 Blade Chassis Server Enclosure... Whatever that is :P

 

[jgreco]

No. The HP/Dell servers are custom-built for their applications, so at best it is sometimes possible to swap one HP board for another HP board from a similar system, ditto Dell. This includes things like the wiring harnesses, where cables are made-to-order, boards have struts and fasteners and risers with specific requirements, etc. The R510's I'm discussing, for example, have a direct-wire to a header on the backplane and then some awful power connector for the mainboard that's at the end of maybe 3" of cable. I haven't taken apart one of them to the point where I can get a good look at it other than to note that it is a fold-over connector of some sort, the rest is hidden under cables and the internal RAID.

The good news is that you can sometimes hack on these things. The R510 can have a Dell PERC H200i subbed in place of its normal H700i and that can be flashed to IT mode. I had a more extensive thread on the R510's and I might have made some other comments.

But in general, no, there's too many custom holes, too many custom cables, too many custom risers, etc. I could see that it is probably possible to strip the board entirely out of one of these and use them as an external disk array, but putting some other mainboard in? Not *impossible* but a massive buttload of dangerous hackery that won't be worth it, especially given the price of used Supermicro stuff.

 

[wraith]

Hi @jgreco. Thanks for all the feedback and advice. I'll keep hanging on until the right Supermicro product comes available :)

 

[jgreco]

It's probably a less-frustrating idea to go that route. Good hunting.

 

[wraith]

Hi @jgreco , what is your opinion of SilverStone?

 

[jgreco]

Hi @jgreco , what is your opinion of SilverStone?

No significant direct experience. They've been around long enough to be considered well-established, and are generally liked in the enthusiast and gaming communities. Most manufacturers have their ups and downs, so if you're looking at a chassis, consider things like airflow, cooling, etc. and also read all the reviews. As a chassis is basically just a bunch of bent sheet metal, opinions of "how cool it looks" are much less important than "how well it cools my system."

 

[shamo316]

Hi All,

I'm in the process of planning to move my server innards from a desktop case to a rackmount. I'm trying to consider all my options before making a purchase.

At the moment I see myself as having two options:
1) Purchase a chassis [4U?] that has everything inbuilt. I'm currently considering the Norco 4220. Details here. Cost is around AUS$500 [~US$400]. This should give me enough room for my current drives [10 in total] plus room for expansion. I've read @Stux build and he appears to speak rather well of Norco.
2) Purchase a smaller [1U?] chassis and connect an enclosure to it [if such an option is possible and practicable]. Someone is selling a second hand Supermicro 813M-M for around AUS$100 [~US$80]. Details here. Supermicro appears to be the duck's proverbials all over the forum. Plus the seller literally lives in the same suburb as myself. Getting a 4U Supermicro chassis in Western Australia is difficult and/or expensive. Plus it's cheap enough to work as a learning curve for rackmounts.

As such, I'm seeking feedback from the community as to any pro's, con's, feedback/advice etc for each option.

If I purchase the Norco 4220 is there any other potential issues I need to consider and resolve to ensure it fits into my rack?
Would the power supply from my desktop fit into a chassis or is this an item that is chassis specific? Looking at the Spec's for the Corsair RM550x in my case, and that the Norco accepts a standard ATX power supply, I currently understand I should be able to transfer the PS straight across. I'd imagine the 813M, being 1U, would have a custom power supply.
I've done some hutning for enclosures on ebay but can't find much. Or I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Everything appears to be for external USB hard drives

For those on Tapatalk my current system hardware is:
BOARD: Supermicro X10SL7-F [microATX]; BIOS v3.0; LSI 2308 f/w v 20.00.04
CPU: Pentium G3260
RAM: Crucial 16GB Kit (2x 8Gb) PC3-12800 ECC UDIMM [Model: CT102472BD160B]
HDD: vdev1: 2 x WD Red 1.0Tb [Mirror]
vdev2: 8 x WD Red 3.0Tb [RaidZ2]
PSU: Corsair 550W [Model: RM550x]
CASE: Fractal Design R4
FANS: 4 x Noctua NF-A14 PWM 140mm
2 x Fractal Define R3
Boot: 2 x Corsair 16Gb USB [Mirror]

Thanks in advance for your feedback

I'm using the Norco 4224 4u case, I love it. You do have to change the 120mm and 80mm fans on the case because they aren't that good. I put 3 Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 and 2 Noctua NF-A8 PWM for the rear. Have not had any issues with the case, I'm also going to get the Norco DS-12D 2u 12 bay prob by end of this year to add more drives.

 

[Maelos]

Would any of the devices here (https://www.discsandersdiscountstore.com/disc/4u-server.html) help you? This is where I found my deal. I would ship my soon to be unused Rosewill 4U chassis to you if shipping was not going to be more than the worth of the chassis. Is there anything else we can help you with?

 

[wraith]

@jgreco , thanks for the feedback!

Hi @Maelos,

Thanks for the link and feedback.

When planning and considering my rack I was only planning on placing my server tower straight into into the rack. As such, I bought a rack that is 580mm deep [outside faces] and ~500mm between the supports. Not deep enough for most chassis' it seems. A real bummer but it is what it is :)

As such I've started looking for short chassis'.

The Rosewill RSV-R4100 can fit eight drives [after converting the two disc drives] and could work. As does the Norco RPC-430. I'm looking around to see if there are any deeper chassis' [5RU?] that can support more.

I recently bought a secondhand SuperMicro 1RU server [c/w Windows Server 2012 R2] with an 813M chassis - this just fits. All I need now are rails :)

Hi @shamo316 ,

One option I was considering was moving the motherboard, power supply etc. to a smaller case and linking it to an enclosure. The Norco product you mentioned may just fit :)

 

[Nick2253]

I've been on a quest for short chassis, so I can move my servers to a wall-mount rack, so I can relate. Unfortunately, there are only a couple cases I could find that would work for me, but many of these cases would work is your relatively more spacious 2' rack.

Supermicro is the vendor I would probably start your search with: http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/chassis_short_depth.cfm. Another company that I've found with lots of shorter cases is: http://www.plinkusa.net/index.html. I'm not sure how easy it would be to get these cases in Australia.

 

[wraith]

Hi @Nick2253 ,
A lot of those SuperMicro chassis' are quite limited in qty of HDD's.

Have you had any dealings with Logic-Case? Found a bunch of short chassis' that hold more than 4 HDD's...
https://www.logic-case.com/products/rackmount-chassis/4u/

 

[Stux]

I'm using the Norco 4224 4u case, I love it. You do have to change the 120mm and 80mm fans on the case because they aren't that good. I put 3 Noctua NF-F12 iPPC 3000 and 2 Noctua NF-A8 PWM for the rear. Have not had any issues with the case, I'm also going to get the Norco DS-12D 2u 12 bay prob by end of this year to add more drives.

Same changes I nade, along with blocking all the holes that compromised interval airflow (Ie by negating the negative pressure of the fans in the fan wall)

Adding, was hard to get anything at realistic price in Australia, other than Norco.