jgreco
Resident Grinch
- Joined
- May 29, 2011
- Messages
- 18,680
Seriously, for drive density, the Backblaze stuff is nice, but for cooling it is less than optimal, plus bonus points for the agony of SATA port multipliers.
I know that the Norco cases are popular (hi cyberjock) and also relatively inexpensive ... $400 for RPC-4224 and that they're definitely a contender for home users. But please do factor in to the equation the cost of a power supply, and the possible cost of retrofitting in different fans, brings it up to at least $500. Also, the Norco uses six SFF-8087's (one per row) which is kinda awesome from a ZFS point of view, except that needing something like 3 M1015's adds costs, or an SAS expander also adds costs to the build.
An option like the CSE-846BE16-R920B is extremely expensive in comparison, but comes with dual redundant power supplies WITH PMBus and I2C, plus two different options for mounting a pair of 2.5" drives (and you can even use both together, giving 2 internal 2.5 and 2 external 2.5). Based on an SAS expander, you get a single SFF-8087 to the system, which means less controller cost, but possible contention as the system approaches 24Gbps of traffic to the storage subsystem.
Both the Norco (appropriately fanned) and the Supermicro are going to give much better cooling effects than the Backblaze, which involves running heat from one drive past the other drives.
I know that the Norco cases are popular (hi cyberjock) and also relatively inexpensive ... $400 for RPC-4224 and that they're definitely a contender for home users. But please do factor in to the equation the cost of a power supply, and the possible cost of retrofitting in different fans, brings it up to at least $500. Also, the Norco uses six SFF-8087's (one per row) which is kinda awesome from a ZFS point of view, except that needing something like 3 M1015's adds costs, or an SAS expander also adds costs to the build.
An option like the CSE-846BE16-R920B is extremely expensive in comparison, but comes with dual redundant power supplies WITH PMBus and I2C, plus two different options for mounting a pair of 2.5" drives (and you can even use both together, giving 2 internal 2.5 and 2 external 2.5). Based on an SAS expander, you get a single SFF-8087 to the system, which means less controller cost, but possible contention as the system approaches 24Gbps of traffic to the storage subsystem.
Both the Norco (appropriately fanned) and the Supermicro are going to give much better cooling effects than the Backblaze, which involves running heat from one drive past the other drives.