Expand the Storage (Hard Drive Time!)

[joltman]

I've moved my Supermicro 846EL1-900B chassis from a APC SmartUPS 1500 to a SmartUPS 6000 on 240V/30A circuit. Since then, during weekly scrubs the ESXi NICs drop and the Management Network and the VMs are not pingable. The VMs are still running, but I can't bring them back until I force shutdown the VMs (bad!) and reboot the host. This has happened every week since I moved from 120V to 240V for the server. I'm thinking that with this issue, along with one of the slots in the backplane being funky, and being nearly out of space, that it's time to move to a different storage JBOD. I think I could completely unplug the backplane from power/SAS and that would free up some power and I wouldn't drop NICs.

So I'd like to look at a JBOD that's 48 disks or maybe 60! Does anyone have any suggestions? I've got an LSI 9201-16e that I bought from eBay already flashed to IT mode, so I'm good. Would love some opinions!

 

[joltman]

I'm trying to decide between two hardware options. I've currently got the chassis I mentioned above. I believe it's got some power issues as I said. One of the PSU slots doesn't let the mobo boot. So I'm thinking either:

1. Nuke it from orbit with a new (to me) chassis.
2. Keep the current chassis and motherboard and add this.

The Chenbro sounds like it might be the better option. I could just remove the broken/breaking SM 846 and get rid of the older X8DTH-6F motherboard. However, 60 bays also has a nice ring to it. I guess I'm just worried about noise levels on either option. I've read that the Chenbro is noisey. Does anyone have any experience with these options?

 

[dlavigne]

Did you decide which way you will go?

 

[pro lamer]

I've read that the Chenbro is noisey

This thread https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/my-new-48-bay-build.61223/ describes some chassis and IIRC it's chenbro and they found that one quiet.

Sent from my phone

 

[joltman]

So I know it's been a while. I've not chosen anything yet. Lots going on here.

I should probably mention what I've got currently. 12 x 4TB Toshiba SATA 7200 RPM drives. 4 x HGST 2TB SAS2 drives. Whatever solution I come up with, I need to support the drives I have now and hopefully 8 more 10TB drives.

I'll ask over on that CHENBRO thread, but if anyone has any thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

 

[joltman]

I've just pulled the trigger on a Chenbro case with SuperMicro X9 MOBO, 32GB RAM. Now, I need to find good, long lasting drives. I'm thinking Toshiba 10TB 7200 RPM SATA drives. Any thoughts? There are some HGST 10TB drives that are a bit more that look interesting. Thanks!

EDIT: Thought I'd include what I currently have.

4xHGST SAS2 7200RPM 2TB in stripped mirror (ZFS)
12 x 4 TB Toshiba 7200RPM SATA (2x6 RAIDz2)

These will be transplanted to the new server and I'd like to add 8 x 10TB SATA drives. I'm not a huge fan of the shucking phenomenon. Personally, I'd rather pay for that longer warranty than risk losing my data, but I could be convinced otherwise. Toshiba drives have been very reliable for me. I'd like to pull the trigger tomorrow or Thursday. Thanks!