BUILD external drive bay

[sour]

I have a MacPro5,1 with 2x 2.66 GHz 6 Core Xeon X5650 and 24GB RAM currently running linux. I want to virtualize FreeNAS via libvirt and passthrough an LSI HBA with 8x10TB drives attached (either Ironwolf or WD Red). The issue is that there isn't very much space in the Mac Pro tower to house drives. The LSI HBAs I've seen have 2x mini SAS connectors and I have seen mini SAS to 4x SATA breakout cables, but is there a better way to house the drives, preferably rack-mountable with cooling and power? I didn't see any mention of this in the community hardware guide. Would something like this work http://www.sansdigital.com/es108xplusb.html or is there another community-recommended approach? Is this just a SAS expander?

 

[Logikgear]

You would be looking for something called a disk shelf. They house 12-24 drives in how swap trays in 2U-4U flavors. They have single and dual power supplies along with I/O modules (SAS Expanders) but one of each is all that is needed at minimum.

 

[blacklc56]

And how can you connect the disk shelf mit a "normal" computer?
I have the "same" question.

I own a 24 slot server with FreeNAS:

Supermicro X10SL7-F retail
HP Smart Array SAS Expander Card
Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3
Samsung DIMM 8GB, DDR3L-1600 x4
Inter-Tech 4U-4424

I need more disks and don't want to replace the "old" but working disks with greater ones. How can I connect a diskshelf with the server?
Is there something like SUN-J4400 possible? But how to connect it?

Thank you!!

 

[Logikgear]

As long as you have one empty PCI-E slot you can add that SUN-J4400 with ease.
You would need a LSI SAS 9207-8e and one or two SAS 8088 cable .
One is only needed but if you use two, one to each expander you have some redundancy.
You can also add another SUN-J4400 by just daisy chaining them.

 

[blacklc56]

Wow outstanding information. Thank you so much. I'm searching for a long time to get this information. I have one PCIe Slot free. The other is blocked with the HP-SAS-Expander. I will try to get this J4400 and test it.
!! OR do you know other disk shelfs that are the better choice? The example was only because that is the only Shelf that i know.

 

[Logikgear]

I Personalty avoid SUN unless I can make sure they aren't using SUN I/O Modules.
For disk shelfs I would go with one of the following.

4U rack mount
netapp ds4243 24 3.5" drives

2U rack mount
Xyratex HB-1235 12 3.5 drives <-- these can be scored filled with 1-2TB drives for around $300-$400
Dell Compellent SC200 12 3.5" drives <-- these are re-branded Xyratex HB-1235
Dell MD1200 12 3.5" drives <-- I believe these are just newer. Some can be found with 12GB/s modules witch would be good for mixing HDD & SSD but you would need a SAS 9300-8E with different cables.

 

[blacklc56]

Thank you

 

[sour]

great info! thanks for your help

 

[sour]

I have another question regarding these disk shelfs--do they have drive capacity limitations? e.g. can the Xyratex HB-1235 handle 10TB Seagate IronWolf/WD Red SATA drives?

 

[Logikgear]

It seems to depend on where you look. There are people in the /r/homelab subredit saying they are using 8TB drives in the Xyratex HB-1235. But, Like I stated before the Dell SC200 is a rebranded Xyratex HB-1235. and Dell's website states that the SC200 supports up to 4T drives. But from a bit a research in the past on NetApp shelfs you could take one of the older shelfs and put newer I/O modules in them to be able to use largers drives. So that tells me it is entirely up to the support of the I/O module on what how large of drives you can use. But I'm not 100% sure