Hello from the snow bound nation of Canada...

[CdnGhost]

Just getting into this area very unfamiliar with it, and am looking forward to leaarning

Was given some old but still useful hardware.. and am looking forward to building a server from it.
Specs are
x8dt3-ln4f Mobo
1u chassis
12 2gb Kingston ECC ram for 24gb
Dual E5520 Xeon processors
24 WD 1.0Tb WDRE4 drives.

Good at building gaming rigs etc, never done any server builds... Will likely transplant it into a larger chassis with support for the spare drives I have

 

[Spearfoot]

Welcome to the forum, and good luck with your server build!

 

[CdnGhost]

Welcome to the forum, and good luck with your server build!

Thanks!

 

[jgreco]

Just getting into this area very unfamiliar with it, and am looking forward to leaarning

Was given some old but still useful hardware.. and am looking forward to building a server from it.
Specs are
x8dt3-ln4f Mobo
1u chassis
12 2gb Kingston ECC ram for 24gb
Dual E5520 Xeon processors
24 WD 1.0Tb WDRE4 drives.

X8's are good space heaters.

 

[CdnGhost]

X8's are good space heaters. :)

and sound like a jet is about to take off.... I am thinking of transplanting the mother board, and the sas controller and hard drive rack into a thermaltake x9 witha 1200w power supply... and some quiet static pressure fans.... THAT or figure out how to replace the fans inside the power supplies... the 3 system fans I can swap with some arctic 80mm fans... I just dont like the noise... the heat is welcomed though lol

 

[CdnGhost]

I do custom Desktop computers so hardware wise I have no issue hacking and slashing things up to make them fit and or operate differently... its the software side of servers etc that has me out of my comfort zone....

 

[CdnGhost]

 

[HoneyBadger]

X8's are good space heaters. :)

Well, he is Canadian. With that cold snap we had, might as well have your space heater double as a file server.

 

[jgreco]

and some quiet static pressure fans.... THAT or figure out how to replace the fans inside the power supplies... the 3 system fans I can swap with some arctic 80mm fans... I just don't like the noise... the heat is welcomed though lol

Not recommended. The static pressure differential required to force air through all the tiny gaps around the drives is surprisingly high, and your typical hobbyist-grade fans like the Arctics will fail rather earlier than they should.

I do custom Desktop computers so hardware wise I have no issue hacking and slashing things up to make them fit and or operate differently...

And I do custom servers professionally, so "word to the wise."

Well, he is Canadian. With that cold snap we had, might as well have your space heater double as a file server.

That... was actually the joke there.

 

[CdnGhost]

Not recommended. The static pressure differential required to force air through all the tiny gaps around the drives is surprisingly high, and your typical hobbyist-grade fans like the Arctics will fail rather earlier than they should.



And I do custom servers professionally, so "word to the wise."



That... was actually the joke there.

Thanks for the info... might as well put it in a case instead of a rack mount...

 

[jgreco]

Thanks for the info... might as well put it in a case instead of a rack mount...

That's the best bet. It's also fine to get a 24-bay chassis and only fill every other row. Then you can arrange it so you're not stressing "quieter" fans. You just need to be real sure you remember that you've compromised the airflow design and don't try putting another 12 drives in there at some later date.

 

[CdnGhost]

That's the best bet. It's also fine to get a 24-bay chassis and only fill every other row. Then you can arrange it so you're not stressing "quieter" fans. You just need to be real sure you remember that you've compromised the airflow design and don't try putting another 12 drives in there at some later date.

I hope to snag one more of these units, going to grab the drive bay, and board... will the motherboard accept 24 drives? As there are 2 sas headers?

 

[jgreco]

I hope to snag one more of these units, going to grab the drive bay, and board... will the motherboard accept 24 drives? As there are 2 sas headers?

X8 is from the Tylersburg era so I'd suspect it's probably an LSI 1068, which is SAS generation 1 or "3Gbps SAS". There will be a chipset limitation for LBA addressing of 2^32-1 meaning you're limited to 2TB HDD's. "2 sas headers" is meaningless. Individual SAS connectors look similar to SATA and have a single lane. A 4 lane multichannel connector like SFF8087 can directly handle up to 4 drives with a breakout cable and no further electronics. Any SAS connector can be hooked up to an SAS expander and potentially handle hundreds of drives.

If we're talking a Supermicro chassis, there's a part number suffix breakdown in my SAS guide to help you decode what connectivity it provides.

 

[CdnGhost]

X8 is from the Tylersburg era so I'd suspect it's probably an LSI 1068, which is SAS generation 1 or "3Gbps SAS". There will be a chipset limitation for LBA addressing of 2^32-1 meaning you're limited to 2TB HDD's. "2 sas headers" is meaningless. Individual SAS connectors look similar to SATA and have a single lane. A 4 lane multichannel connector like SFF8087 can directly handle up to 4 drives with a breakout cable and no further electronics. Any SAS connector can be hooked up to an SAS expander and potentially handle hundreds of drives.

If we're talking a Supermicro chassis, there's a part number suffix breakdown in my SAS guide to help you decode what connectivity it provides.

Awesome info, thank you!!
And as to max 2 tb drives... that’s ok by me I was given all this stuff never figured I’d be doing a project like this....