My new 48 bay build.

[Nick2253]

I hate you both. You are evil temptresses and you should repent for your sins against my wallet!!

 

[Chris Moore]

Yeah since they are so close to me it's just a quick drive down and grab it. Picked it up about 1:15 today. Really nice guy. Looks like they are just moving into the building they have as they didn't even have desks all together. From what I was told they are going to have a good amount of stuff coming in. Said he will have a bunch of DDR3 ECC RAM soon in 16GB and 32GB sizes. Was also talking about some large SAN but those are gonna be high dollar and not really useful to me.

Something I find interesting about this new chassis and I don't fully understand the 'why' of it... My system did it's first scrub since moving into the new chassis and, with no other hardware changes, the scrub finished a full hour and fifteen minutes faster than it used to do.
Only 2 hrs and 11 min.

 

[LTCM]

Add me to the cool kids club. Hope it arrives next week.

Don't even think about paying full price. Apparently they have a pretty large stock of these things.

 

[nightshade00013]

Yeah I think they have at least 15 or 20, the one I bought was relisted with 11 available and I know they have some that are a buy three for 1200 deal. Didn't ask but I did tell them about the forums so who knows they may stop by and offer up some deals.

Interesting on the scrub time reduction.... Were you using a backplane previously with two connections? Honestly it shouldn't matter as the drives are generally the slowest part of the whole thing anyway but could be a bit faster.

One thing I was wondering is if it would be advantageous or cause issues with the backplanes to link them together. Basically use the "out" from one to the other one's "in" and also link to the SAS controller. I am not that well versed in all that type of stuff but just wondering if it will chose the fastest path or allow one connection to act up and still keep everything alive or if it will just cause issues. Would still have one direct connection to the controller to each backplane and add two extra SAS cables to link the two together.

BTW how hard was it to get the sas cables plugged into the backplanes. I only had it open long enough to look inside and then my LB6M showed up. Today has been my Christmas with taxes coming in and selling off my crypto and paying myself back for that build.

 

[nightshade00013]

I hate you both. You are evil temptresses and you should repent for your sins against my wallet!!

I have a 4U Rosewill that supports 15 HDD's that will be available. Add a board and PSU along with some drives and fans and you will be great. I have used it for quite a while now. Just two dings in the top where I needed to make space for the 212 EVO's. Otherwise I will probably end up putting my router into it and tossing everything into a rack now that I have 3 rackmount devices it is starting to make sense.
I wonder what the apartment manager will think if I end up carting a rack in.....

Add me to the cool kids club. Hope it arrives next week.

Don't even think about paying full price. Apparently they have a pretty large stock of these things.

As I was pulling out UPS was pulling up so maybe you will get lucky.

 

[Chris Moore]

BTW how hard was it to get the sas cables plugged into the backplanes. I only had it open long enough to look inside and then my LB6M showed up. Today has been my Christmas with taxes coming in and selling off my crypto and paying myself back for that build.

The hardest part of connecting the SAS cables was the fact that all the hard drive trays need to come out first. Then the trays that hold the backplanes can be unscrewed (thumbscrews on the front of the chassis) and slide forward a few inches (without disconnecting any of the already connected cables) to allow fingers to get into where the connectors are.

One thing I was wondering is if it would be advantageous or cause issues with the backplanes to link them together. Basically use the "out" from one to the other one's "in" and also link to the SAS controller. I am not that well versed in all that type of stuff but just wondering if it will chose the fastest path or allow one connection to act up and still keep everything alive or if it will just cause issues. Would still have one direct connection to the controller to each backplane and add two extra SAS cables to link the two together.

I don't think that would be advantageous and it might actually cause problems because it would make a loop. Kind of like having a loop in a Ethernet network can cause problems. I ran a SAS cable from each port on my SAS controller, one to each backplane, and it is working really nice.
The way I had it connected before, I was using two SAS controllers with each one directly connected to 8 drives. I thought that would be the fastest way, but it appears to be working faster now.

 

[nightshade00013]

Ok cool, saves me money then. I have a breakout cable hooked to four drives now so I just have to get two mini sas cables and plug them in with one cable to each one.

 

[nightshade00013]

Picked up a couple 80MM fans for the back of the case and a couple SAS cables from Newegg since I had twenty bucks I needed to burn there. Be here around the 18th or so.

 

[nightshade00013]

Well looking through the information about the backplanes I decided that I would just power the 120MM fans from the backplane instead of the MoBo. Part of the reason why is one of the backplanes controls two fans and the other controls one and I don't want to end up with one set of drives getting a little too warm compared to the others once I start using the case. So I plugged in the back fans where one side controls one middle fan each and then the front fan on the same side as the backplane. Flip a couple of the dip switches and they should all work.

Part of the reason for this is the fans on my current server rarely spin up on their own and I ended up just defaulting them to 100% to keep everything cool. I will have a couple fans in the very back that will be MoBo controlled and the HDD fans will always be moving some air so I doubt that will be an issue with a good cpu cooler. I already have a fan directly on the onboard SAS chip heatsink and will be making sure one is either on or aimed at the Mellanox card I am using for a LAN connection.

Also going to use something like this https://tombuildsstuff.blogspot.com/2014/02/diy-server-rack-plans.html to start setting up stuff and keep it quiet enough to be in a room and not make me want to pull my hair out.

 

[Chris Moore]

Well looking through the information about the backplanes I decided that I would just power the 120MM fans from the backplane instead of the MoBo.

Probably a good call. The front fans were like that to start with and I kept them that way, but the rear set I connected to my system board and they keep ramping up and slowing down. I was trying to get that sorted by adjusting the IPMI firmware but I have not got a satisfactory setting out of it yet. The CPU fan (I installed the Noctua this weekend) works great. Even running at 450 RPM, it is keeping the CPU cool enough, between 45 and 55c. I didn't even put any fans at the rear of the chassis, it just didn't feel like it was needed because the HDD fans are pushing a good amount of air through the system.

PS. I like the look of that rack.

 

[nightshade00013]

Yeah the fronts are already connected but the middle one is on one backplane so if the other side is a little warm I have my doubts about it getting everything cooled down. Hooking the other three should alleviate that problem. The only thing you have to do is adjust the first two switches to the on position or towards the front of the case so that they the boards can control them correctly.

Glad to hear the Noctua is working well. I am looking at the NH-D9DX since my current board is LGA 1366. Till I have them I will probably just leave the rear section open and run the Hyper 212 EVO's if I transplant things into the new case.

Same here on the rack. I have a couple of the rails but I think the screw threads are slightly off. Nothing a tap will not fix but probably the reason why they were tossed. Been floating in the back of my truck for over two years now. Anyway I also wouldn't mind just using the wood directly, once the rails are installed I won't be removing them so no issue to use a small lag bolt to hold them in place but another set of 20U rails is cheap too. I have done projects not too dissimilar to the rack/cabinet before.

Sadly I do not have it any more.

 

[loch_nas]

Nice to hear that the Noctua cooler is doing a good job, especially at those low RPMs.

 

[Constantin]

Hey Chris, thanks for the report and best of luck. The local electric company must love you! :)

 

[Chris Moore]

Glad to hear the Noctua is working well. I am looking at the NH-D9DX since my current board is LGA 1366. Till I have them I will probably just leave the rear section open and run the Hyper 212 EVO's if I transplant things into the new case.

I got the NH-D9L that was suggested by @loch_nas and it is working with no trouble. It fits several CPUs with the included hardware, but I don't think the 1366 socket was one of them.

Hey Chris, thanks for the report and best of luck. The local electric company must love you! :)

I don't think the power consumption is really any different than with the old server. It is down to the number of drives and how much power they consume. I moved the 16 drives I have running in this chassis from the older chassis I had before, along with the system board, SAS card, CPU and RAM. I plan to add additional drives for another pool later, which was the whole reason for the bigger chassis, but all the key components are basically the same as before. The new chassis even has the same number of redundant power supplies but they have a lower amount of heat output. It isn't like I put some fancy meter on it though, I am just looking at the readout on my UPS. If I had the money to do it, I would fill it with SSDs so I could save real money on the electric bill.

 

[Nick2253]

Hey Chris, thanks for the report and best of luck. The local electric company must love you! :)

 

[southwow]

@Chris Moore

Do the rails for the case allow easy enough access to the drives?

 

[Chris Moore]

@Chris Moore

Do the rails for the case allow easy enough access to the drives?

Each drive gets a little plastic bracket that is attached by two screws. It gives you a handle to grab the drive with when you want to pull it out and it helps align the drive with the connector when you are slotting it in. There is no catch because gravity hods the drive down. It works great by my way of thinking. We have one of those 45drives.com Storinator serves at work and they don't give you any kind of drive bracket for the drive alignment, so it is a pain getting it aligned properly to go in the chassis to begin with and almost as much a pain getting a grip on the drive to pull it out when you need to. I would never suggest one of those systems to anyone for anything.
I have not used the rack mount rails yet but they look nice and they are very heavy.

 

[Chris Moore]

I hate you both. You are evil temptresses and you should repent for your sins against my wallet!!

You know, since they relisted these, they already sold three more.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Server-Che...NEW-in-Box-New-Rail-Kit-Included/253419031346

 

[nightshade00013]

You know, since they relisted these, they already sold three more.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Server-Che...NEW-in-Box-New-Rail-Kit-Included/253419031346

Yep, it's a heck of a deal IMHO even with the shipping. I was planning a total of 14 drives previously. Now it's going to be a whole lot more. Plus I end up with another PSU that I can use with my crytpo miner once I transfer out of the current case.

Powered up the PSU with the fans all hooked up for a quick test today and let my wife hear it. She thinks it's quieter than the Rosewill 4U I currently have but the fans are all running 100% in it to keep the drives cool.

 

[data packrat]

Could the faster pool scrub in the new chassis be due to less vibration ?
There is a video showing the vibration caused by just shouting at a set of discs can cause slower disc accesses...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4