New 3U rackmount - Suggestions?

[Chris Moore]

I am doing research right now to build 4 new (identical) servers for my work. I figured I would see if there were suggestions, options I may have overlooked.

What I need to do:

• 3U rack mount with the boot and data drives all easily removable (space constrained)
  
• 16 TB usable storage

I took a couple runs at it and I think I am overbuilding. I would like it to do the job, but be cost effective. It will ONLY serve a single network share to a Windows server for data backup. It will never run anything except I will sync between two of the servers so they have the same data.

 

[Chris Moore]

Prices are best available as of today and are subject to market fluctuations.
All parts are listed as New with Manufacturer (Mfr.) part number.

Suggested Parts List:

1 @ $700 ea.
SUPERMICRO CSE-835TQ-R920B Black 3U Rackmount Server Case 920W Redundant 2 External 5.25" Drive Bays
Mfr. Part #: CSE-835TQ-R920B

1 @ $34 ea.
ICY DOCK Full Metal 2 Bay 2.5 SATA/SAS HDD & SSD Hot Swap Mobile Rack Enclosure for 3.5 Drive Bay
ToughArmor - Mfr. Part #: MB992SK-B

1 @ $215 ea.
SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SL7-F-O Micro ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C222 DDR3 1600
Mfr. Part #: MBD-X10SL7-F-O

1 @ $205
Intel Xeon E3-1220 V3 Haswell 3.1 GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1150 80W BX80646E31220V3 Processor
Mfr. Part #: BX80646E31220V3

1 @ $170 - kit contains two modules
Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3L 1600 (PC3L 12800) Server Memory
Mfr. Part #: CT2KIT102472BD160B

2 each @ $40 = $80
Seagate Momentus Thin ST320LT007 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive
Mfr. Part #: ST320LT007

4 each @ $190 = $760
Toshiba X300 6TB Performance Hard Drive 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive
Mfr. Part #: HDWE160XZSTA

Total cost with drives: $ 2164, which is about $1500 less than a prefab solution without drives.

NAS with RAID-z1 capacity estimated to be 15.3 TB

 

[danb35]

3U seems like overkill for these requirements--you could easily get this amount of storage in 2U, and even getting it in 1U wouldn't be much of a stretch. You could, for example, save half the cost of the chassis you mention by going for the 825TQ instead, without any loss of 3.5 drive bays (and you could always use 2.5-to-3.5 adapters to put your boot drives into those bays as well). Or the 826TQ gives you 12 bays instead, though it's a little more expensive than the 835TQ you mention. I'm not a fan of the TQ backplanes at all, but with this few bays the cabling isn't a complete nightmare.

Similarly, I think you're putting in a higher-end motherboard and CPU than are called for here. The SAS controller (and thus 14 ports) of the X10SL7 are wasted if you're only going to use six disks, and a Pentium should be plenty to handle a single SMB share.

 

[Chris Moore]

Similarly, I think you're putting in a higher-end motherboard and CPU than are called for here. The SAS controller (and thus 14 ports) of the X10SL7 are wasted if you're only going to use six disks, and a Pentium should be plenty to handle a single SMB share.

Thank you. I had a feeling I was over building. I was hoping to get this kind of input.

 

[Inxsible]

I know you like 3U/4U chassis because of the space and cooling, but since you are constrained for space, maybe a 1U/2U won't be so bad. Also since these would be in a server room, noise should not be an issue.

If the storage space is not going to be increased much beyond 16TB, then going for an older board in the X8/X9 series might also work and turn out to be cheaper by using only the SATA ports on the board.

 

[Chris Moore]

If the storage space is not going to be increased much beyond 16TB, then going for an older board in the X8/X9 series might also work and turn out to be cheaper by using only the SATA ports on the board.

There is some possibility the storage might go up. We would be replacing the drives every six months to a year due to the nature of the data backup these systems are purposed for.
I do have to obtain something that is available new at retail because of purchasing requirements of the organization I work for.

 

[danb35]

The only real problem with the X10 boards is that their RAM is limited to 32 GB; an X11 would allow you to expand to 64. For your stated use case that won't be a problem at all. But if you're contemplating changing that, you might look at a basic X11 board instead.