recommendations for an external enclosure?

[ihateire]

hey all,

i currently have 8x2TB drives in my freenas box, and i'm looking to add some more storage in an external enclosure, since i'd like a dedicated pool to put my vmware datastore on. i'll be getting external HBAs for both boxes, but i still need to figure out where to put my drives. something in a desktop form factor would be extremely useful since space is a limiting factor. SAS support would be useful as well.

any suggestions are greatly appreciated. thank you!

 

[Ericloewe]

There isn't much to choose from, unfortunately. The easiest option might be to hack something together with an SAS expander, ATX chassis, PSU and drive bays.

SAS support would be useful as well.

Actually, it's absolutely necessary. eSATA is rated for 2m, regular SATA for 1m. That leaves very little to play with, so you effectively need an SAS expander in the external chassis. Well, you could run individual SAS channels to SAS drives, possibly, but that's not a good solution.

 

[ihateire]

There isn't much to choose from, unfortunately. The easiest option might be to hack something together with an SAS expander, ATX chassis, PSU and drive bays.


Actually, it's absolutely necessary. eSATA is rated for 2m, regular SATA for 1m. That leaves very little to play with, so you effectively need an SAS expander in the external chassis. Well, you could run individual SAS channels to SAS drives, possibly, but that's not a good solution.

thanks for the info. i've been considering this, though i'm not sure if it would be needs-fitting: https://www.amazon.com/8-bay-miniSA...rd_wg=IrE4q&psc=1&refRID=NQJATGWRWJWBFT67HQ91

i'm not all that familiar with external storage, so any info helps a ton!

 

[Ericloewe]

These units generally suffer from at least two of the following issues:

• Crap airflow
• Crap PSUs
• Crap RAID on a chip
• Crap SATA port multiplier
• They're actually a Supermicro rackmount. Not that it's a bad thing, but it's not really what I was looking for.
• Absurd cost

Unfortunately, I have yet to see one that avoids all these pitfalls.

 

[Johnnie Black]

Yeah, good quality affordable SAS enclosures are hard to find, I found these Xtore 5 bay enclosures a few months ago on ebay and they are well built and pretty good value for what they cost me, about 50€ each:

They are older SAS1 but that's enough speed for 5 devices and they have no problem working with >2TB disks, there's also a 10 disk model.

Another option is to build your own, you just need a SAS expander and an external SAS cable and can even re-use an old case if you have one laying around, this is one I built for 12 devices:

The Supermicro power board is optional, you can just clip the PSU plug, in fact I bough it several months ago and just recently installed it when I needed to open the case for other maintenance.

 

[CraigD]

I lucked out and pick up a used Antec Twelve Hundred v1 for NZD$70 (~USD$50) for my JBOD enclosure maybe you can too, get 4 drive cages, a SAS expander, some cables and it can support 20 3.5" drives in the 12 5.25" bays

Currently I have a full ATX motherboard in the JBOD powering the expander, I am considering swapping it out for a PCIe x16 powered riser and PSU jumper

Have Fun