Upgrading to a server chassis

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

Ok so I need some help, I recently filled up my last spot in my nas case and I want to upgrade to a server chassis. I am interested in this one however I am a little lost as to what I need to make this work with my current components. 

 

http://www.ipcdirect.net/4u-rpc-4224-server-case-w-24-hot-swappable-sata-sas-drive-bay-minisas-connector/

 

I have a Ryzen 7 2700 with an Asrock X470 Taichi 10GB motherboard. I have used an LSI raid card before to add hard drives but I am not sure what kind of card(s) I will need to power this backplane. I would like to only occupy one PCIe slot but I would also like to not spend $500 on a PCIe card that isn't a GPU lol. 

 

Any help is appreciated. 

 

[Dutch_Master]

Here's the key:

Quote

Six internal SFF-8087 Mini SAS connectors support up to twenty-four 3.5" or 2.5" SATA (II or III) or SAS 6G hard drives;

So you need a card (or more) that allows these mini-SAS connectors to connect with your LSI card, or probably better, the PCIe bus directly. They exist, but not at rock-bottom prices. Have a google

[Velcade]

Stay away from IPC Direct.  They took $600 from me last February and I've lost all contact with them.  Won't reply to emails or website chat messages or phone calls.

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

1 hour ago, Dutch_Master said:

Here's the key:

So you need a card (or more) that allows these mini-SAS connectors to connect with your LSI card, or probably better, the PCIe bus directly. They exist, but not at rock-bottom prices. Have a google

So I thought that my LSI card has 2 mini SAS connectors on it. They breakout to cables that have 4 sata connectors on them. I have seen some stuff on ebay but I'm not sure if they are actually what I need. 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-RES2SV240-24port-6G-6Gbps-SATA-SAS-Expander-Server-Adapter-RAID-CARD/192928337759?epid=25025194291&hash=item2ceb6ccf5f:g:vM4AAOSwVd5c6Q43

 

This has 6 mini SAS connectors on it but how would it connect? does it operate through pcie to the other card or does a cable need to connect it to my lsi card? Also how would data transfer speeds work. My LSI card is an 8x PCIe card, wouldn't adding 4 times the drives reduce data speeds? 

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

1 hour ago, Velcade said:

Stay away from IPC Direct.  They took $600 from me last February and I've lost all contact with them.  Won't reply to emails or website chat messages or phone calls.

What would you recommend? I'm looking for a 24 bay server that can support full height PCIe and a standard consumer grade PSU. 

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

@Dutch_Master

If this helps I have an LSI SAS 9211-8i 8-port 6Gb/s PCI-E Internal HBA card

Can this be used with something else or is there a card that can do what this one does but with 6 mini SAS ports? 

[Dutch_Master]

Can you post a photo of your card, showing the general setup/overview but at fairly close range? That way I can see what you're talking about. If the card has 8 discrete SAS ports it would be able to handle up to 32 SATA drives, but if it has only one SAS port, then 4 SATA drives is the max.

 

As for suppliers, if you're in Europe, I'd suggest Alternate in your country or a nearby one. Elsewhere, find a local PC hardware store that can order a chosen chassis for you. Or choose a supplier connected to the PC-part picker website.

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

15 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Can you post a photo of your card, showing the general setup/overview but at fairly close range? That way I can see what you're talking about. If the card has 8 discrete SAS ports it would be able to handle up to 32 SATA drives, but if it has only one SAS port, then 4 SATA drives is the max.

 

As for suppliers, if you're in Europe, I'd suggest Alternate in your country or a nearby one. Elsewhere, find a local PC hardware store that can order a chosen chassis for you. Or choose a supplier connected to the PC-part picker website.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/LSI-SAS-9211-8i-8-port-6Gbs-PCI-E-Internal-HBA-IT-MODE-FW-P20-Controllers-RAID/132776063861?hash=item1eea11f375:g:gQUAAOSwLURetScq

This is the card I own, it's somewhere in storage at the moment. My motherboard can support all of my current drives on sata but I can confirm that this works with my motherboard. 

 

I have not purchased anything else other than this. I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want before I buy anything else. 

 

From googling I found out that I should be able to use this with a card like this one to connect all of the Mini SAS cables 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-ServeRAID-16-Port-6Gbps-SAS-2-SATA-Expansion-Adapter-46M0997-Firmware-634A/163321588238?epid=8024629173&hash=item2606b9aa0e:g:CC8AAOSw27lcQYcK

 

My issue is that it would require using up both of my remaining 16x PCIe slots which means I can't add things in for future upgrades to the server. 

 

I am curious if this IBM card could operate the hard drives without the lsi card or if there is a card that exists with 6 mini SAS ports that can control all of them while only taking up one PCIe slot. 

[Dutch_Master]

Yeah, just what i thought: it's only 8 disks. Having thought about your particular use case I'm gonna be brutally honest: IMO you'd be better off with a new system and not re-use your existing main board/cpu combo. They're more then adequate for the task now, but given you want to upgrade in the future, your best bet is to obtain new/used hardware that allows you to upgrade later and on the X470 system, that's rather limited.

 

As for that IBM card, from what I understand, it needs an existing 8-disk SAS card that it would expand to 16, so even less remaining PCIe slots.

 

Having said that, what you can do as an interim solution is to transplant the existing system you have as originally planned, use the LSI card for expansion but as you won't need all 24 drives ATM, a new system is not immediately required. This allows you to look for a suitable main board, ATX or larger, that allows for more PCIe slots and/or build-in SAS controllers/interfaces, the latter primarily being prevalent on server boards.

[OddOod]

Honestly, if it were me, I'd separate the concerns. Have a storage server and a server server. I like to cruise liquidationsites (govdeals is bae, but ebay will do in a pinch) and grab fully functioning old ass servers, then fill them with drives. I've got an old TS440 with a V3 E3 chip in it and it has two jobs: serve files and don't die. Then I have a custom built threadripper unraid build that does all my cool servery stuffs. Back in the day I picked up a 12bay 4U complete system sans drives for a whopping 10$

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

10 hours ago, OddOod said:

Honestly, if it were me, I'd separate the concerns. Have a storage server and a server server. I like to cruise liquidationsites (govdeals is bae, but ebay will do in a pinch) and grab fully functioning old ass servers, then fill them with drives. I've got an old TS440 with a V3 E3 chip in it and it has two jobs: serve files and don't die. Then I have a custom built threadripper unraid build that does all my cool servery stuffs. Back in the day I picked up a 12bay 4U complete system sans drives for a whopping 10$

That sounds like a good option, would this be through SFP+ or something else? I can't find an easy how to on using disk shelf's which would be an interesting option.  I want to find something that is easy to mod as well because my server sits right next to my desk so fan noise is a big concern, I'm trying to avoid server PSU's.  

 

All that being said I did find some interesting information concerning using only one PCIe slot to run all of the disks. 

My LSI card can run this through one sas cable and with the free port on the lsi card and the expander I could populate all of the drive bays. There could be a performance hit during parity checks but like @Dutch_Master said, that's not a right now issue because it will be a long time before I populate all the bays, by then there may be an option for hardware upgrade that makes sense for my uses. Alternatively if I still have a free PCIe slot at that point I can run the expander with 2 sas cables to the LSI card and use a different LSI card for the other two backplanes eliminating any bottleneck. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[OddOod]

Oooof, yeah, if you're going with a rackmount server, it's gonna be loud. I tossed mine (tower, but still a server) in the basement. and just chased a cat7 cable through the outside. Nice thing is that an HDD storage server doesn't generate too much heat, so you can comfortably toss it in a closet if you don't have a basement. 
 

[SweatyWhiteJedi]

6 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Oooof, yeah, if you're going with a rackmount server, it's gonna be loud. I tossed mine (tower, but still a server) in the basement. and just chased a cat7 cable through the outside. Nice thing is that an HDD storage server doesn't generate too much heat, so you can comfortably toss it in a closet if you don't have a basement. 
 

With options like this Norco I can replace all of the fans in it and use a consumer grade PSU 

 

http://www.ipcdirect.net/4u-rpc-4224-server-case-w-24-hot-swappable-sata-sas-drive-bay-minisas-connector/

 

I can mod a normal case as well but my issue is knowing exactly how to connect it all up. If there was a simple list of "Buy this disk shelf + this pci card" it would be a lot easier. 

 

[OddOod]

The big issue is that there are a ton of back planes and there are a ton of raid cards and (as far as I'm aware) there is no list of "this card is compatible with these back planes". And hell, a lot of cards need firmware flashes to go over 8tb drives. I ran into that when I was upgrading to 10s 18 months ago. dropped 2 grand on drives and I had to boot with the drives pulled  
That's why I recommend that you just buy a case that comes with cards, whole system is a nice to have, because when you're getting to these drive volumes, you really lose any reasonable airflow which kneecaps the performance of your other components, plus the fact that you want your NAS to be rock solid, while you can play stupid games with your real server.