Help with Norco RPC-4220 and Sata Breakout Cables

[Kulegamez]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm going to be building my own storage server soon and in getting pretty confused about how to connect all of my drives.

 

So I will be using the Norco RPC-4220 case because I've seen Linus use it a lot and I've heard great  things about it and I love it too.

 

I started doing some research on how I was going to connect all of my drives to my motherboard. I found that I needed some SATA Breakout Cables.

 

Where I got stuck is that on amazon, when I'm shopping for some, there are Forward and Reverse Cables.

 

Which one do I need?

 

The second confusing question is weather I need something like a raid card (I plan to run the drives in raid). I think I solved this one and I plan to get a couple LSI 9341 Raid Cards . Can you  please tell me if this will work or if I need something else or more things in addition to that. I have a 1000w power supply already so I can definitely  power all of the drives.

 

Thank You.

[scottyseng]

15 minutes ago, Kulegamez said:

Hello everyone,

 

I'm going to be building my own storage server soon and in getting pretty confused about how to connect all of my drives.

 

So I will be using the Norco RPC-4220 case because I've seen Linus use it a lot and I've heard great  things about it and I love it too.

 

I started doing some research on how I was going to connect all of my drives to my motherboard. I found that I needed some SATA Breakout Cables.

 

Where I got stuck is that on amazon, when I'm shopping for some, there are Forward and Reverse Cables.

 

Which one do I need?

 

The second confusing question is weather I need something like a raid card (I plan to run the drives in raid). I think I solved this one and I plan to get a couple LSI 9341 Raid Cards . Can you  please tell me if this will work or if I need something else or more things in addition to that. I have a 1000w power supply already so I can definitely  power all of the drives.

 

Thank You.

You need reverse cables. What OS are you using? That will tell you if you need a SAS HBA card vs a RAID card. If you get a card, you don't need the break out cable.

I would stay away from the LSI 1341 RAID cards, they're really entry level cards and aren't proper full on RAID cards. You need something like the 9361-8i with the appropriate Cachevault battery for it.

[Kulegamez]

(deleted)

[Kulegamez]

54 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

You need reverse cables. What OS are you using? That will tell you if you need a SAS HBA card vs a RAID card. If you get a card, you don't need the break out cable.

I would stay away from the LSI 1341 RAID cards, they're really entry level cards and aren't proper full on RAID cards. You need something like the 9361-8i with the appropriate Cachevault battery for it.

I'm thinking Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials or if it comes out soon, 2016 Essentials.

[scottyseng]

1 minute ago, Kulegamez said:

I'm thinking Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials or if it comes out soon, 2016 Essentials.

Yeah, you can either choose to use Storage Spaces (Built into Windows Server / uses SAS HBA card) or a good hardware RAID card (like the LSI 9361-8i with the battery). There's also other software options like FlexRAID that would also use a SAS HBA. It really depends what you want to have controlling the storage system that will tell you which cards you need to buy.

 

I would heavily recommend getting a proper SAS card (HBA or RAID) instead of the reverse breakout cables.

[Kulegamez]

22 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Yeah, you can either choose to use Storage Spaces (Built into Windows Server / uses SAS HBA card) or a good hardware RAID card (like the LSI 9361-8i with the battery). There's also other software options like FlexRAID that would also use a SAS HBA. It really depends what you want to have controlling the storage system that will tell you which cards you need to buy.

 

I would heavily recommend getting a proper SAS card (HBA or RAID) instead of the reverse breakout cables.

But don't i still need the breakout cables to connect the drives to the LSI 9361-8i? Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012BPLYJC?keywords=sata%20breakout%20cable&qid=1455164719&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1?

Also can you recommend a good but not overkill Cachevault battery backup?

Edited February 11, 2016 by Kulegamez

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, Kulegamez said:

But don't i still need the breakout cables to connect the drives to the LSI 9361-8i? Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012BPLYJC?keywords=sata%20breakout%20cable&qid=1455164719&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1?

Also can you recommend a good but not overkill Cachevault battery backup?

Oh, no, you just need a normal SAS to SAS cable. It plugs directly into your backplane. SAS is very different from normal SATA.

 

Cachevault isn't overkill for the 93xx series, it's standard for a LSI RAID card. If the power goes out, you risk losing data since the RAID card (proper ones) have a onboard RAM cache. You need to have that cache safely backed up with a battery otherwise whatever was in that cache is gone when the power goes out. And this isn't limited to blackouts either, if your PSU goes bad (My AX860i did...) or you need to hard shut down your PC due to a bluescreen, you'll be happy knowing that onboard raid card will survive.

 

If you can't afford proper hardware RAID, then please look at software solutions such as storage spaces or FlexRAID. They use much cheaper SAS HBA cards (The LSI 9311-8i).

 

I think with the Nocro Chassis there, they don't have a LSI expander based backplane like SuperMicro, so each row of four drives is a backplane with it's own SAS port, so you need five SAS inputs to properly use all of the drives for that particular model. You can expand the two ports on the RAID or HBA card using a SAS expander, which will break the two ports into four or more SAS outputs depending on which SAS expander you buy.

 

And if all of the stuff seems really expensive, do keep in mind that this stuff is proper enterprise rated equipment, so there's a price to pay for that. You also will need to have proper airflow on the RAID or HBA card as they do get really hot with use. I have a fan directly blowing air on my own LSI raid card.

 

You might also shop around to used servers. I managed to pick up my SuperMicro Chassis here for $500 used ($200 for the chassis, 24 bay, with fans, and redundant 900W PSUs / $300 to get a used SuperMicro SAS 6Gb/s backplane...the original was SAS 3Gb/s which is too slow for my tastes).

[Kulegamez]

47 minutes ago, scottyseng said:

Oh, no, you just need a normal SAS to SAS cable. It plugs directly into your backplane. SAS is very different from normal SATA.

 

Cachevault isn't overkill for the 93xx series, it's standard for a LSI RAID card. If the power goes out, you risk losing data since the RAID card (proper ones) have a onboard RAM cache. You need to have that cache safely backed up with a battery otherwise whatever was in that cache is gone when the power goes out. And this isn't limited to blackouts either, if your PSU goes bad (My AX860i did...) or you need to hard shut down your PC due to a bluescreen, you'll be happy knowing that onboard raid card will survive.

 

If you can't afford proper hardware RAID, then please look at software solutions such as storage spaces or FlexRAID. They use much cheaper SAS HBA cards (The LSI 9311-8i).

 

I think with the Nocro Chassis there, they don't have a LSI expander based backplane like SuperMicro, so each row of four drives is a backplane with it's own SAS port, so you need five SAS inputs to properly use all of the drives for that particular model. You can expand the two ports on the RAID or HBA card using a SAS expander, which will break the two ports into four or more SAS outputs depending on which SAS expander you buy.

 

And if all of the stuff seems really expensive, do keep in mind that this stuff is proper enterprise rated equipment, so there's a price to pay for that. You also will need to have proper airflow on the RAID or HBA card as they do get really hot with use. I have a fan directly blowing air on my own LSI raid card.

 

You might also shop around to used servers. I managed to pick up my SuperMicro Chassis here for $500 used ($200 for the chassis, 24 bay, with fans, and redundant 900W PSUs / $300 to get a used SuperMicro SAS 6Gb/s backplane...the original was SAS 3Gb/s which is too slow for my tastes).

Oh my goodness, I was missing a big part. I thought that there were 4 SATA connectors for each row of drives. Now I realized that its a single sff-8087 connector for each of the 5 rows. 

 

And I did not even look at Cachevaults before replying. I was assuming, like you could have an overkill psu, there would be an overkill one of them. Sorry, this stuff is pretty new to me so thanks for hanging around.

 

I found this guy on amazon and i think it should workVhttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UZFXBPQ?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_2&smid=A1DBFTVP2GUSS9

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, Kulegamez said:

-snip-

Oh, no, backplanes spread out to the drives. The really nice backplanes like the ones on SuperMicro Chassis only have two SAS inputs which feed all 24 drives (What I have).

 

Yeah, Cachevault is a standard accessory. There's only you didn't do hardware RAID right and cheaped out or you did it right and you have no issues.

 

The thing that you can go overkill on is a UPS unit to back up power to the whole NAS. I do recommend you get one of these as well. APC and Eaton make great UPS units (Please don't get a cheap unit from either though). This will protect your whole server from a power outage (where the RAID battery only covers the RAID card).

 

Yeah, that CacheVault will work with the LSI 9361-8i.

 

That being said though, how many drives do you plan to start off with? Do keep in mind that hardware RAID0, 1, 10, 50, and 60 aren't expandable after the array is built. You kind of do have to have the drives upfront...or accept that you will have to buy new drives to temporarily hold your data as you build the new larger array in the future.

 

Also, are you sure you want to go hardware RAID? It is good, but I'm saying if you do want to save some cash, you can go the software RAID route. Hardware RAID is really nice, but there is a upfront cost with it. As you've seen the LSi 9361-8i and the CacheVault will probably run you $600+ alone. You'll also need to buy SAS 12Gb/s (from the RAID card) to SAS 6Gb/s (The ports on your Norco Backplane) cables.

 

Finally, the two SAS ports on the LSI 9361-8i will only allow you to use 8 drives (two rows) of your Norco Chassis. You'll need to buy a SAS expander down the road to use the other three row of drives.

 

If you can, please spec out the whole server build you plan to do, it's good to double check sometimes.

 

Sorry for my slow response times, I'm actually working on updating my own SuperMicro NAS at the moment and dealing with college HW assignments.

 

As for Windows Server 2012, if you are using this for personal use, try to find a college student and use Dreamspark to get a Windows Server 2012 R2 key. I kind of used my friend's accounts and I have three keys to Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter now. Alternatively, you can buy keys from the Microsoft Softwareswap thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/comments/44w7dd/h_windows_7_8_81_10_windows_server_office_visio/

 

I've bought several Windows and Office keys from this seller and they are legit and work fine. Saves you money too.

[Kulegamez]

6 hours ago, scottyseng said:

The thing that you can go overkill on is a UPS unit to back up power to the whole NAS. I do recommend you get one of these as well. APC and Eaton make great UPS units (Please don't get a cheap unit from either though). This will protect your whole server from a power outage (where the RAID battery only covers the RAID card).

Yea, I was planning to get one already. Is Cyberpower a good source, because I've already picked out this from CyberPower:http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CPS1500AVR-SMART-1500VA-950W/dp/B00006HVLP/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1455206150&sr=1-4&keywords=rackmount+ups

This will be able to handle my PSU at max load which is 500w. I plan to install a low power pfsense machine at some point as well so I want expandibility. Plus its Rack-mountable.

 

6 hours ago, scottyseng said:

That being said though, how many drives do you plan to start off with? Do keep in mind that hardware RAID0, 1, 10, 50, and 60 aren't expandable after the array is built. You kind of do have to have the drives upfront...or accept that you will have to buy new drives to temporarily hold your data as you build the new larger array in the future.

 

Also, are you sure you want to go hardware RAID? It is good, but I'm saying if you do want to save some cash, you can go the software RAID route. Hardware RAID is really nice, but there is a upfront cost with it. As you've seen the LSi 9361-8i and the CacheVault will probably run you $600+ alone. You'll also need to buy SAS 12Gb/s (from the RAID card) to SAS 6Gb/s (The ports on your Norco Backplane) cables.

Yes, I realized this already and I've planned to use 8 2tb WD Reds. I think 14tb will be enough for me for about 3/4 of a year, but when I run out, my plan, assuming it will work, is to add 8 more 2tb Drives + Another Raid Card + Battery Backup. Then I plan to do (if its possible without wiping my exiting array), is to stipe the new raid with my existing raid in software. 

     Oh, I should probably mention that I will use raid 5. Then I can loose one drive, (Which will probably be very rare) before data lossoccurs. Now when I install 8 more drives, I'll have used 16 of the 20 bays. At that point, I might add 4 hdds + Raid Card and figure out how I'll incorporate those into the array or I'll install something like 4 Kingston V310s and Incorporate some kind of cacheing system.

 

7 hours ago, scottyseng said:

If you can, please spec out the whole server build you plan to do, it's good to double check sometimes.

 

Yea I agree.

 

In addition to the Raid Card, HDDs, Power backup and Case that we have discussed in this topic already

 

For cpu I'm using an Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3. That is a 6 core processer clocked at 2.4 GHz. 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M1BUUMO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_20&smid=A1FF9ODJZIUKGX

 

For the motherboard I'm using a supermicro unit. It's an x10sra-f server board with an lga 2011-v3 socket and using C612 chipset.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TP5FM3Q?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_19&smid=A20NV9CRQIRRW5

 

To cool the cpu I'm using Linus's go to, the Noctua NH-D9L 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QCEWTAW?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_18&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER (Yes it's Temporarily out of stock)

 

My power supply is a Xeal 500w redundant psu but it is labeled on amazon as by iStarUSA which I know are apart of the same company: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0027JHBA4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A18K25N425Y52T 

 

Ram is a Kingston 32gb (4x8) DDR4 ECC Registered CL15 DIMMS  at 2133 Mhz

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NLZANE4?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_15&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

I'm pretty sure thats it for the rest of the hardware.

 

13 hours ago, scottyseng said:

As for Windows Server 2012, if you are using this for personal use, try to find a college student and use Dreamspark to get a Windows Server 2012 R2 key. I kind of used my friend's accounts and I have three keys to Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter now. Alternatively, you can buy keys from the Microsoft Softwareswap thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftsoftwareswap/comments/44w7dd/h_windows_7_8_81_10_windows_server_office_visio/

 

I've bought several Windows and Office keys from this seller and they are legit and work fine. Saves you money too.

If only I had known this existed earlier. Thanks

 

 

 

 

[sybreeder]

Raid5? For 8 2Tb drives ? Very i mean Very bad idea. Go with Raid6 if you want to use hardware Raid. I know that you will have less space but trust me it wil lbe worh it. Or at least RAID50. You can loose 2 drives. That LSI 9341 supports raid50.But it doesn't support Cachecade nor  Cachevault.

If you'd like to have more drives with that raid card you'd need to have expander.

In my opinion it'd be better idea to buy IBM M1015 off ebay - it's LSI 9260-8i Raid card. It support caching, battery and raid 6 and 60. And it should be even cheaper. 

[Kulegamez]

10 minutes ago, sybreeder said:

Raid5? For 8 2Tb drives ? Very i mean Very bad idea. Go with Raid6 if you want to use hardware Raid. I know that you will have less space but trust me it wil lbe worh it. Or at least RAID50. You can loose 2 drives. That LSI 9341 supports raid50.But it doesn't support Cachecade nor  Cachevault.

If you'd like to have more drives with that raid card you'd need to have expander.

In my opinion it'd be better idea to buy IBM M1015 off ebay - it's LSI 9260-8i Raid card. It support caching, battery and raid 6 and 60. And it should be even cheaper. 

I'm not looking for cheap, nor do i like ebay because there is always a chance of damage in shipping and if its dead, broken, defective, ect, there is almost always no way to get a return and usually no warranty. Plus, Did you even read the whole discussion???? If you did which I know you didn't is that I'll be getting 2 LSI 6361-8i raid cards now with battery backups. I'll have two raid 5 arrays of 8 drives each which will be striped together in windows which is essentially RAID 50. Also I have lots of extra wd reds that haven't been used ever so if one fails, I can instantly swap one out in a matter seconds. 

 

Please read the discussion before responding...

[sybreeder]

Yes i read. And still 8 drives in 1 raid5 pool is a bad idea. 2 8 drives raid5 stipped in raid0 is even worse. If for example you'll lose 1 array during rebuilding which CAN happen - you'll lose all data. From both raid arrays. That's why it's better to divide that 8 drives in to 1 raid50 in 1 array and leave second raid card alone. You'd have 2 separate arrays and you could lose up to 4 drives. But not random. 1 on the each parity array. 

But well.. It's your money, your drives. You'll do whatever you want.

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, Kulegamez said:

-snip-

Cyberpower is good as well, but Eaton or APC is just my preference. Eaton is my personal favorite, but they come at a price. That and for the price you got that Cyberpower for, you're plenty fine with it. Eaton and APC would be like the $700+ range for the same 1500VA rating.

 

Yeah, you really should consider getting 4TB drives though...I mean GB per dollar, 4TB drives come out on top at the moment. Also, you can either buy another RAID card, or just expand the RAID card you have currently, since one RAID card should be able to handle all of these drives easily (Though there might be a slight bottle neck...but come on, when this is fully loaded, you're probably going to be getting over 1GB/s or more easily...the LSI 9361-8i taps out at 2.7GB/s per card). Yeah, you'll have to use software if you want to stripe the two arrays (Storage spaces works for this). I would recommend RAID6 instead of five though since you have so many drives. And when you add in your future array, you'll have RAID 60. The 9361-8i would easily be able to handle RAID6 with all drives. The caching system, I would use the onboard SATA ports for, as the Intel controller supports TRIM. you can then use Storage Spaces to make the cache drive for you. I also wouldn't use any of the drive bays for the SSDs. You can have them just hanging around in the case (That's how my OS SSD drive is at the moment).

 

The parts for the build seem pretty solid. I would toss in another noctua fan or bequiet fan to just place on top of the raid card (I have a fan just tilted that rests on the RAID card to cool it down). They do run really hot. I have that same Motherboard, though with a Xeon E5-2695v3. The one thing I will note is that with this SuperMicro board, the min fan speed is 50% (Since it's a server board) so I would recommend low RPM fans (Like Noctua or BeQuiet Pure or Slient Wings 2). Oh, you might consider some kind of GPU to have in the system, just to get a display out (The Xeon CPU does not have Integrated graphics) while you do the initial setup.

 

Ah, do note that with NIC teaming, the max speed you'll ever get out of the server will be roughly 200-250ish MB/s with the two LAN ports teamed. One of them will get you roughly 100-125MB/s. The only way to fix this bottleneck is 10Gb/s Ethernet, but it's quite expensive.

 

Ah, to comment of the side discussion, yeah, I wouldn't bother with the entry level RAID cards. They lack Cachevault / a battey backup for a reason. They aren't that good. You can get cheaper used cards on ebay, but if you have the funds, I would buy new (Not to mention the 12GB/s of the 93xx series will future proof you a bit). The used RAID cards (like the used 9260-8i mentioned above) are a option though...but since you mentioned everything new, I figured you didn't want to play the ebay lottery.

[Kulegamez]

@sybreeder, I see what you mean now.

@scottyseng, I was looking at some test about most reliable hdds, Segate's 4tb came out top and mentioned best price to performance. Should I stick with Wd reds 4tb or should I go Segate's 4tb? Or do u have another recommendation.

And Yea, my ISP doesn't support 10Gb/s and I asked a company what it would cost to have a Fibre line run to my house cost, and I think you know what came back.

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, Kulegamez said:

@sybreeder, I see what you mean now.

@scottyseng, I was looking at some test about most reliable hdds, Segate's 4tb came out top and mentioned best price to performance. Should I stick with Wd reds 4tb or should I go Segate's 4tb? Or do u have another recommendation.

And Yea, my ISP doesn't support 10Gb/s and I asked a company what it would cost to have a Fibre line run to my house cost, and I think you know what came back.

I prefer WD Reds myself. You might also consider WD Se drives...they're enterprise grade and surprisingly don't cost quite as much as the Red Pros.

Either brand will work though. The other good one is the HGST NAS drives. Those are really nice too.

 

Edit: If you act really quick, the Seagate 4TB NAS drives are on sale for $119...thought the sale ends in like three hours...:

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/Feb-0-2016/AcademyAwards-11/index-landing.html?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=IGNEFL021116&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL021116-_-EMC-021116-Index-_-E0-_-PromoWord&et_cid=24726&et_rid=2990641&et_p1=&email64=U0NPVFRZU0BTQ09UVFlTRU5HUEhBQVRISVQuQ09N

 

Oh, well, 10Gb/s just for your local network, not your internet line. They're two separate things.