4U server chassis dual mini itx

[lonely_sata_cable]

Is the a server chassis that has a config for 2 mini itx motherboards and has the hard drive cages up front. ive never seen this but i am really into this design for some relatively compact but complex nas setup. if you've noticed ive been talking about building a server that has 2 nas's one with 4tb of raid 0 and another with 40 tb of raid 10. but i was thinking about doing one 1U chassis for the raid 0 and 2U for the raid 10 but those fans are stupid loud. (its gonna be in my bedroom closet)

And my second question is, is 4U tall enough for a 120mm fan or a 140mm fan eithers fine?

 

Open to question or anything really

Thanks

 

[brwainer]

There are multi-node chassis, some of which share all drives with both nodes via SAS and most of which have dedicated drives per node, but I’ve only seen these with proprietary motherboards. A dual-node mITX storage chassis sounds very interesting.

 

EDIT: I found these which are interesting: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=63#T2281 very pricey though - that’s what happens when you want a niche product

[dalekphalm]

I think you’re probably better off doing one system, and installing a VM hypervisor on it, such as ESXi, Windows Server Hyper-V, Proxmox, etc. 

 

Then just create VM’s for each “server”. 

 

I do this with my home server. One FreeNAS VM (with PCIe passthrough direct access to 6x 3TB drives) and 3x Windows servers doing various things (the primary windows server runs Plex). 

[lonely_sata_cable]

5 hours ago, brwainer said:

There are multi-node chassis, some of which share all drives with both nodes via SAS and most of which have dedicated drives per node, but I’ve only seen these with proprietary motherboards. A dual-node mITX storage chassis sounds very interesting.

 

EDIT: I found these which are interesting: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=63#T2281 very pricey though - that’s what happens when you want a niche product

Honestly im glad u found that but imma need more drive space. But i also just thought about proto case, imma make a model and get a quote and ill post the model file and price they give me if your still interested

[brwainer]

42 minutes ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

Honestly im glad u found that but imma need more drive space. But i also just thought about proto case, imma make a model and get a quote and ill post the model file and price they give me if your still interested

if you get a quote then sure I'd be interested to know what it ends up being

[lonely_sata_cable]

3 hours ago, brwainer said:

if you get a quote then sure I'd be interested to know what it ends up being

yep well heres the best turn down you will ever see

 

Protocase Designer - Estimate Information.html

[brwainer]

7 minutes ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

yep well heres the best turn down you will ever see

 

Protocase Designer - Estimate Information.html

Ouch. I was expecting a painful price but that’s quite amazing. 

[lonely_sata_cable]

Just now, brwainer said:

Ouch. I was expecting a painful price but that’s quite amazing. 

i know right i think imma just learn how to build a case my self lol or just keep looking around on the web. but thanks for the help

[Jarsky]

Your best bet, is probably just to get something like a Norco RPC-422x and customise the rear housing and stand offs and the front controls - as its basically the largest 4U case you can fit into a rack. Possibly the biggest issue might be accounting for the PSU and 2 motherboards...may need to look at dual 1U PSU's or something like that.

[leadeater]

On 11/7/2017 at 4:52 AM, brwainer said:

EDIT: I found these which are interesting: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=63#T2281 very pricey though - that’s what happens when you want a niche product

That is actually rather interesting, not that expensive to be honest either. Compare that price to supermicro rackmount chassis.

[brwainer]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That is actually rather interesting, not that expensive to be honest either. Compare that price to supermicro rackmount chassis.

comparing to the most common chassis for myself and my work to buy, the CSE-813MTQ, they have equivalent density (one motherboard, one PSU, and 4 drives per 1U). I guess the cost-per-U is around the same, but for a single chassis/PSU, it seems on the expensive side to me.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

comparing to the most common chassis for myself and my work to buy, the CSE-813MTQ which has equivalent density as this (one motherboard, one PSU, and 4 drives per 1U) I guess the cost-per-U is around the same. But for a single chassis/PSU, it seems on the expensive side to me.

Yea I'm looking at it from the dual node aspect mostly, however just noticed it's not a proper PSU backplane and the power plug connectors and cabling is shonky as hell. Nice try but not quite good enough.

 

I like to avoid chassis that require proprietary motherboards which limits rackmount options heavily.

[brwainer]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Yea I'm looking at it from the dual node aspect mostly, however just noticed it's not a proper PSU backplane and the power plug connectors and cabling is shonky as hell. Nice try but not quite good enough.

 

I like to avoid chassis that require proprietary motherboards which limits rackmount options heavily.

There are loads of dual mini-ITX chassis out there, especially in the 1U size. But ones that have a lot of hotswap bays are rare, and yeah the ones from this Travla brand/series have a lot of ... interesting design decisions. But they're basically the only ones with hotswap bays that I found.

[lonely_sata_cable]

14 hours ago, brwainer said:

There are loads of dual mini-ITX chassis out there, especially in the 1U size. But ones that have a lot of hotswap bays are rare, and yeah the ones from this Travla brand/series have a lot of ... interesting design decisions. But they're basically the only ones with hotswap bays that I found.

 

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

Yea I'm looking at it from the dual node aspect mostly, however just noticed it's not a proper PSU backplane and the power plug connectors and cabling is shonky as hell. Nice try but not quite good enough.

 

I like to avoid chassis that require proprietary motherboards which limits rackmount options heavily.

They dont have to be hot swap at all

 

And yep totally agree with proprietary crap i almost hate it entirely.

 

and i was thinking about buying a 4u rack-mount case that fits all my other requirements except the dual mini itx. make sure theirs enough space for both boards and then create the motherboard stand off which shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world. knock on wood

[brwainer]

1 hour ago, lonely_sata_cable said:

 

They dont have to be hot swap at all

 

And yep totally agree with proprietary crap i almost hate it entirely.

 

and i was thinking about buying a 4u rack-mount case that fits all my other requirements except the dual mini itx. make sure theirs enough space for both boards and then create the motherboard stand off which shouldn't be the hardest thing in the world. knock on wood

I think you’ll run into the problem that the PSU is mounted such that it takes up too much horizontal room, if it is a standard ATX - even mounted on its side. And you’d have to make cuts to the back panel also.

[lonely_sata_cable]

On 11/8/2017 at 9:22 AM, brwainer said:

I think you’ll run into the problem that the PSU is mounted such that it takes up too much horizontal room, if it is a standard ATX - even mounted on its side. And you’d have to make cuts to the back panel also.

this is very true and its gonna very very ugly until i can afford a proper case form someone like proto case. and if im right a 4u rack mount case is 7 inches tall and a mini itx motherboard is 6.7 inches wide so its even possible to rig the motherboard to the side wall of the chassis just make sure to get the right angle sata cables and even if i need more height i can go to 5u then maybe have a dual power supply setup or if they make a single power supply with dual 24 pin cables.