HP Server Drive Expansion Help

[ccigas]

Hello everyone, new to the forum a bit, was hoping to see if I could an answer to my questions here. I work in a DC, just the hardware guy, replacing stuff and installing new hardware/cables no software or expansion on existing servers though. I was fortunate enough to take home an HP DL380p Gen 8 server recently and set up with FreeNAS since that's the only thing I really know was easy. I have 8x 300GB SAS drives installed in FreeNAS raids but was hoping to add some more but unfortunately, I only have one drive cage and they're filled, and the other drive cage has the optical drive cage. I am completely ok with a full 3TB of storage with this server that I have now through the zfs raid. But today I am taking home some more hard drives. 2x 200GB SSD SATA, 1x 400GB SSD SATA, 2x 900GB SAS drives and 2x 300GB drives which I don't have any drive cages for, so they're backups (Ill make sure on the drives SAS/SATA interface but I think I am correct on those). I have 2 more open SAS ports on the motherboard open, the current drives are connected to the RAID controller SAS ports which I don't even use. I also have a 140GB SSD I bought on my own to try to use for the cache but I got stuck on this issue. 

 

I was hoping to see if anyone knew how to add these drives to this server, I know I can buy another backplane (and wires, but I can't find those) but the ones I found were really expensive. I found a cheap way to do it but then my issue is power, getting something like StarTech Model SAS8087S450 which has 4 SATA connectors to a SAS port but like I said power is then the issue. Are there any other suggestions or ideas to make this happen?

 

Currently, I only set it up as my plex media server, since my current one can't stream 4K movies and this can with the overkill 2x 6 core CPU's and 64GB of RAM. But I will be adding at least one windows VM for some proof of stake mining and I plan on using this as a file server too for my college work and personal stuff, as well as family members, work files back up so more storage the better. 

 

Thanks in advance to anyone can help.

[Radium_Angel]

If you want to expand the number of drives beyond what the server can physically store, you have two options:

 

an external storage rack, which isn't cheap.

Set up a SAN, also not cheap

Some kind of dedicated NAS, maybe cheap, maybe not depending on what you are looking at

Remove smallest drives from server, put largest ones in, rebuild RAID.

[ccigas]

23 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

If you want to expand the number of drives beyond what the server can physically store, you have two options:

 

an external storage rack, which isn't cheap.

Set up a SAN, also not cheap

Some kind of dedicated NAS, maybe cheap, maybe not depending on what you are looking at

Remove smallest drives from server, put largest ones in, rebuild RAID.

Thanks for the response, going off your external storage rack idea, could something like this work well? 

• ICY DOCK MB998SP-B (8 bay drive cage) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994178&cm_re=icy_dock-_-17-994-178-_-Product

• StarTech Model SAS8087S450 (like I mentioned in the first comment) https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=StarTech+Model+SAS8087S450&N=-1&isNodeId=1

The only thing from there would be a power issue. 

 

EDIT:  sorry should've added links

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, ccigas said:

Thanks for the response, going off your external storage rack idea, could something like this work well? 

• ICY DOCK MB998SP-B (8 bay drive cage) https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994178&cm_re=icy_dock-_-17-994-178-_-Product

• StarTech Model SAS8087S450 (like I mentioned in the first comment) https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=StarTech+Model+SAS8087S450&N=-1&isNodeId=1

The only thing from there would be a power issue. 

 

EDIT:  sorry should've added links

While personally I've not gone that route (I use several dedicated ReadyNAS devices for my data and streaming) it certainly looks like it would work, providing you have enough SATA connectors. The thing that gives me pause is the fact it's a SATA connection per hard drive, which tells me it's not a RAID, but if you are okay with that, it would be a much cheaper option than this:

http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/powervault-md1220#features

A Powervault DAS that's only (sans drives IIRC) starting at 3k

[NelizMastr]

You can expand a DL380 no problem. You'll need to lose the optical drive cage though, and get an extra SAS backplane and cables. If your SAS controller doesn't have any ports free, then you'll need to buy a SAS expander as well.