this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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datahoarder

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My unRAID server has 12 data drives, 2 parity drives, and 3 SSD cache pools. Plus dual Xeons on a SuperMicro ATX board.

I currently have the Deep Silence 5 case by Nanoxia. But things are cramped. I've filled all the standard drive bays, plus put in a 4-bay 5.25 enclosure. But I still have one of the SSDs just floating around.

What would a better case to put all this stuff in?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Majawat 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fair question, difficult to answer.

I bought the Deep Silence around $180. So maybe $250 or so/less? Flexible. Definitely not Storinator prices (though I wish they sold the chassis separate).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At that price, your only real option is to get lucky on eBay with an old supermicro rack mount chassis.

[–] Majawat 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you have something else in mind?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The fractal design 7 xl might give you what you want, but at $200 + 5x drive cage kits at $20 each + upgrading and maxing out the fans ~$100, you're looking at closer to $400, and there are mixed reviews on how well it can keep your drives cool.

Once you get above 10-12 drives, you're going to need to look at enterprise gear, or building a custom solution. There just isn't much consumer hardware at that level.

[–] Majawat 1 points 1 year ago

Ah yeah, that's not bad. I do get that this is a fairly niche idea so paying extra was expected. $400 isn't outside the realm of idea. Thanks! Its the big, $1k+ server case costs that was worrying me.

[–] tomten 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have a 12 drive setup in a define 7 (not xl) and it's working fine. As long as I keep the filters decently clean from dust the temps are fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you say what those temps are?

[–] tomten 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm putting this here because I couldn't find a good summary anywhere else on the Internet:

There hasn't been much work on this recently, but a summary of the scholarly work in this field can be found between these sources:

The 2013 paper unfortunately is stuck behind a paywall, but message me if you would like to read it.

My suggestion given the work in the field would be to keep temperatures around 30°C if you can because at higher temperatures, you could be reducing the lifespan of your drives.

[–] a_fancy_kiwi 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Frectal Define R7 XL

Their website says a max of 18 HDDs and 5 SSDs in the storage layout. I have the R5 and am pretty happy with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You need to obtain the drive bays separately though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

fractal design meshify 2 xl

[–] fkn 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Have you looked at PCPartPicker with it's filters? There's only a few full atx cases with that many drive slots.

[–] Majawat 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem that I find is that most cases only say they support x drives, but with some additional (official) drive cages can support more, but stuff like PC Part Picker doesn't show that, so hard to search that way.

[–] fkn 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would put that in your original post next time. It's hard to know what kind of things to recommend if we don't know what you have already looked at. Knowing that there are standard ways of increasing drive count (such as the 4x drive pay you are using now). You can search by internal drive count and reduce your search significantly.

That said I think the fractal design 7 xl looks good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I got an old atx case off craigslist with 9 5.25” hotswap bays and put in 3x 5bay hotswap cages in the front. plenty of room for the smaller SSDs inside

Came with a free i5 system and a 1050ti I use for transcoding.

[–] lemming007 1 points 1 year ago

Can you get bigger drives instead? So you have to use fewer of them?

[–] MaxVoltage 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

all casez can fit that if you try hard enough

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This was my thought as well. Most cases could fit 14 hdds and 3 ssds if you don't put anything else in them and don't actually mount the drives to racks/bays.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And nobody in their right minds would set up such a system.

[–] saturnonice 1 points 1 year ago

This looks like a good(?) way to have lots of drives connected to one machine: https://github.com/trapexit/mergerfs/wiki/Real-World-Deployments I don't have any experience like this, I have the CS380 with standard loadout... just thought it was a funny way to add lots more drives.

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