Even one hard drive can be noisy, depending on the model. I'm fighting the same issue at home with my VM/Nas/Homeassistant setup
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Ever since moving to a dell precision tower inside a rack, noise has been taken care of greatly. The 7920 has been an amazing homelab platform so far. Cut off and looking at selling my r430, way too loud with the small fans.
R730 is a dual socket server right? I would expect a fair amount of heat and power consumption from that just for storage. I’d definitely expect less heat from a shelf cause it’s only power+disks, no cpu(s). I’ve been looking for a way to separate out my storage too, with similar concerns. Maybe add power consumption too. I also want something that can fit in a shallow rack. I’d just get a synology if they weren’t so expensive.
Anyway, I found the EMC KTN-STL3 which is a 3u 15 bay disk shelf. They are dirt cheap and all over ebay. Was thinking about pairing that with a r230 or something. I think both units have a relatively low idle power usage. Don’t know about noise, everything you read is very subjective, so it’s hard to tell without just getting one. I like the r230 cause it has 2 pcie slots for hba + 10gbe nic. But if you don’t care about that or have something else already, there are lots of other options.
as of right this moment I run an R430 1U dell server, which is a dual socket server with 4 3.5 drive bays up front, averages about 90w. Just being a 1U enclosure and having those tiny fans it tends to get loud. Was looking into a 3U disk shelf as well, but have seen 40mm fans on the back of them. I have too many 40mm fans as it is, I don't need to add more with more noise. I know a 2U or 3U server enclosure would have larger fans and be quieter, and if I get the same generation or newer, use the same or less power.
Oooh, I assumed a 3u shelf would have bigger fans, but I just realized I never actually saw any fans inside that thing. Reading more about it now, apparently it has some kind of nonstandard squirrel cage fans? Damn.
This is why I’m concerned about noise. I swapped the 40mm fans I have in my switches to noctuas, helped a bunch. Would hate to have this disk shelf I grab to be louder than my switches.
I do a lot of work with Qnap's TS-431 rackmount series atm (building dedicated docker machines) and they're pretty sweet noise-wise. I can actually hear if a drive platter is dodgy over the system db. Something to consider?
If I can find a good, cheap 4 bay nas that would be just as good. But I can’t seem to justify to myself to pay $200-$300 for a four bay nas when I can pay the same amount for other options that either have more storage or more compute. Don’t have much room or money, so most of my lab wears many hats, and I like to purchase tech that can fill as many holes as possible.
How much disc capacity are we talking about?
Need to add four drives pretty much immediately, but I like to future proof my builds, which is futile I know. I’ve considered a used commercial NAS but ones with four or more bays tend to be as much as my other options.