Hi John,
Yes, I looked into this and I was looking for a solution with a large number of drives, but at a good cost point.
So you are saying a full fledged PC with an 8-port sata mobo is a better solution.
--Jason
----- Original Message ----- From: "John R Pierce" pierce@hogranch.com To: "CentOS mailing list" centos@centos.org Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 9:36:59 PM Subject: Re: [CentOS] eSATA drive enclosure of a full PC?
Slack-Moehrle wrote:
HI All,
I have a dilemma and I would appreciate advice
- Get a good size case, mobo, processor, etc and put 8 hard drives it in and RAID them. (yes an 8 port SATA mobo). Running CentOS.
or
- Get an eSATA enclosure that has room for 8 or 10 drives and just connect it to box?
esata enclosure will be on a single SATA port, which will be a bottleneck for 4 or more drives. maybe even for 3 drives. 8 or more drives should be on a 4 channel SAS port at least.
how about getting something like a QNAP and putting your storage on the network?
for instance, http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=134
_______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Slack-Moehrle wrote:
Hi John,
Yes, I looked into this and I was looking for a solution with a large number of drives, but at a good cost point.
So you are saying a full fledged PC with an 8-port sata mobo is a better solution.
yeah, its cheaper to go direct connect internal jbod. make sure the drives get plenty of airflow, don't pack them too close together.
a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU...
if you get a motherboard that has a 2nd x8 or x16 slot, you can put an x4 PCI-express card in that for lots more SATA/SAS channels if you feel the need to really expand. I wouldn't put more than 4 SATA ports on a PCI-E x1 slot.
Hi John,
So you are saying a full fledged PC with an 8-port sata mobo is a better solution.>
a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU...
So I am confused, where does this go? It is external? Or does it fit inside a full tower case?
-Jason
Slack-Moehrle wrote:
a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU...
So I am confused, where does this go? It is external? Or does it fit inside a full tower case?
it fits in the HH 5.25" external bays of a big tower, where you might put CDs or tape drives. it takes 3 HH 5.25" bays and holds 5 3.5" drives.
use a big tower that has 7 HH bays, and you can have a DVD and 2 of those 5 drive bays.
John R Pierce wrote:
,
Yes, I looked into this and I was looking for a solution with a large number of drives, but at a good cost point.
So you are saying a full fledged PC with an 8-port sata mobo is a better solution.
yeah, its cheaper to go direct connect internal jbod. make sure the drives get plenty of airflow, don't pack them too close together.
a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU...
if you get a motherboard that has a 2nd x8 or x16 slot, you can put an x4 PCI-express card in that for lots more SATA/SAS channels if you feel the need to really expand. I wouldn't put more than 4 SATA ports on a PCI-E x1 slot.
There are other brands/sizes of those trayless hotswap enclosures too. I've used a unit from Startech and swapped one of the drives out of a raid weekly for an off-site rotation without any trouble for over a year now. You do need a big tower case that could take 5" drives all the way down, but it's nicer than having cables and power off to an odd-sized external box and very handy to not have to open the case to trade drives once it is set up. If this is a single-user PC or even a media server for a few people at once you probably don't have to worry about extreme speed issues and would get along fine with an 8-port PCI-X or -E card.
John,
On Sunday, February 21, 2010 you wrote:
a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these.
example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU...
You may consider using this part:
http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=2814
The disadvantage is that you have no quick-swap-possibility, but the cooling is better as in hot-swap cases. The box has nice vibe-stoppers so that you have no vibrations on the case. I have several of these boxes and the disks run at least 10C cooler compared to a hot-swap system. And they sell for less than 25$.
best regards --- Michael Schumacher
Dne 22.2.2010 14:25, Michael Schumacher napsal(a):
You may consider using this part:
http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=2814
The disadvantage is that you have no quick-swap-possibility, but the cooling is better as in hot-swap cases. The box has nice vibe-stoppers so that you have no vibrations on the case. I have several of these boxes and the disks run at least 10C cooler compared to a hot-swap system. And they sell for less than 25$.
I'm happy with: http://www.chieftec.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=146... We usually take two pieces, so we have 6HDDs for raid in enclusures and 2 others for os inside the case. Regards, David
-
David Hrbáč -
John R Pierce -
Les Mikesell -
Michael Schumacher -
Slack-Moehrle