[OpenIndiana-discuss] Expanding storage with JBOD

[David Scharbach]

Supermicro may bit a bit overkill for the home server :)  Although I have considered it for myself at home…  We used them where I used to work and they are pretty nice for the money.

For myself, I opted to go with the Norco 4220, a Tyan MB with an integral LSI-2008 based HBA, LSI based intel SAS expander card, 16GB of ECC, a low end xeon and 13 3TB cheap seagate HDDs.  This setup allows for 20 hot swap bays connected to the SAS card, 2 2.5” SSDs connected to the MB via SATA for cache/zil and a slim optical drive with a spare SAS channel that I could use to connect to an external JBOD enclosure if needed.  My drives have seen a maximum temp of 39C and that is when doing a full scrub with the server in my utility room in winter (furnace is on, heats the room up).

I agree that cheap HDDs suck, I have returned 3 of them in a little over a year but ZFS and SMART are awesome at detecting early troubles.  Just had another bark at me for uncorrectable sector errors.  Resilvering my RaidZ2 production array does take a long time, but I have a RaidZ1 backup array so I would have to lose 5 of 13 drives at the same time to affect all my data.  Nice part is I can still add 7 more drives to the case if needed.

I would stay away from Adaptec only because I have had a number of issues with compatibility with my Adaptec 5805 card.  Great product, limited support for some systems.  I have been using the LSI HBA products for a while now and they seem to work very well and are typically a cheaper option with excellent OS support.  The combo of a SAS-2008 HBA and expander gives you a total of 6 useable SAS channels.

Cheers,

Dave

On Jan 2, 2014, at 8:49 AM, Saso Kiselkov <skiselkov.ml at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/2/14, 2:28 AM, Roman Naumenko wrote:
>> cjt said the following, on 01-01-14 7:14 PM:
>>> On 01/01/2014 04:23 PM, Roman Naumenko wrote:
>>>> Saso Kiselkov said the following, on 01-01-14 4:30 PM:
>>>>> On 1/1/14, 9:11 PM, Roman Naumenko wrote:
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Looking for cheap way of expanding current home storage server running
>>>>>> on openindiana 151_a5.
>>>>>> jbod (12 bay are 400$) with SFF-8088 is most cost-effective.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Now the question what card with 8088 to stick in the server. Will this
>>>>>> one work? http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/sas/sas/asc-1045
>>>>>> Is there any similar listed on HCL here
>>>>>> http://wiki.openindiana.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4883876?
>>>>> My best experience is with stuff from LSI, mainly the LSI SAS
>>>>> 2008-derived products such as the LSI 9200-8e, HP SC08e, Dell 6Gbps SAS
>>>>> HBA, etc.
>>>>> http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=342-0910
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> I'll probably use LSI SAS3801E, it's listed as compatible on HCL and
>>>> priced in 80-150 range on ebay.
>>>> 
>>>> --Roman
>>> as long as you don't want to use drives bigger than 2GB ...
>> I don't know if even 2TB will fill fast enough to justifying any
>> "investment" into storage expansion.
>> Speaking about storage expansion, even HBA cards are dirt cheap, pricing
>> on enclosures with integrated SAS expander is just nuts. Can't figure
>> out how to add 8-12 disks externally to the storage server without
>> paying for this 2x cost of the server itself.
> 
> What's your budget? A Supermicro SC826-based enclosure can be had for
> under a thousand bucks and you can set it up as a JBOD easily (get a
> power distribution board for it - Supermicro sells those too). Comes
> with a dual-path expander, dual PSUs and a nice rack-mountable with rack
> rails - kind of the equivalent of something like an HP MSA 60 or Dell
> MD1200, only much cheaper.
> 
> If you're looking to grow in the future, definitely have a look at
> SC837E26-RJBOD1 and SC847E26-RJBOD1 - these are pre-assembled
> 36/45-drive JBODs and they cost a lot less per drive (either box can be
> had for around $2k). Given that quality 3TB NL-SAS drives cost around
> $250-300 a piece (and I recommend you buy good drives; don't cheap out
> on SATA if you want performance, reliability and peaceful sleep at
> night), the cost of the enclosure will, in the end, be a drop in a
> bucket in your overall investment.
> 
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Saso
> 
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