where to buy very very large cases

where to buy very very large cases

[mjstumpf]

Perhaps off topic or FAQ.  My apologies, seemed like best forum.

I need to expand an x86-based fileserver that's already stacked with 11
drives.  Where have you folks found reasonably-priced very very large ATX
cases?  I need to go to 20 or so drives, but I'd like to hear the upper
limit you have all found..

Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE, has
anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple vertical
5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
[vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..

May have to resort to home depot PVC + jigsaw + zipties.. !!

Thanks in advance for tips,
Michael Stumpf

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Rev. Jeffrey Paul]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, mjstumpf wrote:

> I need to expand an x86-based fileserver that's already stacked with 11
> drives.  Where have you folks found reasonably-priced very very large ATX
> cases?  I need to go to 20 or so drives, but I'd like to hear the upper
> limit you have all found..
>
> Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE, has
> anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple vertical
> 5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
> [vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..
>
> May have to resort to home depot PVC + jigsaw + zipties.. !!

While I'm all for the home depot engineering (i just made ten sets of rack
rails for $11 each whereas OEM ones for our ibm servers were >$200 each),
i don't think that's your best bet in this case.

What type of interface do the drives have?  If they're LVD SCSI, you might
be better off with an external drive enclosure (they're designed to fit
many drives in small spaces, with proper cooling and power to boot)
connected to a VHDCI external connector on your scsi or raid card.

Someone (3ware?) should make an IDE drive cage with a custom backplane and
an integrated IDE RAID card... and a VHDCI plug for an uplink to the host.
That would be cool.

-j

--
--------------------------------------------------------
 Rev. Jeffrey Paul    -datavibe-     sneak@datavibe.net
   aim:x736e65616b   pgp:0x15FA257E   phone:8777483467
    70E0 B896 D5F3 8BF4 4BEE 2CCF EF2F BA28 15FA 257E
--------------------------------------------------------

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Jim Ramsey]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

A verry big AMEN about cooling.

Servers are up all the time.  If you want your drives to last as long as
possible, cool the enclosure well.  Keeping the drives cool can help
them last longer, but almost more important is keeping the drives at
a STABLE temperature.  You also want to invest good money in a high
quality power supply -- not just big (in terms of watts), but good.
Again supplying high quality, stable DC power will help make the
entire system generally more stable and reliable.

On Monday 28 July 2003 10:11, Rev. Jeffrey Paul wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, mjstumpf wrote:
> > I need to expand an x86-based fileserver that's already stacked with 11
> > drives.  Where have you folks found reasonably-priced very very large ATX
> > cases?  I need to go to 20 or so drives, but I'd like to hear the upper
> > limit you have all found..
> >
> > Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE,
> > has anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple
> > vertical 5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
> > [vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..
> >
> > May have to resort to home depot PVC + jigsaw + zipties.. !!
>
> While I'm all for the home depot engineering (i just made ten sets of rack
> rails for $11 each whereas OEM ones for our ibm servers were >$200 each),
> i don't think that's your best bet in this case.
>
> What type of interface do the drives have?  If they're LVD SCSI, you might
> be better off with an external drive enclosure (they're designed to fit
> many drives in small spaces, with proper cooling and power to boot)
> connected to a VHDCI external connector on your scsi or raid card.
>
> Someone (3ware?) should make an IDE drive cage with a custom backplane and
> an integrated IDE RAID card... and a VHDCI plug for an uplink to the host.
> That would be cool.
>
> -j
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------
>  Rev. Jeffrey Paul    -datavibe-     sneak@datavibe.net
>    aim:x736e65616b   pgp:0x15FA257E   phone:8777483467
>     70E0 B896 D5F3 8BF4 4BEE 2CCF EF2F BA28 15FA 257E
> --------------------------------------------------------
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
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- -- 
Regards,

Jim Ramsey

  There's that that's worth living for.
  There's that that's worth dying for.
  The rest is c**p.
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Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mads Peter Bach]

Rev. Jeffrey Paul wrote:

> Someone (3ware?) should make an IDE drive cage with a custom backplane and
> an integrated IDE RAID card... and a VHDCI plug for an uplink to the host.
> That would be cool.

It already exists, but it isn't cheap:
http://www.robustdigitalsolutions.com/html/ata-raid.html (one of many)
I think 3ware sold something like it, at one time (was it called the 
Palisade or something?)

-- 
Mads Peter Bach
Systemadministrator,  Det Humanistiske Fakultet, Aalborg Universitet
Kroghstræde 3 - 5.111, DK-9220 Aalborg Øst - (+45) 96358062
# whois MPB1-DK@whois.dk-hostmaster.dk

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Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mike Dresser]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, Rev. Jeffrey Paul wrote:

> Someone (3ware?) should make an IDE drive cage with a custom backplane and
> an integrated IDE RAID card... and a VHDCI plug for an uplink to the host.
> That would be cool.

Promise does this, with their SX6000, (if i remember the model number
right)

IDE inside the external case, externally it's a SCSI connector.

Horribly expensive.

Mike

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Dominik Kubla]

Am Montag, 28. Juli 2003 16:11 schrieb Rev. Jeffrey Paul:

> Someone (3ware?) should make an IDE drive cage with a custom backplane and
> an integrated IDE RAID card... and a VHDCI plug for an uplink to the host.
> That would be cool.

Those things do already exist.  Now the manufaturers seem to move on from PATA 
to SATA. The latest info i got was about the following:

* Infortrend EonStor A16U:	16 drive Serial-ATA to 2x Ultra160-SCSI
* Infortrend EonStor A16F:	16 drive Serial-ATA to 2x 2Gbit-FibreChannel

3U size, (current) max. capacity 4TB brutto (equals 3,75 TB for one big 
RAID5). Can be configured as RAID Level 0, 1, 3, 5, 0+1, 1+0, 3+0, 5+0 or as 
JBOD or NRAID.

More info at: www.infortrend.com

Regards,
  Dominik Kubla
-- 
ScioByte GmbH                     | ScioByte Information Technologies AG
Fritz-Erler-Strasse 6             | Innere Güterstrasse 4
55129 Mainz (Germany)             | 6304 Zug (Switzerland)
Phone: +49 700 724 629 83         | Phone: +41 41 710 30 18
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Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mike Dresser]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, mjstumpf wrote:

> Perhaps off topic or FAQ.  My apologies, seemed like best forum.
>
> I need to expand an x86-based fileserver that's already stacked with 11
> drives.  Where have you folks found reasonably-priced very very large ATX
> cases?  I need to go to 20 or so drives, but I'd like to hear the upper
> limit you have all found..
>
> Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE, has
> anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple vertical
> 5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
> [vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..

Yes, there's carriers to let you do this, I've seen 3 3.5 in 2
5.25(normal orientation), and 4-5 3.5" in 3 5.25"(on their side).

Try googling for 3in2 ide.

Most of these are very expensive if they're hotswappable and all that, I
found a very cheap(30 dollar) bracket about two years ago, but don't
recall the url.

You do have to really watch your cooling though, because you're taking
away any space around the drives.

Most of these carriers are designed for SCSI.

You should set your scsi drives to power on by scsi id.(drive 0 powers up
immediately, id 1 powers up 7(12) seconds later, scsi id 15 powers up
7(12) * 15 seconds later.

Else the spinup current may overwhelm your power supply even if the PS can
normally handle that many drives.

If you need something to plug IDE drives into, the 3ware 7500-12 works
quite nicely in Linux, along with it's 7500-8 8 port brother.  This will
also let you hotswap drives.  These cards do raid0,1,10,5,etc, or
alternatively let you just use the drives normally.

Something like a 12 5.25" bay case, such as the high end Antec 1500(can't
remember exact model) could theorectically hold 20 scsi drives.  Cabling
and power will become fun at that point though.

Don't bother with IDE in the antec case unless you want to drill a hole
through the motherboard plate, as 18" ide cables are not long enough to
reach around except for the very bottom or top 5.25" bays.  The Antec 1500
is a nice case otherwise though.  I have a system with 4 15krpm cheetah's,
a jaz drive, cdrom, and a dds-3 mounted without having to actively cool
the cheetahs.  There's enough airflow to keep them at barely warm.  Then
again, with 1 80mm + 9 92mm fans, (4 front, 6 back) I'd hope so!

Yes, it's loud.

Mike

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[mjstumpf]

Fascinating topic.  Building these, cheaply, is easy up to a point. 
Beyond that it gets interesting!

>> I need to expand an x86-based fileserver that's already stacked with
>> 11 drives.  Where have you folks found reasonably-priced very very
>> large ATX cases?  I need to go to 20 or so drives, but I'd like to
>> hear the upper limit you have all found..

Thanks, all, for comments.  I see every detail I forgot to include:  I'm
trying to do this on a budget (but not a college student budget) with ATA
drives.  I'm using a stack of promise ATA controllers with rounded ATA
cables (some of long lengths, 36") to get the job done.  It's been up and
running for the better part of 4 years now.

I currently have it in a 10 bay antec case; there are some opportunities
for home depot engineering + 3in2 + more fans + hours of wiring to pack
more drives in, maybe 5 or 6 more.  But, cooling will no doubt become
[more of] an issue and I figured it's more prudent to start from a very
physically large (double width) server case like I'd seen in the past. 
pricewatch seems to have them for $250-400, which I suppose I will have to
cough up.. one of these filled with 3in2 brackets might give me enough
room for growth ;-)

Has anyone seen the equivalent of more dense promise cards (more than 2
channels per card, but no extra bells & whistles like raid.. meaning,
cheap)?  I really prefer plain old software raid in linux, but I am
actually physically out of PCI slots (and heat issues, space issues, etc).

I wasn't even thinking of SCSI.  It's an interesting idea; there are
ata->scsi converters (tomshardware.com had a review, $70 at the time I
believe.. maybe cheaper now).  Essentially could create roll-your-own SCSI
enclosure.  Problem is, at an added cost of $70/drive, it may prove to not
be worthwhile.

Can't easily stagger IDE powerup, can you?  Already ran into that issue...

Because I'm a kernel hacker, I'd even been dreaming up ways have other
linux boxen stacked with drives, similarly, and have them smoothly
integrate into the big LVM.. but the methods are either unstable or
clumsy.  Suggestions accepted..

By the way, Gary Murakami has helped inspire me to do this.  Check out his
page if you've never seen it; great info.  
http://www.nobell.org/~gjm/linux/ide-raid/

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mike Dresser]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, mjstumpf wrote:

> Thanks, all, for comments.  I see every detail I forgot to include:  I'm
> trying to do this on a budget (but not a college student budget) with ATA
> drives.  I'm using a stack of promise ATA controllers with rounded ATA
> cables (some of long lengths, 36") to get the job done.  It's been up and
> running for the better part of 4 years now.

How big are your drives now?  I've got a server at home with 5 drives in
it, could all be replaced with a raid1 of 80 gig drives, and retire the
ugly full tower case with a tiny case.

I ask, because there's 250-300 gig drives available now, you might be
able to use your existing case and just start replacing drives.  Newegg
sells the Maxtor 300gb drive for about 329.

It's 5400 rpm, and only 2 meg cache, but your needs might not require a
fast drive if you're just storing stuff.

For a fast drive, a 250 gig version goes for about 258, for a 8 meg
cache, 7200 rpm model.

So figure a dollar a gig.  How many gig do you want?  How many do you
actually need? ;)

> Has anyone seen the equivalent of more dense promise cards (more than 2
> channels per card, but no extra bells & whistles like raid.. meaning,
> cheap)?  I really prefer plain old software raid in linux, but I am
> actually physically out of PCI slots (and heat issues, space issues, etc).

Well, the 3ware cards are about 500 dollars for a 12 port.  This isn't all
that bad, since you'll only need two for 24 drives.  You can use these
with software raid just fine.  A 8 port version is around 340, or about
the same per port cost.

Btw, your 36" rounded cables likely grossly violate ATA spec, what kind of
wierd case are you currently using that you need that long of cabling?

3ware also makes SATA card versions, the 8500-12 comes to mind, this would
have much smaller cables, and SATA allows up to ~3 foot cables by design.
Controller is much more expensive though, at around 700 for a 12 port
model.

You can get 250 gb SATA drives for about 320ish, I don't see the 300 gb
models that Maxtor promised a year ago, which doesn't surprise me, as
Maxtor is king of waiting a year to actually release products.

> Can't easily stagger IDE powerup, can you?  Already ran into that issue...

Hence, start with fewer drives.

Mike

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Ross Vandegrift]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 11:16:39AM -0400, mjstumpf wrote:
> Fascinating topic.  Building these, cheaply, is easy up to a point. 
> Beyond that it gets interesting!

One idea we considered was building our own rack-mount drive enclosure.
The plan was this:

1) Have a standard case sit desktop style on a shelf in a rack.  Remove
the cover.  This way your PCI slot IDE controllers all have the ports
facing sitraight up.

2) Build an enclosure to bolt the drive in, but on the bottom of the
enclosure, cut slots for cables to come directly up from the server box
to the drives.  Stagger the drives forward and back and use longish ATA
cables.

3) Rack mount it directly above the server, as close as is possible.
Your limit will probably be PCI slots, since you can fit quite a few
drives into a bare box the size of a PC case.

Power could get insteresting, but it's a bit easier to be creative here
::-)

> I'm using a stack of promise ATA controllers with rounded ATA
> cables (some of long lengths, 36") to get the job done.  It's been up and
> running for the better part of 4 years now.

Are 36" cables within spec?  I thought 24" was max for 80-pin cables.
I've had data corruption problems due to extended cables, but if you've
been running them for 4 years, your luck looks better than mine.

> Can't easily stagger IDE powerup, can you?  Already ran into that issue...

Well, you can, but it's not pretty.  Power on, wait until the PSU trips.
Before the drives spin down, power again.  Rise and repeat until all
drives spin up.  Conservation of angular momentum is your friend here.
Then go buy a better PSU so you don't have to do this ::-)

> Because I'm a kernel hacker, I'd even been dreaming up ways have other
> linux boxen stacked with drives, similarly, and have them smoothly
> integrate into the big LVM.. but the methods are either unstable or
> clumsy.  Suggestions accepted..

NBD is probably the way to go.  I've used it some for RAID over network,
but it was mostly just me messing around for fun one weekend at home.
Nothing serious.

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross@willow.seitz.com

A Pope has a Water Cannon.                               It is a Water Cannon.
He fires Holy-Water from it.                        It is a Holy-Water Cannon.
He Blesses it.                                 It is a Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
He Blesses the Hell out of it.          It is a Wholly Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
He has it pierced.                It is a Holey Wholly Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
He makes it official.       It is a Canon Holey Wholly Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
Batman and Robin arrive.                                       He shoots them.

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mike Dresser]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, Ross Vandegrift wrote:

> Well, you can, but it's not pretty.  Power on, wait until the PSU trips.
> Before the drives spin down, power again.  Rise and repeat until all
> drives spin up.  Conservation of angular momentum is your friend here.
> Then go buy a better PSU so you don't have to do this ::-)

This sounds vaguely familar to the BOFH's method of fixing computers.
Something about, "it made it to 27 cycles" comes to mind :)

Mike

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Ross Vandegrift]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 09:18:02AM -0400, mjstumpf wrote:
> Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE, has
> anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple vertical
> 5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
> [vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..

Yep - the company I work for is a manufacturing company, and as such has
a complete metal shop in the back.  We ripped out the guts of a full
tower case and had one of the metalworkers put together a vertical
bracket that allowed us to triple the amount of drives we could fit in
the case.

It originally had some ridiculous number of 5.25" drive bays.  After
that bracketing was ripped out, and our custom bracket rivetted in, we
ran 12 disks for a long damn time.

Funny things happen over time though - our 120G array of IBM 16G
deskstars was easily replaced by two disks, LOL.

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross@willow.seitz.com

A Pope has a Water Cannon.                               It is a Water Cannon.
He fires Holy-Water from it.                        It is a Holy-Water Cannon.
He Blesses it.                                 It is a Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
He Blesses the Hell out of it.          It is a Wholly Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
He has it pierced.                It is a Holey Wholly Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
He makes it official.       It is a Canon Holey Wholly Holy Holy-Water Cannon.
Batman and Robin arrive.                                       He shoots them.

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Jim Ramsey]

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Hash: SHA1

Don't feel bad. I worked for West Publishing Company (they make
law books) from '75 - '77.  We had 3 strings (8 drives each) of IBM
3330's.  That's 24 x 200MB / drive === 4.8GB.  Today, you can
put that and more in your shirt packet.  Actually, you can put 2GB
on you keychain for about $500.

Sigh!!!



On Monday 28 July 2003 10:51, Ross Vandegrift wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 28, 2003 at 09:18:02AM -0400, mjstumpf wrote:
> > Are there other means of packing more drives into a small space -- IE,
> > has anyone actually fabricated a bracket that would take multiple
> > vertical 5.25" form factor spaces, and let you mount 3.5" drives sideways
> > [vertically] to pack 4 drives into the space of 3.. etc..
>
> Yep - the company I work for is a manufacturing company, and as such has
> a complete metal shop in the back.  We ripped out the guts of a full
> tower case and had one of the metalworkers put together a vertical
> bracket that allowed us to triple the amount of drives we could fit in
> the case.
>
> It originally had some ridiculous number of 5.25" drive bays.  After
> that bracketing was ripped out, and our custom bracket rivetted in, we
> ran 12 disks for a long damn time.
>
> Funny things happen over time though - our 120G array of IBM 16G
> deskstars was easily replaced by two disks, LOL.

- -- 
Regards,

Jim Ramsey

  There's that that's worth living for.
  There's that that's worth dying for.
  The rest is c**p.
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Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mike Dresser]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, Ross Vandegrift wrote:

> Funny things happen over time though - our 120G array of IBM 16G
> deskstars was easily replaced by two disks, LOL.

I was going to suggest him doing this if he had small drives, but there
might be a case where a lot of spindles is what he wants.  (database
access, or something)

Mike

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[mjstumpf]

>> Funny things happen over time though - our 120G array of IBM 16G
>> deskstars was easily replaced by two disks, LOL.
>
> I was going to suggest him doing this if he had small drives, but there
> might be a case where a lot of spindles is what he wants.  (database
> access, or something)

Only care about capacity--not spindles.  Currently at 6 80-gig + 4
120-gig.  Would like to not toss out perfectly good drives of reasonable
size (waste of money), plus, I want to keep raid-5 arrays no smaller than
4 drives for efficiency reasons (lower % of drive space wasted in parity).

That's kinda why the sweet spot needs to be more drives, ~20 I think, to
provide both flexibility (migrate files in LVM, remove 1 of 4 raid arrays,
replace it with new bigger one) and optimal use of resource.

Still have to figure out what to do with the leftover 80 gig drives
somewhere down the line.  They aren't chump change yet :-(

Re: where to buy very very large cases

[Mike Dresser]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, mjstumpf wrote:

> Only care about capacity--not spindles.  Currently at 6 80-gig + 4
> 120-gig.  Would like to not toss out perfectly good drives of reasonable
> size (waste of money), plus, I want to keep raid-5 arrays no smaller than
> 4 drives for efficiency reasons (lower % of drive space wasted in parity).

I wonder what the 6 80 gigs would get on ebay.

Enough to buy three 250's, and raid5 them?  Looks like they're about 40-50
dollars on ebay.  Times 6.. 300 bucks.  Ok, not quite enough :)

But if you're buying new drives anyways, this would easily take care of
your case issues, saving you a couple hundred bucks there.

Mike