On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Dan Langille <d...@langille.org> wrote: > > On Tue, February 9, 2010 7:51 am, Tom Evans wrote: >> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Charles Sprickman <sp...@bway.net> wrote: >>> .... >>> Here's the list: >>> >>> http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=8441629 >>> >>> Just over $1K, and I've got 4 nice drives, ECC memory, and a server >>> board. >>> Going with the celeron saved a ton of cash with no impact on ZFS that I >>> can >>> discern, and again, going with a cheap tower case slashed the cost as >>> well. >>> That whole combo works great. Now when I use up those 6 SATA ports, >>> I >>> don't know how to get more cheaply, but I'll worry about that later... >>> >>> Charles >>> >> >> As long as those SATA ports are AHCI compliant, should work quite >> nicely with a SiI port multiplier. Failing that, a simple 2 port SiI >> PCI-E SATA card (supported by siis(4) driver) + 2 x SiI port >> multiplier would give you 10 extra SATA ports. >> >> My SiI PCI-E card cost £15, and the PM about £50, so it is about >> £13/port, or ~$20/port. Probably can get the components cheaper in the >> US actually. I also found some nice simple drive racks for £20/4 >> drives - not completely hotswappable, but much easier to replace than >> screwed into the case. > > Now there's an idea. Drive racks? Got a URL? > >
These aren't the exact racks I bought, they seem to be discontinued (glad I bought 3 at once!), slightly more expensive, but same idea: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Silverstone-SST-CFP51B-Aluminum-Bay-converter-3x525-to-4x35-in-Black-with-120mm-Fan-RoHS I got the SiI add-in card and port multiplier from the same place: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Lycom-PE-103-x2-Port-SATAII-3Gbps-PCI-E-Controller-Card-with-NCQ-PC-MAC-Linux http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Lycom-ST-126RM-SATA-II-3Gbps-1-To-5-Port-Multiplier-bridge-board-(for-Rack-Mount) For fixing the portmultiplier into the case, I recommend No More Nails :) I bought one of those cases that has 5.25" bays all down the front - 10 bays on mine, 1 with a DVD recorder, 9 filled with three of those drive racks, which gives me 12 'easily accessible' drive bays, 2 internal ones. With 6 SATA ports on the motherboard, together with the SiI controller + one portmultiplier, I have 12 bays and 12 SATA ports for not too much. I currently have 6 of them filled with 1.5Tb SATA drives in a raidz pool, and can expand the pool by adding another 6 as I run out of space. Works very nicely for my needs :) One thing to point out about using a PM like this: you won't get fantastic bandwidth out of it. For my needs (home storage server), this really doesn't matter, I just want oodles of online storage, with redundancy and reliability. Cheers Tom _______________________________________________ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
