[geeks] cases with 5 hot swap drive bays

[Shannon]

On 11-Jun-2012 11:05, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 8:28 AM, RichTea <mail at catsnest.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Lionel Peterson
>> <lionel4287 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> No, but it met every other criteria you listed...
>>>
>>> Lionel
>> It has been mentioned on the list before but, The HP Microservers (i think
>> the N40L is the current version) Is a very nice little server, Its only got
>> 4 drive cages but also has a bay for a "DVD drive" (a 5th sata port).
>> They say that it is not hot swap but a friend of mine has had no problems
>> hot swapping (I have not been brave enough to try!).
>> They are quite cheep in the UK ~ B#250 and you get a B#100 re-bait so B#150.
>> They are also low power they have a 150W PSU. you would also need some to
>> upgrade the memory as it comes with 2G, I also added a dule Gbit ethernet
>> card to mine as it come with just 1 built in.
>>
>> Ritchie
> 
> The N40L is great, but here in the states they are closer to $350 -
> not a con, just a difference.

True, I rejected them mostly because its a lot to pay, though admittedly
it is pretty nice. If I ever find a cheaper source, I might get one.

> The Chenbro chassis I listed earlier ($140 at newegg), plus an Intel
> Server mini-ITX MB (S1200KP $135 at provantage), an i3 Sandy Bridge
> CPU ($100 almost everywhere) and an 8 gig RAM kit (DDR3 ECC) is about
> $75 (newegg) and since the MB includes two Intel Gb NICs, there's no
> need for an add-in card, for a total cost of around ($140 + $175 +
> $100 + $75 = $490 (plus S/H, tax, etc)

I may have found a better deal:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339

This Lian-Li case has a built-in 5-drive hot-swap SATA backplane, and
room for 2 more 3.5 and 1 2.5" drive in the bottom. That's a lot of
drives in a small space, and a hot-swap backplane to boot.

I have read several articles where people used them for file servers,
and they are tight upon assembly, but easy to maintain and run nicely
from everything I have read.

Now to pick a controller and motherboard, and drives.

I really want enterprise class drives but ouch... drives have gotten
expensive.

I don't need server-room performance, but I do plan to dedicate a VLAN
to storage so I'd like it to be reasonably quick.

Lots to choose from, though whatever controller I get must support
Solaris and/or FreeBSD. Still a good selection out there.

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