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Building a home server. Please help, DC!

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4wd:
Hi superboy, have u checked the pricing on 2TB SAS drives? I think that's one important step before you commit to buying that big box.
-lotusrootstarch (September 08, 2011, 05:33 PM)
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Why not have the benefit of cheap SATA drives with the speed of an Multilane Infiniband connection?

eg.
Storage - Addonics Rack System (it doesn't need to sit in a rack since there's no ventilation slots on the bottom of the case.)
             1 or 2 x Addonics Multilane Bridge coupled with Addonics 5x1 SATA Port Multipliers (Each host Multilane controller could then run, conceivably, 20 HDDs.  However, I'd be looking at probably only 1 or 2 Port Multipliers per Multilane which would still give you from 14-20 HDDs that could be connected to 2 host controllers.)
PC end - 1 or 2 x Multilane 4x RAID 5/JBOD Controller (Doesn't have to be in RAID/JBOD mode.)

Going completely berserk, 2 Infiniband cables could conceivably connect you to 40 SATA HDDs.....big enough?  :D

lotusrootstarch:
What's the hardware BOM and total cost of this solution for an aggregated storage space of, let's say, 20TB?

Then we can nail it down to dollars per TB and compare.

4wd:
Basing this on using 2TB HDDs, (so at least 10 of them), since they're still significantly cheaper than 3TB - the cheapest option which allows room for upgrading later:

1x Multilane 4x RAID5/JBOD PCIe 8x Controller              @ $185
1x 3M Infiniband cable                                             @ $85
1x 4X Multilane bridge for SATA storage                      @ $29
2x 5X1 Internal SATA Port Multiplier                           @ $62
1x Storage Rack DA base unit with ATX power supply   @ $355
2x Disk Array 5SA (black bezel)                                 @ $129
                                                                    ---------------
                                                                              $1036

More thoughts: If you wanted to forego the Infiniband links to start with then you could do the following:
1x Storage Rack DA base unit with ATX power supply   @ $355
2x Disk Array 5SA (black bezel)                                 @ $129
2x 5 Port HPM-XA Enclosure Version                           @ $89
                                                                    ---------------
                                                                              $791
This uses a pair of eSATA ports which are probably on the host PC already.



HDDs are a personal choice but if you use WD 2TB WD20EARS, (Caviar Green), @ $79.99 each from Newegg, then the total is approximately: $1836

If you go for WD 2TB AV-GP WD20EURS, (designed for always on streaming), @ $89.99 each, then the total is approximately: $1936.

NOTE: I don't know what kind of performance you'd get over Infiniband links but since they're used for server farms, etc, they must be halfway decent but SJ or 40hz would be more likely to have had some kind of experience/knowledge with/of them.

Also, this is still more expensive than simply building a new PC with the requisite amount of ports in a decent size case and running it using FreeNAS, WHS or similar.

lotusrootstarch:
plus a $500+ Infiniband PCI-e host adapter when you attach this to the PC?

4wd:
plus a $500+ Infiniband PCI-e host adapter when you attach this to the PC?
-lotusrootstarch (September 08, 2011, 10:41 PM)
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First item on the list.

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