My unRAID server has 12 data drives, 2 parity drives, and 3 SSD cache pools. Plus dual Xeons on a SuperMicro ATX board.
I currently have the Deep Silence 5 case by Nanoxia. But things are cramped. I’ve filled all the standard drive bays, plus put in a 4-bay 5.25 enclosure. But I still have one of the SSDs just floating around.
What would a better case to put all this stuff in?
Define affordable
Fair question, difficult to answer.
I bought the Deep Silence around $180. So maybe $250 or so/less? Flexible. Definitely not Storinator prices (though I wish they sold the chassis separate).
At that price, your only real option is to get lucky on eBay with an old supermicro rack mount chassis.
Did you have something else in mind?
The fractal design 7 xl might give you what you want, but at $200 + 5x drive cage kits at $20 each + upgrading and maxing out the fans ~$100, you’re looking at closer to $400, and there are mixed reviews on how well it can keep your drives cool.
Once you get above 10-12 drives, you’re going to need to look at enterprise gear, or building a custom solution. There just isn’t much consumer hardware at that level.
Ah yeah, that’s not bad. I do get that this is a fairly niche idea so paying extra was expected. $400 isn’t outside the realm of idea. Thanks! Its the big, $1k+ server case costs that was worrying me.
I have a 12 drive setup in a define 7 (not xl) and it’s working fine. As long as I keep the filters decently clean from dust the temps are fine.
Can you say what those temps are?
Around 40C
I’m putting this here because I couldn’t find a good summary anywhere else on the Internet:
There hasn’t been much work on this recently, but a summary of the scholarly work in this field can be found between these sources:
Failure trends in a large disk drive population (2007)
Datacenter Scale Evaluation of the Impact of Temperature on Hard Disk Drive Failures (2013)
Hard Drive Temperature—Does It Matter? (2014)
The 2013 paper unfortunately is stuck behind a paywall, but message me if you would like to read it.
My suggestion given the work in the field would be to keep temperatures around 30°C if you can because at higher temperatures, you could be reducing the lifespan of your drives.