I am currently looking into upgrading storage for my homelab. The two routes I am looking at are grabbing a dell r730 or a disk array. They are both about the same price, but my major purchase concern is heat and noise. My office/homelab is in a 10x10 foot room. I have worked hard to get the sound floor at my desk to be around 44dB, and the temps to top off at 79f, 74 on a good day with the door open. Is a disk array going to add more heat and noise to the room than a dell r730 server running proxmox with trunas?
R730 is a dual socket server right? I would expect a fair amount of heat and power consumption from that just for storage. I’d definitely expect less heat from a shelf cause it’s only power+disks, no cpu(s). I’ve been looking for a way to separate out my storage too, with similar concerns. Maybe add power consumption too. I also want something that can fit in a shallow rack. I’d just get a synology if they weren’t so expensive.
Anyway, I found the EMC KTN-STL3 which is a 3u 15 bay disk shelf. They are dirt cheap and all over ebay. Was thinking about pairing that with a r230 or something. I think both units have a relatively low idle power usage. Don’t know about noise, everything you read is very subjective, so it’s hard to tell without just getting one. I like the r230 cause it has 2 pcie slots for hba + 10gbe nic. But if you don’t care about that or have something else already, there are lots of other options.
as of right this moment I run an R430 1U dell server, which is a dual socket server with 4 3.5 drive bays up front, averages about 90w. Just being a 1U enclosure and having those tiny fans it tends to get loud. Was looking into a 3U disk shelf as well, but have seen 40mm fans on the back of them. I have too many 40mm fans as it is, I don’t need to add more with more noise. I know a 2U or 3U server enclosure would have larger fans and be quieter, and if I get the same generation or newer, use the same or less power.
Oooh, I assumed a 3u shelf would have bigger fans, but I just realized I never actually saw any fans inside that thing. Reading more about it now, apparently it has some kind of nonstandard squirrel cage fans? Damn.
This is why I’m concerned about noise. I swapped the 40mm fans I have in my switches to noctuas, helped a bunch. Would hate to have this disk shelf I grab to be louder than my switches.