eSata Storage Enclosure

[ginjaninja]

I am considering an 8+ bay storage enclosure.
Any brands or products to consider like EdgeStore DAS801T.
Need a living room device.
Need at least compatibility with sata3 drives (if not support for sata 3 bandwidth if only a future upgrade*).

*if this isnt currently realistic any suggestion on brands to look out for.

thanks

 

[Skidilliplop]

For 8 drives you'd be better off going down the NAS route as SATA only connects a single device, thus you'd need 8x eSATA ports or two mini SAS connectors. This is tought to achieve without shelling out a lot on HBAs.
8 drives is a lot number for SOHO application. How much storage space do you realistically need?

 

[Trifid]

For 8 drives you'd be better off going down the NAS route as SATA only connects a single device, thus you'd need 8x eSATA ports or two mini SAS connectors. This is tought to achieve without shelling out a lot on HBAs.
8 drives is a lot number for SOHO application. How much storage space do you realistically need?

You can get DAS bays with a esata port multiplier built in. My understanding is they are not very good though. I'd probably look into a couple of Drobo's if I were you.

 

[PhillyDee]

As for living room, more than 1 or 2 sata mechanical drives make more noise. Is there any reason why you would need to have it in the living room?

You could save money by just buying a nice big tower such as the antex 1200, and a board with a load of sata ports. Are you really going to be hotswopping drives all the time?

Skidilliplop - The edgestore linked inclodes a pci-e cardfor the unit, so you just need a computer.

 

[Skidilliplop]

Skidilliplop - The edgestore linked inclodes a pci-e cardfor the unit, so you just need a computer.

mmm looked it up. For the price that was selling for you could build a server with 4 drives in.
Which is up to 8TB of storage depending how you configure it, and would be more practical than DAS.

(though in terms of how the PC sees it iSCSI presents as a local HDD anyway despite it being networked)

 

[ginjaninja]

For 8 drives you'd be better off going down the NAS route as SATA only connects a single device, thus you'd need 8x eSATA ports or two mini SAS connectors. This is tought to achieve without shelling out a lot on HBAs.
8 drives is a lot number for SOHO application. How much storage space do you realistically need?

Pretty sure i dont want a nas, its bad enough to limit 8 disks effective 800mb/s down to single channel sata 2 speed. Gbit ethernet would be even worse!

unfortunately if it was just a one time write and read during view then fine, but HTPC software needs to regularly reindex content etc plus i have to back up that 12TB to a duplicate every so often. So Gbit ethernet is no good.

Need it for an HTPC, currently at 12TB need 16 in short term. (Blurays take up 25-40GB each, a lot of space).

The hbas are not the problem. Non Raided super micro with 2 SAS ports and a couple of SAS-4xSata cables <£100 unfrotunately u need windows home server for software raid 7 which i dont have.
Even a reaonable high point 8 port rocket raid is <£200. The problem is the computer chasis. No one sells a normal atx chassis with a storage backplane. By the time you have spent a bit more on a larger psu, all the the data and power cables, karger case, a controller, then you are close to just buying an £350 8 port external enclosure (with all its advantages (management, leds, hot swap, portability) and disadvantages (single sata II channel))

 

[ginjaninja]

You can get DAS bays with a esata port multiplier built in. My understanding is they are not very good though. I'd probably look into a couple of Drobo's if I were you.

I think i want DAS bays with esata port. Ive looked at drobo pro but at £1000, i would just stick to hdds in a large case, with a bigger psu and some fans.

 

[ginjaninja]

As for living room, more than 1 or 2 sata mechanical drives make more noise. Is there any reason why you would need to have it in the living room?

You could save money by just buying a nice big tower such as the antex 1200, and a board with a load of sata ports. Are you really going to be hotswopping drives all the time?

Skidilliplop - The edgestore linked inclodes a pci-e cardfor the unit, so you just need a computer.

I find modern HDDs effectively silent (at least in my p183 case), the fan on the psu of enclosure would be noisier? (im expecting to have to change it).
needs to be in living room to have the DAS quality bandwidth to the HTPC. either way it needs to be quiet. c. '25' dbs is what my projector and HTPC produce from their spec sheets (anyways they are silent).

hotswap is not essential..a nice by product of paying a bit more for an enclosure.

yes i do plan to add to an HTPC.

 

[Myocardial Inf]

Pretty sure i dont want a nas, its bad enough to limit 8 disks effective 800mb/s down to single channel sata 2 speed. Gbit ethernet would be even worse!

How many things are you actually moving about at any one time?

unfortunately if it was just a one time write and read during view then fine, but HTPC software needs to regularly reindex content etc plus i have to back up that 12TB to a duplicate every so often. So Gbit ethernet is no good.

Need it for an HTPC, currently at 12TB need 16 in short term. (Blurays take up 25-40GB each, a lot of space).

Why would you need to backup 12TB each time? Why not just do incremental changes, that way you only backup the changes after initially backing up the 12TB. As I assume you're saving rips, how often are you actually going to be changing/moving files other than when you initially rip them? Similarly you could team multiple connections together both ends and increase your bandwidth I'd have thought.

The hbas are not the problem. Non Raided super micro with 2 SAS ports and a couple of SAS-4xSata cables <£100 unfrotunately u need windows home server for software raid 7 which i dont have.
Even a reaonable high point 8 port rocket raid is <£200. The problem is the computer chasis. No one sells a normal atx chassis with a storage backplane. By the time you have spent a bit more on a larger psu, all the the data and power cables, karger case, a controller, then you are close to just buying an £350 8 port external enclosure (with all its advantages (management, leds, hot swap, portability) and disadvantages (single sata II channel))

I've bought a HP Microserver and am intending to install a PCI-e 1x HBA to attach a DAS to increase the amount of storage available. This connects to my HTPC in the living room and I don't really have any huge issues although I don't rip blue rays as I'd just play a DVD or blue ray direct if I'd purchased the disk.

 

[ginjaninja]

How many things are you actually moving about at any one time?

Why would you need to backup 12TB each time? Why not just do incremental changes, that way you only backup the changes after initially backing up the 12TB. As I assume you're saving rips, how often are you actually going to be changing/moving files other than when you initially rip them? Similarly you could team multiple connections together both ends and increase your bandwidth I'd have thought.



I've bought a HP Microserver and am intending to install a PCI-e 1x HBA to attach a DAS to increase the amount of storage available. This connects to my HTPC in the living room and I don't really have any huge issues although I don't rip blue rays as I'd just play a DVD or blue ray direct if I'd purchased the disk.

I dont want a NAS primarily because you pay more for less bandwidth. I dont want to pay more for less, even though in practise as you say it would provide a workable amount of bandwidth in most instances.

please explain "Similarly you could team multiple connections together both ends and increase your bandwidth I'd have thought." dont follow this suggestion.

does PCI-e 1x HBA offer enough bandwidth not to choke performance of a 8 raid 5 array on at least sata 2. Do HP micro servers offer a cost effective 8 port chasis?

re: mount a bluray each time: i cant think of anything more tedious than not having all media online to browse / watch at any tv / projector in the house.

 

[#Chri5#]

Do HP micro servers offer a cost effective 8 port chasis?

No. For 8 HD bays in a tower, you need something like a ProLiant ML150 G6 which is validated for 8 x 3GB. That's not going to be 1) cheap or 2) quiet as you need a second HD cage, redundant PSU enable kit, redundant PSU and a SmartArray P410 controller.

 

[Skidilliplop]

Gigabit is fine. Teamed is more than enough. There's pretty much nothing you'd have to do in a domestic environment that needs to happen faster than 120MB/s to an individual client device.
Regarding backup, you'd never backup anything over a couple of Terabytes. Because even in enterprise scenarios it's tedious and bandwidth hungry. Data in those quantities will almost always be replicated, usually synchronously.

The question has to be asked, 16TB is over 400 uncompressed Blu-rays.... would it not be easier just put the disk in a blu-ray player? This seems like a vastly over engineered solution to a very simple problem to me.

 

[Demon]

I am considering an 8+ bay storage enclosure.
Any brands or products to consider like EdgeStore DAS801T.
Need a living room device.
Need at least compatibility with sata3 drives (if not support for sata 3 bandwidth if only a future upgrade*).

*if this isnt currently realistic any suggestion on brands to look out for.

thanks

The EdgeStore you mention is probably the most cost effective 8 bay device, and I've used other EdgeStore enclosures, they've all worked OK to me.

On another note, your strategy of having your HTPC in the front room doing all the work and having a large DAS box is OK, but as people are hinting, you could change strategy and make your setup more flexible.

I used to have all my storage attached to the HTPC, but like you are finding, it's not flexible, nor that scaleable in terms of keeping it in your front room.

I have 2 NAS's over gigabit (24TB Storage, plus can add 2 eSATA DAS Enclosures on top if I need to), I have my BR drive in the HTPC, and rip my ISO's directly to the NAS, which over gigabit (realistically I get a solid 80-100MB/s for large file transfers, an order higher then the speed of my BR Drive!).. All the media indexing software I've tried seems to work amazingly quickly, most software indexes are locally cached, so it's just a background task of checking for new stuff etc.

OF course, having a low power NAS means it becomes cost effective to leave on 24/7 and perform a myriad of background stuff, and share your media around the house if you so wish.. I even have mine backing up to an cloud backup for important photo's/documents etc..

 

[two00lbwaster]

please explain "Similarly you could team multiple connections together both ends and increase your bandwidth I'd have thought." dont follow this suggestion.

You can 'team', or combine the bandwidth of, certain multiple gigabit ethernet adaptors together, so with 1Gb/s adaptors you can soon exceed the 300MB/s (2.4Gb/s) theoretical throughput of SATA II with a few cards teamed together, with the right network equipment.

 

[RimBlock]

I am considering an 8+ bay storage enclosure.
Any brands or products to consider like EdgeStore DAS801T.
Need a living room device.
Need at least compatibility with sata3 drives (if not support for sata 3 bandwidth if only a future upgrade*).

*if this isnt currently realistic any suggestion on brands to look out for.

thanks

Sorry but I am really confused about what you are trying to get out of this.

So far I have got;
Media player with desire to have 16TB local storage.
Storage needs to be backed up now and then.
8 hard drive connectivity preferred for local storage.
Local storage to be housed in a living room eSata DAS.
SATA III preferred for future proof.
SAS maybe a possibility.
Don't want to bottle neck the system.
Some mention of raid 5 and raid 7 which I am not so clear on.

If the above is sort of correct then where is the backup going to reside ?

First a few basics, especially if you want to get the full bandwidth of the devices. Note the drive speeds are a guide.

PCIe 1.0a = 250MB/s per channel
PCIe 2.0 = 500MB/s per channel

SATA II = 300MB/s per connection (one connection per cable without expander).
SATA III = 600MB/s per connection (one connection per cable without expander).
SAS = 300MB/s per connection (four connection per cable without expander).
SAS2 = 600MB/s per connection (four connection per cable without expander).

Note, SAS controllers can control SATA drives but not always at the same top speed they can control SAS drives. A 6G SAS controller may not be able to run SATA III drives at full speed.

5.4K HDD = 75MB/s
7.2k HDD = 125MB/s
SSD SATA II = 250MB/s
SSD SATA III = 500MB/s

eSATA
If you insist on full bandwidth to max all drives at max speed then you are looking at needing 8 eSATA connections. If you limit yourself to SATA II speeds then you could get away with 4 eSATA connections. If you limit yourself to mechanical drives then you are down to 2 eSATA connections and if you limit yourself to 5.4k (or green) drives then you could get away with a single cable.

SAS
SAS requires a separate controller card and so PCIe bandwidth comes in to play. If the supermicro card you were looking at is the AOC-SASLP-MV8 (very popular with home server builders) then this is a PCIe 1.0a 4x card (1GB/s bandwidth on the PCIe bus). The card has 2 connectors so 8 channels in total supporting a max of SATA II speeds (8 drives x max 300MB/s = 2.4GB/s) which results in you being bottlenecked by the PCIe x4 connection. If you moved up to a PCIe 2.0 card like the LSI 9211i (or IBM M1015 reflashed with LSI IT SAS2008 firmware) then you would get an PCIe 2.0 8x card (4GB/s on the PCIe bus). The card is a SAS 6G card but only handles SATA up to SATA II so you are back to 2.4GB/s max total device speed. No bottleneck and you could max out 8 SATA II drives including SSDs. You would need the SAS card, a two SFF-8087 -> SFF-8088 converter for the HTPC case, two SFF-8088 cables (remember SAS can go 12 meters but cables are expensive for long runs), a case with two SFF-8088 connectors and 8 drive bays.

I have a 20bay Norco case at home with dual LSI 9211i controllers (just upgraded from LSI 1068i controllers).

I am currently prototyping 4 drive (3.5") and 8 drive (2.5") disk packs for home use with SAS or eSATA connectivity mainly for situations such as yours. Units are stackable, around 10cm x 22cm x 33cm in size, matching server/HTPC/Virtualisation Server units to connect too and decent WAF. Bit of work to do though before a product comes out the other end but have done a fair bit of research in this area.

The obvious question that springs to mind though is why you need it all as local storage. I have a media player and all my Bluray ISO rips on my nas which stream flawlessly via my Gbit lan to my AVR and projector. Admittedly my NAS is a big beast (the Norco listed above) and has a decent Nic in it but Gbit lan can easily handle streaming Bluray ISOs and you can keep your data in a centralised area along with a backup set hidden out of the way.

This thread on AVSForums has a guy who has done a 12 bay SAS box which may also interest you.

RB

 

[ginjaninja]

Thanks for advice,

i have read the thread on avsforum and this is my inspiration for a BYO solution. He does not quote costs but i suspect its a bit more expensive than my solution so far below.

I could be swayed on the NAS that a few are suggesting, but by my reckoning they are more expensive and slower option, albeit fast enough. Unless i find a good value NAS it wont win over DAS (as long as i can find a quiet one) or BYO.

Just realised that my maximus formula x38 has a spare x16 PCI2 slot, so i have quite a lot of bus bandwidth.

I am currently considering 2xSAT3540U2E (4 port sata II chasis) on a cheap and cheerful (throwaway) RocketRAID 622 (not decided on controller).
with 1 RAID *5* array and a couple of startech 1m esata cables.

this comes to £310 delivered (not including 8x£55 disks).

My hope is that each enclosure would not max its sata II cable rating on Raid 5 reads. And given 8 x 2TB Spin Point F4s, then in a straight line i would get c. 400Mb/s read (200 from each enclosure/sata channel) and 100mb/s write.

There would be a little head room in the sata II connections, so i dont need to be too disgruntled with buying a sataII enclosure when i should wait for sata III (when good value/faster sata 3 disks come out, the potential performance of the enclosure will increase). The controller itself has a pcie limit of 500MB/s (PCIE2x1) but it is not as massive cost.

Would such a setup/controller yield such read/write speeds, is the bottleneck the controller?

I hope that the enclosures will support >2TB disks ..but at £300 it would not be as painful when it becomes obsolete as £1000 say of a drobo pro.

 

[RimBlock]

I could be swayed on the NAS that a few are suggesting, but by my reckoning they are more expensive and slower option, albeit fast enough. Unless i find a good value NAS it wont win over DAS (as long as i can find a quiet one) or BYO.

I know where you are coming from and NAS or DAS for a large number of drives can get expensive quickly.

Just realised that my maximus formula x38 has a spare x16 PCI2 slot, so i have quite a lot of bus bandwidth.

You do need to be a bit careful with compatibility though. I have a lot of hard won personal knowledge in this area and 4 motherboards sitting on the floor .

I am currently considering 2xSAT3540U2E (4 port sata II chasis) on a cheap and cheerful (throwaway) RocketRAID 622 (not decided on controller).
with 1 RAID *5* array and a couple of startech 1m esata cables.

this comes to £310 delivered (not including 8x£55 disks).

Ok, the bay is based on the EXAR - XRS10L240 port multiplier (datasheet here - pdf). The chipset can do 4int -> 2ext (presumably ones used for eSATA and one for USB in the SAT3540U2E). Limited to 2TB drives SATA II drives. Not bad at all. The Rocket Raid 622 (datasheet here) supports port multipliers (there are sometimes issues with cards and PMs depending on the chipsets though so have a google if you have not already done so for this config). As you mention 1 raid 5 array, does that mean you will also be booting from this array as well as using it for data storage ?.

My hope is that each enclosure would not max its sata II cable rating on Raid 5 reads. And given 8 x 2TB Spin Point F4s, then in a straight line i would get c. 400Mb/s read (200 from each enclosure/sata channel) and 100mb/s write.

Based on your listed speeds you should be able to do it easily. 1/3 headroom on the eSATA connects from the external boxes, and 1/5 headroom on the PCIe bus. Raid 5 does slow the transfer speed down although others here are better placed to give comparative speed differences for the different raid levels.

There would be a little head room in the sata II connections, so i dont need to be too disgruntled with buying a sataII enclosure when i should wait for sata III (when good value/faster sata 3 disks come out, the potential performance of the enclosure will increase). The controller itself has a pcie limit of 500MB/s (PCIE2x1) but it is not as massive cost.

Seriously you are only likely to see slowdowns with SDDs or very fast HDDs at this point. Raid 5 lowers your top combined speed for the drives anyway so you should be good for a number of years baring any major technological breakthroughs .

Would such a setup/controller yield such read/write speeds, is the bottleneck the controller?

Gut feel is that the controller will slow down the whole setup if you are running raid 5. Raid 5 is processor intensive and this is why good raid 5 cards are usually pretty pricey. You can do raid 5 in software but that means you cannot boot off of it. A cheap half way house is doing it in software on a small chip on the controller which is what I suspect this controller is doing. There is a reason this card is 42quid on OCUk and a Adaptec 3405 (lowest level Adaptec card to support raid 5) is around 300 quid. The Highpoint also has no cache which would speed up the card but then brings the risk of power loss without a battery backup. The Highpoint, as well as probably being quite slow, is likely to take a very long time rebuilding an array if you loose a disk.

The question I would ask is "do you really need raid 5" ?. Remember this is for home use rather than for enterprise storage.

Raid 5 gives you a large pool of space, can handle a single drive failure, can recover on drive replacement. On the other side, doing it on cheap hardware will slow the drives, take hours for a rebuild, it is still a single drive failure and you are out of action, you loose a 2TB drive to parity. I seriously question the use of raid 5 for the home environment on cheap hardware especially without a hot spare.

Now lets look at raid 0 (striping).
Big pool of space, increased throughput, cheap controllers, full space of all drives combined available. On the off side you have single drive failure, no rebuild have to recopy from backup.

So what about raid 1+0 (or raid 10).
Big pool of space, increased throughput, cheap controllers, minimum 2 drive failure to knock out the array. The flip side is that you loose 50% of your space.

Now I bring up raid 10 as you said you will be backing up the data. If you are just backing up the data to another data pool for the most part (ie movies / music etc) then why not use the backup inherent in raid 10 ?. Important data you may need incremental backup for you can backup to a USB drive and take it off site if needed but for data that rarely changes then raid 10 should be fine and most HBAs/raid cards/raid motherboard controllers can handle it. It does not require the parity calculations raid 5/6 does. Of course the cost of this depends on your current backup solution.

Of course, raid 5 on a cheap card in a home environment for a movie server is fine but it is worth being aware of the downsides and some limitations of the upsides within the home environment.

I hope that the enclosures will support >2TB disks ..but at £300 it would not be as painful when it becomes obsolete as £1000 say of a drobo pro.

Nope the enclosure only supports up to 2TB (well according to the PM chipset specs that is).

Again, if not so worried about 8 drives is one box then the Fractal Design R3 has 8 bays - 80 quid. Add a LSI 3081E-R card (8 channels SATA 2 -> PCIe 1.0a 8x) - 100 quid. 2 sets of 2xSFF-8087 -> 2xSFF-8088 - around 50 quid. 2 sets of 8088->8088 cables 25 quid. 2 sets of 8088->8087 cables 25 quid. PicoPSU 150W 35quid. a few Molex power to SATA power splitters. Around 310quid + delivery. Some parts will need to be sourced from the US. No raid 5, big case but looks relatively nice, can add a quiet fans or two if needed. Does not support > 2TB drives. Changing the LSI 3081E-R to an IBM M1015 (rebadged LSI 9201i) and flashing it to the LSI firmware will get you a controller that supports > 3TB drives with PCIe 2.0 8x (4GB/s) bandwidth for around 50 quid more if you can find them. This is what I have just done but note that the flashing software is sensitive to the motherboard you are using and I have only found 1 out of the 4 motherboards I have worked. Personally I would go down the M1015, Fractal R3 route, install some cool blue leds, add a custom panel and tell your partner / wife they are a monument to TRON..... .

RB

 

[ginjaninja]

Thanks RB

You do need to be a bit careful with compatibility though. I have a lot of hard won personal knowledge in this area and 4 motherboards sitting on the floor .

my current understanding is that PCIe x 1 slot or x 4 slot will fit in x16 slot.is this correct in most instances?

and that PCIe1 and 2 are interchangable albeit 2 would run at slower speed in 1.
is this correct in most instances?

As you mention 1 raid 5 array, does that mean you will also be booting from this array as well as using it for data storage ?.

nope..will be booting off ssd..not array.

Nope the enclosure only supports up to 2TB (well according to the PM chipset specs that is).

i have seen the manufacturers confirm that up to 2tb is supported. but was assuming that >2tb had not been tested. Are you saying that the low level specs confirm that support for >2tb is impossible or v. unlikely. I would prefer an enclosure that does not limit disk size, otherwise i will have no where to go when 2k+ resolutions come out.

 

[RimBlock]

Thanks RB

my current understanding is that PCIe x 1 slot or x 4 slot will fit in x16 slot.is this correct in most instances?

and that PCIe1 and 2 are interchangable albeit 2 would run at slower speed in 1.
is this correct in most instances?

You would think that would be the case . I can attest that both of my LSI 3081 controllers will not work in the ASRock Extreme 4 16x or 8x PCIe slots but do work in the 4x PCIe slot. These cards are PCIe 1.0a. My new LSI 9211i cards work in all three slots and are PCIe 2.0 8x. Something to be aware of so I would check google for the card you are looking at and the motherboard you have to see if any issues have been reported.

i have seen the manufacturers confirm that up to 2tb is supported. but was assuming that >2tb had not been tested. Are you saying that the low level specs confirm that support for >2tb is impossible or v. unlikely. I would prefer an enclosure that does not limit disk size, otherwise i will have no where to go when 2k+ resolutions come out.

If there was a chance that their devices can work with 3TB drives then surely it would be worth updating their specs . 2TB drives seem to be a logical max size for some chipsets. Assumptions have certainly made a dent in my wallet . Google for confirmation is a safer bet.

RB

 

[ginjaninja]

thank you.

There are people on internet stating that the startech enclosure works with 3TB drives....thats good enough for me.

People have mentioned that a rocket raid raid controller is v. slow at rebuilding raid arrays. I am interested in array expansion. I might start with 3 + 1 parity in an enclosure, and then buy another enclosure later with some more harddiscs and expand the array as i go. This would allow me to convert my current stand alone disks 1 by 1 into the array.
If not the rocket raid controller what is the next value point up to support two+ external esata chassis. Bear in my that the 622 is only £42. Sinking a lot more £ into a controller that might not work in my PCIe2x16 slot may not be realistic.

How bad is the 622 compared to more expensive products at rebuilding arrays, any experience out there?.

I do have a concern that whilst the 2tb spinpoint f4 are excellent value their performance sucks to the point that even watching a film whilst copying data to a drive can judder. I would not want the array to become unusable whilst the array is rebuilding especially if it takes a much longer time than the raw speed of the disk suggests it should.