new case/rack, what to do

[MassiveJim]

A bit long winded, but not sure what exactly to do here.

Currently my "office" is in our 3rd bedroom which soon must become a nursery.
This means moving the office in to our loft space.
I don't forsee the loft space looking particularly pretty to begin with, but if funds and time allow it might get decorated at a later stage, I do plan on having it at least insulated however.

Currently my NAS is in a cheapo 4U rackmount case which has about reached it's capacity in terms of HDD space, not to mention the HDD mounting system is bloody awkward/fiddly.
It is housed in a fairly smart looking 18U rack, which has a wooden top.

So the move in to the attic space comes at the same time as the NAS requires upgrading.
The NAS upgrade can be put off for a little while, I have ordered the additional drives and SAS card however.
The current rack will not fit through a loft hatch, so rivets will have to be drilled and the cabinet taken apart that way to make it fit, should I decide to keep it.

The cabinet can house a case with a depth of 470mm tops, which limits me in terms of buying another case if I do decide to keep this rack/cabinet.


So my question is (kind of) 2 fold,
1 - do I upgrade to a different (bigger) rack or keep the current one ?
I haven't ran out of vertical space, and it doesn't house a lot of equipment, But also it doesn't matter what it looks like as I can box it off in it's own little room now if needed. so I could buy a tatty 2nd hand one from the bay.

2 - do I go for a rackmount case again or a normal case ?
hardware is standard ATX gear with 3.5" HDDs.
I was hoping to go for hot swap with this "upgrade", I will be expanding to 8 drives now and want to leave space to expand further later.
I have found a rackmount case with 10 hot swap bays for ~£200 (which should fit in the current cabinet) and one with 16 hot swap for ~£260 (not so sure this one will fit in the current cab however, they also do a deeper version for the same price).
Or I could buy a normal case and fit some 5.25" to 3.5" hotswap caddies, for ~£60 you can convert 3 x 5.25" bays to 5 x 3.5" hot swap.

I don't know if I really need a rack now.
I will list the equipment that's (currently) in it though

1 x 24 port GigE patch panel
1 x 24 port GigE HP managed Switch
1 x 1u cable tidy
1 x 4u Rackmount case housing my NAS
1 x BT modem
1 x Asus router


Your thoughts ?

 

[MassiveJim]

Agreed. Also humidity.

going to insultate the loft.
I don't have a choice, all my kit needs to exit that room to make way for the baby's nursery.

media I am storing is mainly dvd/ blu-rays that have been ripped. (the physical copies of those are also all stored in the loft as well, not sure if they are affected by heat/humidity though :S) at least they are what is taking up most of the space and as you know they soon eat in to storage space nowadays, I'm up to around 500 films now on the NAS and that is only going to increase over time. I'm only trying to future -proof a little.
I currently have 4 x 2TB in a RAID-Z, I have 2 more 2TB drives sat next to me now that will be used to increase that to a 6 disk RAID-Z2 array.
I am below 1TB free space currently, so I probably have a few years yet with the pending update before I need a further upgrade.


We are actually going to widen the loft hatch now as well, I won't know for certain until the loft hatch is in but its looking like this Cab will fit through if I can find someone strong enough to lift up there

I'll hold off on a new case until that has happened now I think;.