Could not find a better thread to ask.
My current 2PB farm runs on Mac Mini M1 + 16 JBODs (qnap tl-d800c). I was growing the farm incrementally and needed smth quiet and smaller to fit in my home office.
With that setup I am quite aware: I have a farmer + JBODs + separate PC Plotter (with 3060 ti GPU).
Now I want to explore another option: server rack and JBODs.
I don’t really know how to transition. What equipment / servers / JBODs / Server rack are required.
It is a new world to me…lots of silly questions.
Do I need a server - which one? JBODs like 84 bay JBOD PN SP-2584?
Can anyone give direction / guidance for dummies please. Like for real noobs.
THe whole concept of server rack based farmer and plotter is kinda new and very unclear to me.
Thanks heaps for the guidance and patience.
I think you want to change to a similar setup to what I currently run.
I did used to use the TL-800c’s but sold them and bought the 24 bay NetApps DS4246’s.
I got £400 each for the tl-800c’s which hold 8 drives and the DS4246’s that hold 24 drives cost me £250 each so a no brainer.
I got a 4u server case and built my own farmer/plotter using a low power i7 12700t, key thing is to use a motherboard with 3 pci slots. 1 for video card, then the others for a HBA card card and a SAS expander.
Decent future proof video card choice would be an RTX A4000.
In my case a use NOSSD C14 plots and this is a powerful, efficient card with 16gb vram, can also plot while farming.
I also have a machine running 600tb of GH2 C19 plots that also uses an A4000 card.
If you aren’t using compressed plots you don’t need the gpu, but that is how I built my systems.
I see. For higher compression you need GPU to run the farm? I do use compressed plots…but only C4. Because of my Mac Mini M1 as a farmer. Had to factor it.
Why did you not go with more Bays per jbod btw? Like 48 or higher. Any rational behind it?
The DS4246’s were pretty cheap and quite popular with chia farmers. Pretty much 2 x 8bay tld800c (16 drive bays) paid for 3 x ds4246 and cables (72 drive bays).