Quiet JBOD Recommendations?

Chia Farming & Harvesting
1

My plotting machine has now become a harvester since my NAS drives are all full. So I put 3 x 12TB drives in this machine and started harvesting for a pool. Now that those are full, I’m weighing my options for expansion.

  • Get another bigger NAS $$$$ (I love the Synology but it’s probably not the perfect fit for this scenario)
  • Get a USB3 disk array attachment with maybe 4 disks (is throughput an issue here?)
  • Get a JBOD and use one of those SAS Expander cards

I have the least knowledge about the last option, but it seems appealing. However everything I’m seeing are large and loud. This would have to be located next to me, so noise level and aesthetics are important.

Any advice?

2

I can say this: I have 9 WD Easy Store USB3 Drives beside me and they are more silent than a couple PC case fans next to them. I dug out my db meter (closed room is ~62.7 dBC), inches from that hardware it’s 63.3 dBC.

3

bru go on eBay. just buy a large 8-16 drive backplane… find some old pc fans laying around… wire everything accordingly to a super cheap psu.
they usually use some form of hba. get some sas cables ect…
look into the art of server
on YouTube.
basically
u just need
backplane.
cables.
hba.
airflow,
power supply.
u can easily get another 8 drives spinning for under 80 $
super simple
price of sas drives are reallllly cheap too.
4tb for like 20 bucks…
can get another 32 tb run-in for under 200$

I’ve done it twice. leme know if u need any help.

happy farming :slight_smile:

4

Out of curiosity, I already have an LSI HBA in my host machine connected to a 12-bay JBOD… I’m realizing that was seriously overkill.

So once the JBOD is full, I think I’m out of connectivity options (only 2x 16x PCIe slots on mobo and then 2x 1x PCIe slots… the HBA takes up one of the 16x because I think it’s a 4x and won’t fit in the small ones) - the other PCIE is filled with one of those ASUS Hyper NVME Cards.

Can’t really tell what my options are for connecting more drives to this host machine… everything except the USB seems “Full”.

Thoughts?

P.S.> I also have an SATA port card inside in one of the 1x PCIe cards so I can have 8 drives in the host computer case in addition to the JBOD.

5

What about a PCIe Extender?

How about SAS expanders?

Pretty sure you can daisy chain them too. The only issue is you start running out of bandwidth eventually.

What about a SATA multiplier…

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6

So your PC is full with 3 drives?

If you’re going for quiet and aesthetics, what about a fractal design PC case?

They come with sound dampening foam on the panels, and being consumer hardware you can make the fans reasonably quiet.

Beyond that 15-40 drives you’re looking at rackmount storage chassis. Then yeah, they take up a lot of room, require a rack, and make a lot of noise.

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7

You can daisy chain multiple JBODs / SAS expanders on a single SAS connector for up to 256 disks on most HBAs, which would be sufficient for farming…

Here is one example setup:

1200×1011 120 KB

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8

There’s more spaces for 2.5" SSDs, but yeah, I originally only intended to use this machine for plotting and store on the NAS.

I will definitely look into these cases, I like the idea of having the drives internal.

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9

Yeah I was only counting the 3.5" bays for the Define 7 XL.

FYI, if you buy the case it’ll probably come with 6 HDD trays but you can add more. I recently bought 6 more for my R6 at £10 a pair…

Also, the Define 7 XL might be quite large. Break out the measuring tape before you buy.

Have fun with your research and shopping. Thats always the fun part.

10

I can tell you from experience, some backplanes won’t work without the motherboard i2c data :frowning_face:

11

Awe rough. I stick with dell and Havnt had any trouble oddly enough.
To many spare parts now than I care to mention… it’s just…
Riggin custom jbods is so addicting.
It’s a strange habit to have :joy:
Once I started laying in some rgb to my jbods my wife had to step in…:rofl:
It will all be worth it one day I just know it.

12

image
image564×640 87 KB

I run the sas cables right into the back of one of my servers. Where 3 hbas now live.
Couple perc 6 i and a h200. IT mode firmware… Xfs. No raid. Mhddfs. Than just assign a harvester container to the lot. Ez pz. 10 min.

Ghetto riggen

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13

got some dell part numbers for the backplanes that work?

14

Honestly they should all work.
The trick is finding a psu that will give u the correct currents.
Or take the time to find the pin out of specific backplane. And make a connector yourself
But make sure u start the backplane jbod before starting the machine it’s connected to.

It takes some time to research. But big big savings. Vs lol 4 bay nas or another whole server.
But look for backplanes that dont have to many connectors on them other than the sas hookup. Some backplanes have connections that goto the front controls. Avoid those.

And make sure to pair the backplane to a raid card that accepts sas and or sata.
Whatever preference. But going all sas is way cheaper but not as versatile.

Even the 3gib/s ones are plenty fast. N so cheap.

Sorry
they are just very custom an take a lot of general know how… I could give u a number but than will just try and hunt that exact one down. And the worlds starting to run out of backplanes.

But the Art of server on YouTube explains how to build one “properly”

10th 11th gen dell servers backplanes are what Iv had luck with.

15

I’m already well versed in this, I have a dell 840 backplane/cage and 2x HP dl380 g6 backplane/cages which both work fine, but a dell r520 backplane that doesn’t want to work (it has onboard conversion of 12v to 5v). Possibly it needs an i2c signal to enable the voltage regulation.

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