Insanity - The 80 disk project

[grevaeg]

Hi guys!

It seems like ill be having a second case build coming up from a client request ^^

Well... its obvious that there are alot of crazy people out there.. and if someone are gonna make a 100TB fileserver... how can i possibly put it down?

Sketches are being made as i write this, so its coming soon..

However, some of the requests thats been made this far :

* Room for atleast 80 harddrives
* Room for 3 PSU's
* 1 mobo slot
* Air cooled
* Possibility to mount a screen in front
* No rack looks :P
* As light as possible
* Sturdy and movable

http://grevaegtwo.com/insanity/insanity6.JPG
Ah well... a few more hours have passed, and ive been eagerly working on the sketches for this build ^^

However, a new criteria just came in !!! IT HAS TO BE AS SMALL AS POSSIBLE!! yes... that means EVERYTHING will be in steel to make stuff thinner :P

(i lol'd) 0.o

http://grevaegtwo.com/insanity/insanity5.JPG
Doesnt the 8" lilliput look cute? 0.o

http://grevaegtwo.com/insanity/insanity7.JPG
Please insert sata and power cable here plx...

http://grevaegtwo.com/insanity/insanity8.JPG

http://grevaegtwo.com/insanity/insanity9.JPG
Yes... ill build a air filter in front of those 4x 250mm fan's... so it wont look that shabby :P and yea... it will be a way for the air to pass trough on the other side 0.o

Lets do some hardware talk regards to this build, shall we? ^^

I dont know much about it to be honest, but what i do know is that it has to support e-atx, so a dual socket 771 or something similar will be going in, also 3ware controllers will be used, i assume together with a expander of some sort....

Regards to detecting faulty drives :

Drives will be sorted out by cable numbers on the sata cables, and a custom ID on the raid controllers =)

Also, diagnostic led tools are quite decent to use ^^

[SXRguyinMA]

this should be good :D

[x88x]

Wow, this looks awesome! I'm surprised they haven't told you anything about what's going in the case... You would think that would be best to know in designing it..
/shrugs

I don't suppose you can tell us who the client is? Just out of curiosity...there's not a whole lot of groups who need 100TB of storage...generally it's either way less or way more. :P

This will definitely be sweet to see completed. :D I'm guessing they're gonna use 4 of these to control the disks. Granted, they're over $1,000USD each, but if they're gonna be spending at least $12,000USD on the drives, I'm guessing that wouldn't be much of a problem.
http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/raid_controllers/sata/3ware_9650se-24m8/index.html
24-port SATAII PCIe

I assume all the storage disks will be 2TB? Maybe with an SSD or three running the OS in the base? :twisted:

For activity/diagnostic lights, I know it's possible because I have some SATA drive cages at work that do that...but I have never been able to find information on how to do it. That's actually something I've been wanting to do on Faust once I finally start working on it.

[StormRider]

wow, that has got to be the biggest computer I've ever seen. but I am new, so I imagine I haven't seen that much

[artoodeeto]

wow, that has got to be the biggest computer I've ever seen. but I am new, so I imagine I haven't seen that much

no no, you're about right. it's maybe not *quite* the biggest computer, but it's definitely gonna be rather massive. it's all well and good to say make it as small as possible, but 80 2.5" HD's will take up a lot of space, even if they weren't mounted properly (which of course these will be). sweet! I'll second X88X's request on client identity if possible, just to satisfy my curiousity.

[x88x]

80 2.5" HD's

Those look like 3.5" HDDs to me.

..though, that gives me a thought...it would be much more expensive, but WD makes that 1TB 2.5" Scorpio Blue. You could get about twice the storage in the same space! :twisted:

[The_Crippler]

Crap...now we gotta start a 100TB frickin' club...

[x88x]

Crap...now we gotta start a 100TB frickin' club...

LOL, give it a few years. :P

[StormRider]

and a lot of lottery tickets

[x88x]

Hahaha, maybe. I just keep remembering back around this time in 2006, just 4 years ago, when I was so proud that my fileserver had achieved a full terabyte of storage space. A feat almost unheard of among the people I knew. :D Now, each of the drives in my server has half that again. Or heck, back in '98 when my parents got our first modern computer, and it had all of a 1.98GB drive, decent sized for the time. If storage prices continue on the trend that they have been over the last few years, I wouldn't be surprised to see 16TB drives for $100 by 2014.

[Luthien]

100 TB...That'd be nice to have one sweet day...now I just need to find a way to get rich...

[grevaeg]

Hahaha, maybe. I just keep remembering back around this time in 2006, just 4 years ago, when I was so proud that my fileserver had achieved a full terabyte of storage space. A feat almost unheard of among the people I knew. :D Now, each of the drives in my server has half that again. Or heck, back in '98 when my parents got our first modern computer, and it had all of a 1.98GB drive, decent sized for the time. If storage prices continue on the trend that they have been over the last few years, I wouldn't be surprised to see 16TB drives for $100 by 2014.

1280GB February 04 ^^

http://www.digi.no/99897/vinneren-i-klassen-kraftigste-pc&bid=1

[diluzio91]

DAAAMN... norwegians dont mess around....

[Airbozo]

Couple of ideas here:

Several companies make drive backplanes with extenders on them, allowing you to connect many drives to one controller via a cable linking the backplanes. This allows you to run one cable to the backplane instead of one cable per drive. This will also allow you to remove the drives easily for hot swap replacement. An added benefit is that most of said backplanes have the drive indicator lights wired to a connector on the backplane.

Force your customer to pop for the battery backup for _each_ raid controller. I know it can be expensive, but just one power surge will pay for the extra cost.

I like the sliding drive cover/computer. Make that sucker automagic. It shouldn't be that hard to install a simple mechanism for sliding the case up with a stepper motor.

Great idea so far and keep us posted!

[Luke122]

^ A nice linear actuator would be fast and quiet, as well as easy to implement. Motorized case!

[artoodeeto]

Those look like 3.5" HDDs to me.

Oops, I meant 3.5".


^ A nice linear actuator would be fast and quiet, as well as easy to implement. Motorized case!

You should just mod a jukebox to plug in a hard drive out of a large stack of them, depending on what you want to do. You know, games on one, etc etc. it would be as cool as it would be impractical LOL.

[x88x]

1280GB February 04 ^^

http://www.digi.no/99897/vinneren-i-klassen-kraftigste-pc&bid=1

Nice. That was Gen 1, right? I love how one of the key things mentioned is that it has 2 SATA drives. :P


Let's see, 2004... I think that was around when i got my first 'big' HDD...a 200GB IDE on sale at Staples for, I wanna say, ~$90? Crazy good deal at the time. :D

[Loki]

insane... How are you going to cool all those drives? a massive fan-rack maybe¿?

[artoodeeto]

I vote for water cooling. :evil:

[Loki]

I vote for water cooling. :evil:

no watercooling on this mod!! XD That's what the costumer wants

[artoodeeto]

customer just doesn't know what they *really* want ;) actually it'd be insane to try and water cool all that; fans are much more practical.

[StormRider]

plus, water cooling for all thse drives would cost a small fortune to purchase and maintain(imagine gettting THAT much coolant). Much easier to use fans, plus they're way more managable

[x88x]

Hahaha, that big a loop I would definitely just go with distilled water. So it would cost all of probably about $5. :P Maybe a few more dollars for a biocide.

I agree though, liquid cooling that many HDDs just isn't practical. I think the general consensus has been that liquid cooling HDDs is kinda useless anyways, and those 4 (or 8? ) 250mm fans blowing across them should be more than enough.

[raistnox]

just to give an impression of the amount of space this thing is going to occupy if you were to line up all 80 drives side by side they would extend 26 feet 8 inches...there is no way this thing will ever be considered small

[grevaeg]

For those who are curious about the customer...

Hes the same guy who bought the 7th.GeN project... he have allready stashed it with 48 1TB drives, however... it filled up.

So he sendt me a request to build a larger fileserver he could place in his basemen in addition

And no, its not a company, just some guy that wanna store the www of 1080p

Also... anyone know who can deliver some hotswap backplates? 0.o

^^

[Kayin]

SuperMicro should. They make the backplates for their servers. Also, look at HP.

SAS backplates will take SATA drives, as I remember (but not the other way around, d'oh) and are out there in great size.

What controller cards will this be using?

[crenn]

My recommendation is to look into custom SAS expanders if price isn't a huge objection, much better than SATA port multipliers.

80 Drives, 4 per each backplate, which means you need 20 SFF-8087 cables which then means you could use 4 "1 to 5" SAS Backplanes and a single 16 port SAS RAID card :P

Just a suggestion.

[Airbozo]

SuperMicro should. They make the backplates for their servers. Also, look at HP.

SAS backplates will take SATA drives, as I remember (but not the other way around, d'oh) and are out there in great size.

What controller cards will this be using?

Kayin is correct about the sas back planes accepting sata. In fact you can mix and match if necessary (depends more on the controller). My company is a supermicro reseller, but check locally to save on shipping and other taxes. Be careful with cabling. There are several different types of connectors and cables.

If you find the back plane you want, SuperMicro will send you the cad drawings so you can make sure that you design the disk trays to fit. If you have problems getting the files, let me know, we sell so much they bend over backwards for us (plus I am less than 5 minutes from their US headquarters). I may even be able to get you a sample...

[x88x]

Hes the same guy who bought the 7th.GeN project... he have allready stashed it with 48 1TB drives, however... it filled up.

:? ??But I thought 7th.GeN wasn't even done yet?? :?

I'll be interested to see how long it takes this guy to fill this up...speaking from experience, it turns into almost a full-time job. :P

[grevaeg]

I lied... ment the 6th.GeN :P

If someone could get me a quote for SAS expander backplates for 80 drives, that would be great ^^

Dont really think cost i a problem to be honest 0.o

[artoodeeto]

man...wish I had that kind of $$....

[Kayin]

You make me wanna get my SAS array up.

But, I can't figure out the kind of cables I need. My drives have weird connectors.

[Airbozo]

You make me wanna get my SAS array up.

But, I can't figure out the kind of cables I need. My drives have weird connectors.

Show me a picture of each device (controller and drive) and I may have them "lying around"...

[Airbozo]

I lied... ment the 6th.GeN :P

If someone could get me a quote for SAS expander backplates for 80 drives, that would be great ^^

Dont really think cost i a problem to be honest 0.o

I am having one of my sales guys contact SuperMicro to see if we can get you a couple of samples to see which one would work.

I also had them check to see if they can sell just the cage and backplane with drive sleds. You may find something that will fit right into your design with little modification.

[grevaeg]

Thx alot for that m8 =)

Really appreciated!

If they wanna contact me directly by any chance, mail me or msn : grevaeg@hotmail.com ^^