I discuss SAS Expanders a lot on this site, primarily dealing with the HP SAS Expander. One option that came out in the December 2010 High-end and Mid-Range Buyer's guides was purchasing a chassis with a redundant PSU and a built-in SAS expander. Today we will be looking at one of Supermicro's SC216 series chassis, the SC216E1-R900LPB.
The SC216 series...
Norco has a reputation for providing inexpensive server rackmount cases that are oftentimes good enough for many home and small business applications. Being server cases, popular models like the RPC-4220 and RPC-4020 are built to be installed in server rooms where airflow takes precedence over noise. Traditional 90mm fans were found in the center partitions of those models. While...
After the December 2010 High-end and Mid-range Buyer’s guides, I received a lot of questions asking how redundant power supplies, and why I would recommend them over high-end enthusiast power supplies in many cases. This article will cover an overview of basic redundant power supplies, not n+1 units (that will be another piece soon).
The use cases for redundant power...
It is a well known practice that many vendors re-brand LSI RAID cards and host bus adapters (HBAs) using different firmware and re-sell them as their own. Oftentimes, re-branded cards are less expensive to acquire than their LSI counterparts making re-brands highly desirable.
It is also well known that using the initiator-target (IT) firmware mode is...
ZFSguru is a new FreeBSD based storage platform that was started by a FreeBSD and ZFS enthusiast to make an alternative to FreeNAS that tracks closer to a full-blown FreeBSD installation. Over the past few months, quite a few experimental builds have been offered for download and starting today, there is a final release of the 0.1.7 line. ZFSguru...
Welcome to 2011! Over the past year, the ServeTheHome.com readership has grown by almost 25 fold. In visiting other forums, I have noticed that each forum has a specific purpose. Windows Home Server, FreeNAS, unRaid, general data storage, general memory and motherboards and etc. What is lacking is a single place to discuss direct attached storage (DAS), network attached...
Regular readers of this site may have read my recent article on an Apple iPad app called FileBrowser which allows a user to connect to a NAS an retrieve files, stream music and video, and etc. After that piece, Stratospherix offered to have me take a look at NetPortal, an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch which allows...
Regular readers of my site know that I am a fan of the Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G 4GB (2x2GB) ECC Unbuffered DIMM kit. It works in Intel 3400 chipset motherboards that are picky about memory. Two major changes have been happening with regard to this memory.
First, the price has been falling like a rock. As of 20 December 2010 the KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G...
A lot of users on this site, and of Windows Home Server, FreeNAS and OpenSolaris look for compatible RAID controllers that are both supported and inexpensive. For these users, both the older SAS 3.0 and SATA II LSI 1068e chipet and the newer LSI SAS 2008 are favorites. The LSI 1068e was an extremely popular RAID chipset that has...
A lot of comments have been logged asking for an entry/ low-end storage DIY guide. The purpose of this guide is to provide a solution for a system with 2-6 drives which is more robust than a simple 1-2 drive NAS system sold by many vendors. Unlike the higher-end and mid-range builds, this guide will optimize for cost of...