42 Bay DAS, Stupid Purchase :)

Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 08:38
Last edited 14/02/2021 - 08:57

So I made a stupid purchase. I picked up a second hand but great condition SATAbeast. It's a 4U rack mountable storage monster that can hold 42 drives, and creates enough noise to cause 12 divorces. Combined with my other stupid purchases (2x HC4, 1x Kobol Helios64 and a NetApp DS4243) I'm now up to 75 disk slots in total or about 1.35PB fully populated.

What do?

I've got a MooseFS Pro licence, which I could get extended to the full size of however big I make this.

I use my storage for small scale supercomputing tests, for RCC (platform for sharing legal content like music), biomedical research, hard drive mining and all sorts of other things, but it's a stupid and fun hobby if I'm honest. That's all it is.

Anyways I'm hoping to mine Sia, StorJ, Burst (kidding), Arweave, BHD, Chia, and I guess Safe Network with it.

Poll question: "am I completely nuts?"

Poll Options

  • 62
    Yes
  • 6
    Most definitely
  • 29
    Whoa wtf?
Computing

Comments

  • holdenmg on 14/02/2021 - 08:47
    +8

    It is only weird if you make it weird.

    • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 08:57

      Hah. Well, it might be stupid but at least it's not weird ;)

      • holdenmg on 14/02/2021 - 08:59
        +2

        You aren't reading to it at night or buying it a Valentine… lol

        • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 09:03

          That you know of!

          (Nope, doing neither)

          • holdenmg on 14/02/2021 - 09:37
            +1

            @Zorlin: What is the Power requirement of that?
            Is it 240V and 10A

            Does it affect the national grid? lol

            • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 11:01
              +1

              @holdenmg: Surprisingly little! About 1500W fully loaded including redundancy.

  • kiitos on 14/02/2021 - 09:35
    +4

    Never heard of hard drive mining until now!

  • Tee Rex Arms on 14/02/2021 - 09:47
    +4

    Oh, they have the internet on computers now!

  • Hithere on 14/02/2021 - 09:58
    +4

    You probably are completely nuts OP but as long as you are having fun and not hurting anyone who cares?

    • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 11:01

      I am! And yes, it's fun - or it will be if I can ever make it break even and heal my poor wallet.

  • ihbh on 14/02/2021 - 10:52
    +6

    Does it spark joy?

    • Zorlin on 15/02/2021 - 20:11

      Oh yes.

  • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 11:01
    +2

    Tiny brag - I got the SATABeast for $530 AUD.

    • Trance N Dance on 14/02/2021 - 13:27
      +2

      I was going to ask how much.
      It seems used parts in WA is a little cheaper than the east coast. Where did you get it from?

      • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 13:42

        eBay, it actually came from the US.

        I don't recommend this thing yet. For one thing I have to use pairs of raid0 disks to achieve what I want. Layering MooseFS Pro on top solves that for me but not everyone will want to pay for proprietary software just to store data.

  • No Username on 14/02/2021 - 12:05
    +3

    Just mod the firmware to lower the fan speed or buy some Noctua fans. You could always water cool them if you have enough space in your rack.

    • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 13:11

      Unfortunately it's not a simple case of swapping for Noctua fans as they're not the right size or standard. I'm fairly sure I will either be able to find the replacements or simply rack it somewhere that doesn't care about noise.

      • No Username on 14/02/2021 - 13:17
        +1

        Doesn't the SATAbeast use 120mm fans? You could also use sound insulation foam but in my case it only made a 10% decrease to the noise.

        • Trance N Dance on 14/02/2021 - 13:29
          +1

          Either the plugs are non-standard or it's the PSU fans that are making the noise.

        • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 13:43

          Some of them are indeed 120mm but some are not.

  • bazingaa on 14/02/2021 - 14:14
    +1

    Do you have any servers ? Is it connected via FC or Ethernet?

    You should buy an EMC next

    • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 17:32

      I have an EMC.

      It does ethernet, FC and SAS, plan is to use SAS.

      • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 19:35

        Sorry I meant the SATABeast does those. The Netapp does SAS and maybe Ethernet

  • SF3 on 14/02/2021 - 15:03
    +1

    What do?

    Yes, that do.

  • Gnostikos on 14/02/2021 - 15:12

    Cool story bro, but it's OzBargain, not OzBlog.

    • websterp on 14/02/2021 - 17:30

      Or OzSillyBrag

    • Zorlin on 14/02/2021 - 17:32
      -2

      Oh, you came out of your troll cave! I love you!

      This is the forums. A place for discussion.

  • lovepub on 15/02/2021 - 08:21

    I thought you are mining bitcoins …

    But……strange hobby, not from the people who benefit from it though

    • Zorlin on 15/02/2021 - 08:30
      +1

      I have an unfortunately large amount of hobbies. My poor partner.

  • the Unforgiven on 15/02/2021 - 11:17

    Set up a browser to rival google (I use duckduckgo)

  • acoma on 15/02/2021 - 15:24
    +2

    2nd brag I've seen from this poster in a month.

    • Zorlin on 15/02/2021 - 20:09

      K. Sorry.

  • bargain huntress on 15/02/2021 - 15:33

    awesome!

  • Series4Episode10 on 15/02/2021 - 18:06
    +3

    Stop bragging

    • Zorlin on 15/02/2021 - 20:10
      -2

      It's not really a genuine brag.

      More of a "oh god what did I buy" post.

  • Zachary on 16/02/2021 - 15:43

    I thought you cant get DAS with more than 4 bays….?

    • Zorlin on 16/02/2021 - 19:29

      You can get incredibly massive DAS.

      • the Unforgiven on 17/02/2021 - 07:01

        Where's the best place to buy them? TIA

        • Zorlin on 17/02/2021 - 09:19

          Try your luck on eBay, but I'd stop short of recommending anything. You're looking for $12-14 or less AUD per drive bay if you get a good deal.

          • the Unforgiven on 17/02/2021 - 10:04
            +1

            @Zorlin: I had an 8 bay & had 60TB in it which I ran Stablebit Drivepool software,
            but I ran out of room & instead of getting another 8 bay,
            I saw this thread and I thought bigger might be the way to go.
            That 8 bay cost me $350 but is now selling for over $500,
            that is why I am interested. $12-14 or less sounds good to me, cheers
            I will keep an eye out for 'em

          • akunno on 17/02/2021 - 14:22
            +1

            @Zorlin: Hey @Zorlin

            I've had a crack at setting up MooseFS myself, but find that the chunkservers have the hard drives always spun-up. They never seem to go idle. If I turn on the chunk server (but leave it in maintenance mode) then the hard drives also stay spun up.

            Disabling the chunkserver is the only way to allow them to spin down when not in use.

            Any suggestions? Doesn't seem to be anything in the config — how are you going to avoid massive wear and heat creation on 42 drives if not all are in use?

            • Zorlin on 17/02/2021 - 22:18

              @akunno: I'm planning on keeping them spinning most of the time.

              Spinning drives up and down actually creates more wear than leaving them spinning. The heat is a concern but not too bad, and I've got about 10 redundant fans to cool them with.

              • akunno on 18/02/2021 - 01:54
                +1

                @Zorlin: Ah ok. We only use ours during the day for a few hours. Pretty much never touch them at night - so opposite use case.

                I’ll look at some fans today to avoid any failures in the meantime.

                • Zorlin on 18/02/2021 - 12:28

                  @akunno: You can stop the chunkservers to spin the drives down but just keep in mind that means an outage if you take out too many.

      • Zachary on 19/02/2021 - 22:50
        +1

        Sorry, I should have specified; I was thinking of hardware RAID DAS and not JBOD DAS or JBOD/RAID NAS. Qnap has a 4 bay RAID DAS, Drobolo (or however its spelt, I forgot how what it was…) has a 12 bay RAID DAS but thunderbolt only and only works for macs. Synlogy only does RAID NAS, no DAS. There are of course a few other brands but these seems to be the goto ones for …well everyone that I've been reading over the web….and no one does RAID DAS over 4 bays, except Drobolo which only works on macs….

        I was looking at maybe a 6 bay or an 8 bay RAID DAS so I could backup all my blurays on the shelves which should total about 30TB or so maybe a bit more, assuming 50GB discs per title(that's a rough estimate as I do have a few only that like 12GB on 25GB discs and 4K UHD that like 80GB large on one disc and then another 50GB disc for the normal 1080p version…). And then a couple more of the same DAS for backup incase that DAS dies suddenly, which has happened in the past and I'd lost everything…. So I'd be looking at around 10k - 20k for all that hardware alone(I'll be doubling up so I don't have keep replacing HDDs or get a new DAS everytime I run out of space)….fark so expensive to archive my bluray collection….why did I buy so many on sale???!!! Damn impulse purchase!

        • Zorlin on 20/02/2021 - 10:00

          If you "only" have a need for 30TB, just go with 2x ODROID HC4 for around $400 total, and 4x 16TB (assume $550 a pop).

          That gives you $2600 total which is less than an RTX 3090. But hard drives can't raytrace.

          Even if you use 2x redundancy (RAID1 basically) you'll find that solution works and is cheaper than most.

          I've outgrown low bay count computers, but food for thought.

          • Zachary on 21/02/2021 - 17:04

            @Zorlin:

            If you "only" have a need for 30TB

            That's what I thought when I only needed 100GB, then needed only 500GB…then 1TB, then 3TB and then 5TB and it was here I just gave up and waited till I've saved enough to get one big massive box(Instead of incremental mini sizes to keep up) and not have to worry about it for another decade or two… Now I have all these low space HDDs lying about as awell all these DASs that are now useless because they're too small….

            I'm just waiting for the 20TB drives to come out so I can jump on them and have less HDDs for the same capacity… I was hoping to get a box to do RAID6 on 6x20TB (or 8x20TB) drives and have two more going as backup, so in total there would be 18x20TB (24x20TB) and 3x RAID6 DAS boxes. The only DAS that can do this would be the Drobolo(oh it's Drobo —EEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR—) ones, which of course only works on macs or Lacie ones (unsure if only works on macs or if I can just order the emtpy DAS boxes without their HDDs). Should give me reasonable breathing room for future expansion….

            Qnap only have 4 bay ones and I would only be able to do RAID5 4x20TB instead of RAID6 6x20TB or 8x20TB. They have NAS boxes(which goes beyond 4 bays) but I have no interest in connecting the boxes to a network…as they're meant to be archival backups for offline cold storage not online hot storage… And the rest of the brands have gotten on the NAS bandwagon…like Orico, Icydock, Synology…are the ones I know of….

            Hmmmm….

  • bongoman on 22/02/2021 - 11:31

    if you don't have it running at 100% usage for more than 90% of the time over its lifecycle, I would suggest you could do it in the cloud with the same investment, and gain a few things which you won't have today. interested to see your sums.

    want to share your spreadsheet?

    • Zorlin on 22/02/2021 - 13:57

      I can't get 756TB of storage on the cloud cheaply, and I'd love to know how you can if you know how.

      I am planning to use the entire lot of storage but will only be buying drives as needed.

      I've also got 64TB of storage on dedicated servers, which I do admittedly have quite cheaply. That's where I'd like to do my hard drive mining.

  • Zorlin on 03/04/2021 - 10:15
    -1

    I figured I'd post an update, since it seems to enrage the trolls. I'm now up to 1,100TB of storage. Wheeeeee.

    • Zachary on 04/04/2021 - 00:05
      +1

      What happened to your 1.35PB of storage?

      • Zorlin on 04/04/2021 - 00:25
        +1

        That was total potential capacity, not what I had. I totally screwed up in my wording.

        I've now got 3.2PB worth of bays, but they are mostly empty.

    • [Deactivated] on 04/04/2021 - 12:36
      -1

      Where's the photo of the 30k worth of hard drives?

      • Zorlin on 04/04/2021 - 16:14

        I suspect you're not being sincere, but once everything arrives I will have a detailed post about the entire setup. Hardware specs, laser cutter plans, software and so on.

        • [Deactivated] on 04/04/2021 - 16:23
          -1

          I guess you're not actually 'up to 1,100TB of storage' then.

          • Zorlin on 04/04/2021 - 16:25

            @[Deactivated]: I mean, I've ordered and paid for literally all the drives and if you add it all up it's slightly more than that so… Sure, be pedantic?

            • [Deactivated] on 04/04/2021 - 16:37

              @Zorlin: Looking forward to seeing pics of 70 shucked drives.

  • ModdySwag on 04/04/2021 - 16:16
    +3

    Flex post. Good luck.

    • Zorlin on 04/04/2021 - 16:25

      Mostly trollbait tbh

      • Zachary on 24/04/2021 - 11:49

        are you satisfied with your responses?

        • Zorlin on 24/04/2021 - 19:17

          Are you in this thread in good faith?

          • Zachary on 03/05/2021 - 15:38

            @Zorlin: I only came here to argue the fact that you can't get a 42 bay DAS and then realised you can just that you can't get a 42 bay RAIDed DAS and I was looking for external RAIDed DAS at the time. Still am, and still waiting for the 20TB drives to come out so I can jump on them…

            • Zorlin on 03/05/2021 - 17:10

              @Zachary: Ohhhh fair enough. :) Sorry, just a bit jumpy given the responses so far.

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