Slashdot Mirror

5U 24 drive racks go for about $2k each [...] 144 TB per rack

If density is all, you're doing better than TFA at 4.8drives/U, but you can get 8U 40-drive racks for 5 drives/U or 150TB/rack. Pricey though, and you need at least 3 raid cards per box to run that many drives, which rules out mini-ITX.

I expect you can do even better with those pull-out drawers of drives that Sun used to go in for, but probably not in SATA.

Peter

We were waiting anxiously for this item to be announced, because we have about 100TB of storage (now) and add about 8TB per month. Perfect customer for these.

But, unfortunately, they're not quite as cheap as I had thought. (Friend on the inside thought Sun was going to price them at $1.25 per GB, not $2 per GB)

Instead, we've been using these. Very good cooling:
http://www.rackmountpro.com/productpage.php?prodid =2348

32 SATA-II 750g drives = 24TB, same as the Sun X4500, but for only $16,000 for the entire system (chassis, mobo, ram, drives) instead of $70,000 for the Sun Thumper. Huge difference especially if you're ordering many of them.

Take a look at: http://www.rackmountpro.com/. We have several systems from these people and they are great.

I'm sort of doing what you're talking about with the exception of not using MythTV for playback yet since I've not found a DVI flatpanel that I like and can afford yet. *shrug*

I've got DVD Shrink installed on all my Windows machines so that when I get a new batch of discs in, I can rip them in parallel. I also strip off CSS and Macrovision at that time so that the resulting set of files on the media server is unencumbered. For playback, I use Media Player Classic (again in Windows) to display the shows although I've verified that vlc and mplayer will also play them. I used to be able to use Apple's DVD player software on a mini, but after upgrading to Tiger and getting the latest version of the DVD player software, it won't let me play off the fileserver anymore (damn the MPAA).

Be ready to shell out some serious bucks for storage space as not doing transcoding/trimming puts some serious hurt on a pile of drives. I've ripped just shy of 300 discs (297 to be exact) and have eaten 1.6 TB out of my 1.8 TB array.

My dream is to be able to just pop the disc into a machine and have it rip the contents, decrypt and drop Macrovision and then spit the disc back out but I've not figured out a nice way to do that yet. I also want to add more storage but I've maxed out the current case and cases with lots of drive bays are quite spendy.

Promise has a nice off-the-shelf solution and you can get it for arround $3600.

If I were going to do it I'd build it my own by combining a nice case and a 12 port 3Ware controller with whatever server configuration and SATA drives I wanted to get.

Promise has a nice off-the-shelf solution and you can get it for arround $3600.

If I were going to do it I'd build it my own by combining a nice case and a 12 port 3Ware controller with whatever server configuration and SATA drives I wanted to get.

This isn't in stock at the moment, but is meant for two 12"x13" dual Xeon boards with separate 350W PSUs for each board.

I haven't tried any of these enclosures, but there are some out there that claim IDE-Hot-Swap.

See this Rackmountpro example.

-sid

Both the Compaq DL360 and the new HP lpr 1000r have one standard pci, and afull length pci..

The DL360's are awesome machines...

But if you want to do it yourself....

here's the link to a reseller of a 1U case with two pci's... http://www.rackmountpro.com/productpage.cfm?prodid =503

Now fucking do your own research DAMN IT!...

why has slashdot become tech support for the clueless?

Here's a couple ideas that I thought were pretty neat.

• Nexel Shelving. It's pretty cheap and works great as a computer shelf. You can grab a 48" x 84" x 24" rack for around $200. Stick some mid towers on the bottom shelf. Use the middle shelf for monitors. Third shelf up for more towers and the top shelf for storage. Since the rack is made of wire it's easy to zip tie down all the cables.
• Office Cabinet. You know the cabinets I'm talking about, you see them in every office enviroment. The ugly putty looking things. You can find these real cheap at office liquidation sales. Stick the towers on the shelves. Cut a hole in the back for one of the windows fans you find at Home Depot. Cut some ventilation in the shelves. Instant rack. The nice thing about this system is you can close it and lock it. Cabling is somewhat difficult though.
• Rackmount
• This is the way to go in my opinion. It's definately expensive but this is exactly what you want to do. That was the whole point of rackmount! If your not in any hurry, ebay is a great place to find rackmount equipment. Older cabinets can be found for around $100 and easily painted and fixed up. Cases generally go around $150-$250 for the decent ones. The smaller cases bieng more expensive. I can put together a solid 1U case for under $800.
• SBC. This kinda goes along with the rackmount option. This can be even more expensive sometimes. Find a big 8U case that supports a 20 slot passive backplane. Get a 4 segment, 20 slot passive backplane. Now add four SBC's and you got four full computers in one box. BoomRack makes a nice 8U case although retail is around $1200. SBC's can be found a lot of times pretty cheap on ebay.

My last words of warning:

If you do buy rackmount I would avoid the Top Power cases. I've found them to be horribly engineered.

Boomrack makes really nice cases although thier a tad more expensive than most others.

Rackmount Pro has some good prices and great service but watch out for the Top Power cases they sell.

Stay away from ebay sellers that sell from Atlantec. While I can't prove it I'm relatively positive that they have a bunch of shill accounts that they use to bid up thier auctions. They always start off low and then in the last day they'll be bid up to retail price by someone with zero to two feedback. Normally I woudn't think anything of this but it happens EVERYTIME! Thier items never sell for more than a couple dollars less then what they sell for in thier web store.