Hi everybody
First of all; not going for practicality - at all. Just to get it out there.
With that out of the way:
I recently acquired a bunch of 120-128 GB SSDs. Around 40 pcs to be exact - a mix of Samsung, Sandisk and a few Kingston. Mostly Samsung - with the possibility of more (and some higher capacity) on the way. These are "decommissioned" disks from a bunch of educational laptops (mostly Lenovos I think). Since they came with BitLocker enabled they have been reset (zeroes) and are ready for use. What to do?
First thing that came to mind; what about a bonkers setup for ZFS? A rough estimate puts usable space around 4 TB. Considering the fact, that a 4TB Samsung SSD can be acquired for around $350-400 (2,230 DKK) there's absolutely no economical reasoning behind this idea.
So.
I began to look for server chassis, disk array, jbods and got lost.
My idea at the moment hovers around the idea of a wall mounted NAS with plexi glass to show of the device.
I've considered to aim for a standard ATX form factor PSU, server'ish motherboard with desktop cooling, two 24-device SAS backplanes, some HBAs and built-in or add-on 10 GBE.
I have no idea what parts go well together. What the requirements is to CPUs when it's all flash or how much memory is practical.
A fun idea that came to mind, was an ISCI-volume for video editing and other stupid stuff. But, if it ends up costing in 4 or 5 figures I'm reconsidering the idea.
Napkin math (quick search on eBay):
2x BPN-SAS-216A 70$/pc = $140
12x SFF-8087 cable $10/pc = $120
3x 16i HBA $270/pc = $810
or
6x 8i HBA $50/pcs = $300
Total for just connecting the SSDs to something: $500 - $1,000
Still need power supply, motherboard, CPU (E5 for the lanes?), RAM and possibly a 10 gig NIC (Intel/Mellanox).
Perhaps I'm overlooking something obvious (buying a used SuperMicro/Dell-whatever), but so far I've only managed to find really expensive dual CPU setups, noisy setups, very space consuming setups, something exotic I'm not qualified to make any meaning of or a combination of the aforementioned.
Am I off in the deep end or?
What do you think? I'm not expecting you to find all the parts and doing all the work for me, but perhaps just point me in some direction.
I'm not afraid of doing some DIY'ing, soldering, rerunning cables and whatnot.
TL;DR - Have a bunch of SSDs. Any ideas?
First of all; not going for practicality - at all. Just to get it out there.
With that out of the way:
I recently acquired a bunch of 120-128 GB SSDs. Around 40 pcs to be exact - a mix of Samsung, Sandisk and a few Kingston. Mostly Samsung - with the possibility of more (and some higher capacity) on the way. These are "decommissioned" disks from a bunch of educational laptops (mostly Lenovos I think). Since they came with BitLocker enabled they have been reset (zeroes) and are ready for use. What to do?
First thing that came to mind; what about a bonkers setup for ZFS? A rough estimate puts usable space around 4 TB. Considering the fact, that a 4TB Samsung SSD can be acquired for around $350-400 (2,230 DKK) there's absolutely no economical reasoning behind this idea.
So.
I began to look for server chassis, disk array, jbods and got lost.
My idea at the moment hovers around the idea of a wall mounted NAS with plexi glass to show of the device.
I've considered to aim for a standard ATX form factor PSU, server'ish motherboard with desktop cooling, two 24-device SAS backplanes, some HBAs and built-in or add-on 10 GBE.
I have no idea what parts go well together. What the requirements is to CPUs when it's all flash or how much memory is practical.
A fun idea that came to mind, was an ISCI-volume for video editing and other stupid stuff. But, if it ends up costing in 4 or 5 figures I'm reconsidering the idea.
Napkin math (quick search on eBay):
2x BPN-SAS-216A 70$/pc = $140
12x SFF-8087 cable $10/pc = $120
3x 16i HBA $270/pc = $810
or
6x 8i HBA $50/pcs = $300
Total for just connecting the SSDs to something: $500 - $1,000
Still need power supply, motherboard, CPU (E5 for the lanes?), RAM and possibly a 10 gig NIC (Intel/Mellanox).
Perhaps I'm overlooking something obvious (buying a used SuperMicro/Dell-whatever), but so far I've only managed to find really expensive dual CPU setups, noisy setups, very space consuming setups, something exotic I'm not qualified to make any meaning of or a combination of the aforementioned.
Am I off in the deep end or?
What do you think? I'm not expecting you to find all the parts and doing all the work for me, but perhaps just point me in some direction.
I'm not afraid of doing some DIY'ing, soldering, rerunning cables and whatnot.
TL;DR - Have a bunch of SSDs. Any ideas?