[tech] [committee] More space on Molmol

[Mitchell Pomery]

The SAS Card currently in the machine is a LSI HBA 9207-8i which we paid 
$315ex for back when we built the machine. You can find them now on eBay 
for the lowl low price of $155 from China. Alternatively we could go back 
to DigiCor and get it through them again.

The 5.25" Bay currently in the machine holds a couple the non 
storage drives in the machine. My plan has been to neaten that up with one 
of these: 
http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Hard_Drives_&_SSDs/Enclosures/47295-MRK-425ST-BK?gclid=Cj0KEQjw8pC9BRCqrq37zZil4a0BEiQAZO_zrF7SRs1uMZSQ__s9fWf9ucJHpV4p1u13krscls7gOjgaAnGC8P8HAQ

As for the argument that SAS has gotten more expensive, the numbers from 
years ago are for 6 disks not 8. Taking that into account the price hasn't 
really changed.

> - Having examined it now, there is room to push the cards forward in the 
> hotswap bays, and drill new mounting holes, and then we would have just 
> enough space to to put in the SATA
> - Or we can just not push the hotswap bays all the way in.

Both of these ideas scare me. You're butchering a perfectly good machine 
to try and make it do something it's not designed for. I would like to see 
a lot of thought go into this plan before anyone even considers attempting 
it.

> - The other, really Hacky way (that [*OX] likes) is to Mount another 
> case on top of this case

You said hacky. Why do we still do hacky...

If by this you mean build a second storage server and move some stuff to 
it (website, services, the 300ish GB of webcam archives from the past two 
years) then I approve!

>    - This would involve cutting a hole in the top of the existing case,
>    and the bottom of the one we put in top

Oh. That sounds as bad as the previous suggestion. Again, if you really 
want to do this, I would like to hear exactly what your plan is and it 
shouldn't be "we'll wing it", cause that's not a plan.


Regards,
Mitch

P.S. I've already had to move heaven and earth to get MolMol running. 
Please don't make me have to do it again.

P.P.S. Fundraising's always an option. And I'm sure there are people who 
would be willing to put money in to make sure that we have some "service 
continuity".


On Fri, 5 Aug 2016, Frames wrote:

> Ok, here is the deal with Molmol. We're running out space.  The situation is just below and the potential
> solutions are under that.
>  *  It has its book disk on an internal USB.
>  *  It has its system disk on a 2.5inch SSD internally.
>      +  Using 1 of its 4, motherboard SATA 3 (Black) ports
>  *  It has 2 2.5 inch SDDs in raid for disk cache in the first 5.2inch bay,
>      +  they are connected to its Motherboard SAS (White) ports (running SATA3). There ports are not multiplexed
>         -- that are endpoint SAS, ie SATA ports
>  *  It has piles of SATA 2 ports on the motherboard. Like 8 or so. These are Blue.
>  *  It has nothing in the bottom 5.2 inch bay, and it's fully accessible.
>      +  We could stick some hard drives of any description here (may be hard to get 2 x 3.5inches)
>      +  And use any of the free connectors (prob SATA3 -- of which we have 3 )
>  *  It s 8 taken 2.5 inch bays (hotswappable), which match to 2 4x SAS multipliers, which we have connected to
>     the two ports on its SAS card and we run SATA 3 through that.
>  *  It has 8 free 2.5 inch bays (hotswappable), which match to 2 4x SAS multipliers
>      +  due to the physical nature of the SAS multiplexer (all 4, multiplexer are on once card), we can probably
>         not directly connect those to SATA cable*** (more or less, see below)
> That more or less summarizes what we're working with. Here's the potential angles of approach.
> NOTE: No matter what we do, we need to add drives in pairs, for RAID 1+0, and we really would like at very least
> 2TB more space. Which requires at least 4TB of drives..
>
>  *  The straightforward approach is to buy a new SAS card, allowing us to mount 8 2.5" more hard-drives in the
>     existing bays.
>  *  This is what [BG3] suggested
>      +  [GOZ] likes this since it is good to have them before our exact model  goes out of production
>  *  Issue with this is that there is not much range on 2.5inch disks, they are relatively expensive and small.
>      +  I guess the bet that was made when choosing the case, that 2.5 inch cards would be come the norm, did not
>         pay off.
>      +  The only 2TB 2.5 inch disks are Toshiba laptop hard drives
>      +  Otherwise you are stuck with the 1TB WD-Reds, which is what is has in its taken bays.
>  *  According to [BG3] a SAS card + 8WD reds (1TB), was $1.3 grand.
>      +  Buying a SAS card alone is $200-$400
>  *  This is much more expensive than the numbers from several years ago
>     http://wiki.ucc.asn.au/MoneyMoneyMoney/NewStorage#Level_2:_Optional_extra.2C_add_a_SAS_card
>     of $929
>  *  *** The drives plug straight into the SAS multiplexer, but there are holes in the SAS multiplexer plate which
>     you can just squeeze SATA and power through
>      +  [GOZ] believes, that mounted in the hotswap bays they will be too close to the end to fit the SATA plug
>         in (after going through the holes in the SAS multiplexer plate).
>          o  Having examined it now, there is room to push the cards forward in the hotswap bays, and drill new
>             mounting holes, and then we would have just enough space to to put in the SATA
>          o  Or we can just not push the hotswap bays all the way in.
>      +  Eitherway, connecting these to SATA would let us save on buying another SAS card
>  *  The other option would be to get the capacity to have 3.5 inch disks
>      +  One way would be to move to a new case that has 3.5 inch bays (Possibly one of the spares we have laying
>         around)
>          o  This would mean replacing all our disks with 3.5 inch disk, or just leaving the 2.5in rattling around
>             in the over large slots
>              o  This isn't such a big deal since 3.5 inch disks are cheap
>      +  The other, really Hacky way (that [*OX] likes) is to Mount another case on top of this case
>          o  This would involve cutting a hole in the top of the existing case, and the bottom of the one we put
>             in top
>              o  Could basically remove the bottom of the top one and the top of the bottom and bolt/weld them
>                 together. For a huge 5RU-7RU case.
>          o  This would make deracking molmol pretty shit
>          o  It would however let us have hotswap both 3.5 and 2.5 disks
>      +  Either way This is compatible with either using the spare SATA ports on the MB, or with buying another
>         SAS card. 
>      +  Potentially, but not necessarily may require buying a SAS multiplexer
> So wheel members/committee members, how would you approach this situation? Bear in mind the club is stingy
> (committee doesn't really want to pay $1300 for 4TB of extra space)
> 
> [*OX] / [CHS]
> Wheel Members
>