Ashman70 Supermicro build


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This is a SSG-6047R-E1R36N Supermicro chassis. Its 4U with 36 hot plug bays with 24 in the front and 12 in the back. There are two 1400W hot plug redundant power supplies on the rear. The server came with an older intel dual socket 1366 motherboard, with dual quad core Xeon's and 52GB of ECC ram. It also originally came with an Adaptec ASR-5805Z /Q raid controller. Initially I moved all 30 of my drives over to the chassis along with my SAS2LP HBA and everything seemed fine but then I started getting errors. Eventually I replaced that HBA with a Dell Perc H310 flashed with Dell IT mode firmware and that appears to have resolved my issues.

 

The chassis is solid and has some nice features. To get access to the beneath the motherboard, the chassis slides out from the back, its pretty neat. I had looked at Norco cases for a long time but the reviews from people who had bought them were fairly consistent and everyone pretty much said the same things: build quality was poor, caddies were plastic and broke a lot, issues with the backplanes ranged from horrendous and needing to have them replaced more than once to no issues at all. Whereas I was familiar with build quality of Supermicro, I mean its what they are known for right?  I found this Supermicro chassis on eBay and couldn't pass it up. It has great although loud fans for cooling and I seldom see drive temps rise about 36 degrees celsius if that high.

 

So far, very happy with it.

 

 

IMG_1344.jpg.a5c3b88de6f578215975c770324efea9.jpg

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... Unfortunately hydro is crazy where I live so I am in no rush to get a rack ...

 

I give up -- what does that ("hydro is crazy") mean, and what does it have to do with getting a rack ??

 

Also, if you have room for a large SuperMicro rack-mount chassis, it would seem you have room for a rack  :)

... at least a small one [e.g. a 12U open rack:  https://www.amazon.com/12U-4-Post-Open-Rack/dp/B0037ECAJA ]

 

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Unfortunately hydro is crazy where I live so I am in no rush to get a rack which I don't really have the space for anyway, unless I put it in my garage, but I hear what you are saying.

 

I had a half rack that was in my office and just moved it to the basement with a high capacity dehumidifier. Actually ended up building a standalone clean room for it out of wood and plastic. A friend of mine said it looked like a murder room.... It houses my 4 servers, another 2 computers, a disk array, pfsense modem, a synoloy nas, cable moden, 48 port switch, and some other techno-goodies. The fans can howl all the want/need and it doesn't bother anyone in the house. Also provides silent computing for my remote vm's in the house.

 

Was a fun project. I didn't have space for it, but made it so I could have all the goodies it holds. At some point I guess i'll have to post a photo of it in here... BUT You've got a great server there!

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... Unfortunately hydro is crazy where I live so I am in no rush to get a rack ...

 

I give up -- what does that ("hydro is crazy") mean, and what does it have to do with getting a rack ??

 

Also, if you have room for a large SuperMicro rack-mount chassis, it would seem you have room for a rack  :)

... at least a small one [e.g. a 12U open rack:  https://www.amazon.com/12U-4-Post-Open-Rack/dp/B0037ECAJA ]

 

Hydro = electricity. We live in Ontario, aka land of the highest electricity rates in North America, thanks to our premiere Orval Redenbacher, I mean Kathleen Wynne.

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The correlation is this, I get a rack, I am going to want to fill it with power sucking servers and other stuff. My electricity bill is on average $350 a month and thats with doing laundry off hours and only running the dishwasher in the evening. During the summer with central air its like $550 a month, and then on top of that, ever other month add $100 for water. Our house was built in 2006 its supposed to be energy efficient, I suppose it is, but our electricity rates in this province (Ontario) are off the map.

 

Yes I am glad to see the H310 resolved the issues too, I still wonder though if I am limited to 32 drives with the Dell IT firmware. It was getting a little frustrating, yes.

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Understand -- but clearly adding a rack doesn't cause an increase in your utilities by itself.

 

I can, of course, understand the desire to "fill the rack" with nifty new toys that will consume more power  :)

 

Don't feel too bad about your utilities though ... you're not the only place that has fairly high rates.  My water bill averages well over $100/month;  garbage collection is another $50; and my average electric bill is fairly close to yours.  Plus we have very high real estate taxes (~ $14,000/yr for our house).    My mortgage-free house costs me more/month than any mortgage payment I ever had !!

 

 

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Understand -- but clearly adding a rack doesn't cause an increase in your utilities by itself.

 

I can, of course, understand the desire to "fill the rack" with nifty new toys that will consume more power  :)

 

Don't feel too bad about your utilities though ... you're not the only place that has fairly high rates.  My water bill averages well over $100/month;  garbage collection is another $50; and my average electric bill is fairly close to yours.  Plus we have very high real estate taxes (~ $14,000/yr for our house).    My mortgage-free house costs me more/month than any mortgage payment I ever had !!

 

Gary, if you dont mind how big (sqft) is your house? When comparing things like utility cost, size, among many many other factors, is relevant.

 

I am in a 1300sqft townhome and my hydro (electric) bill ranges from 120 in the winter to 200 in the summer.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎2‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 9:45 PM, ashman70 said:

This is a SSG-6047R-E1R36N Supermicro chassis. Its 4U with 36 hot plug bays with 24 in the front and 12 in the back. There are two 1400W hot plug redundant power supplies on the rear. The server came with an older intel dual socket 1366 motherboard, with dual quad core Xeon's and 52GB of ECC ram. It also originally came with an Adaptec ASR-5805Z /Q raid controller. Initially I moved all 30 of my drives over to the chassis along with my SAS2LP HBA and everything seemed fine but then I started getting errors. Eventually I replaced that HBA with a Dell Perc H310 flashed with Dell IT mode firmware and that appears to have resolved my issues.

 

The chassis is solid and has some nice features. To get access to the beneath the motherboard, the chassis slides out from the back, its pretty neat. I had looked at Norco cases for a long time but the reviews from people who had bought them were fairly consistent and everyone pretty much said the same things: build quality was poor, caddies were plastic and broke a lot, issues with the backplanes ranged from horrendous and needing to have them replaced more than once to no issues at all. Whereas I was familiar with build quality of Supermicro, I mean its what they are known for right?  I found this Supermicro chassis on eBay and couldn't pass it up. It has great although loud fans for cooling and I seldom see drive temps rise about 36 degrees celsius if that high.

 

So far, very happy with it.

 

 

 

IMG_1344.jpg.a5c3b88de6f578215975c770324efea9.jpg

In fact it is a CSE847 chassis, the same as I have. How loud are your fans and power supplies. Which motherboard and CPU are inside? And which backplanes?

Edited by dikkiedirk
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Pretty loud, I have it in my small office sitting next to me, eventually I want to move it out of my office but I need to make room for it. I have an older Intel motherboard in it, model  S5500HCV and it has two quad core E5620's in it along with 48GB of ECC RAM. It all came as a package, I found it on eBay for a stupid price.

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28 minutes ago, ashman70 said:

I found it on eBay for a stupid price.

 

It's amazing how much compute power you can buy with older servers on e-bay.   I've been tempted "just because" -- but the reality is I have PLENTY of compute power around the home (serious understatement), and I don't really have a good location for a loud server, which all of these EATX dual-CPU boards with a good server chassis are going to be.    If we had a basement, I'd be tempted to just stick a rack down there and get one of these servers and probably a few other goodies -- but we don't, so that's simply not an option.    Plus with 4 UnRAID servers; 3 HTPC's; 4 desktops; and a couple laptops -- not to mention a few older systems on the shelf in my workroom -- I probably don't really need more computers :D

 

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Lol @garycase, yeah it seems you have more than enough to go around for sure. It really is amazing what you can find on eBay and I had been considering a Norco case but I just couldn't get past the pages and pages of comments about poor build quality, backplane issues etc. I knew that Supermicro had superior build quality but their price always put them out of reach. From what I am reading I was lucky to score this chassis with the SAS2 backplane as they are now harder to find for a reasonable price.

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i think, Norco had problems with first generation of backplanes.. i have 4224 version since 03.2013 and no probs so far (knock knock knock). and with older Supermicro board (which i got on ebay for 200 EUR) and CPU, see my sig. ;) and this case is located near my sleeping room in additional small room, yes i can hear it in the night but no so loud..

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