While casually browsing TaoBao I came across what looks like the 12 bay 3.5" drive cage for a 2U storage server where the seller put a 3D printed enclosure to hold fans and power… then I got excited because I need more 3.5" storage bays for cheap and I wasn’t ready to spend $300 on the Jonsbo N5.
This is new to me, help me understand before I make my purchase and get my china shipping agent to mail me this thing which will take 2 months to arrive?
Here’s some photos of the thing. Backplane is INSPUR YPCB-00395-1P5. Taobao seller already told my agent that this thing requires a HBA card to work… but I am doubtful this is the true story since I see there are 3 SFF-8643 ports in the PCB…
I’m thinking of connecting all 12 bays to a super power efficient ASM1166 nvme to 6 SATA adapter. This controller sips 2 watts at idle and allows CPU to reach C10.
I want to avoid HBA cards like the plague unless I must since they take 10 watts at idle and screw up CPU c-states. This will be an unraid server btw… if I must use an HBA and no escape, please share some suggestions on external HBAs to buy that are power efficient?
I’m actually considering the same setup. Already have the drive cages (I have 2) and now considering whether or not purchase the M.2 to SATA adapters as well as the required breakout cables. One other important point is powering the lot. Mine came with one each of a triple SATA and Molex header, each had one of the three connectors crushed.
I’m interested to learn where you found the fan shrouds to cool these devices.
This is some reddit level distilled misinformation. Every single statement in your post is false.
Teslaguy can not use this backplane with a SATA controller. It does have a SAS expander.
The backplane requires both 5V and 12V voltages and can’t be powered by PCIE power alone.
And finally the cage is clearly made by Inspur. Why would anyone doubt that is puzzling.
obviously I am wrong and you cannot run a backplane off 12 volt only
obviously I am wrong and you cannot use a SAS backplane with a SATA driver
obviously I am wrong and inspur / supermicro drive caddies from 6 years ago do not interchange
I’ll go back to my house of magic where we apparently do the impossible everyday
But really, this is a home lab / cobbled together build
He is obviously working under the assumption of running SATA drives and not utilizing the SAS backplane functionality (most fail back).
Drive caddy interchange is pretty important state side.
And most 3.5" drives can operate on 12volts only
Best practice? We’re well past that when a bare drive cage/backplane is being shipped in to be frankensteined together
Are you sure you’re using a backplane with a SAS Expander chipset with SATA-only HBAs?
Passive SAS backplanes can be operated with SATA HBAs, that’s true but the little aluminum heatsink on the photo in the OP’s first posting would make me worry that the backplane uses an active SAS Expander chipset.
You can connect SATA drives to a SAS Expander BUT not a SAS expander to SATA-only HBAs like the OP is intending to.
Typically requires 5 volts to function as the expander will default to off state when disconnected from power.
You can test by injecting power separate from the backplane directly to the drive
SAS backplanes also won’t give >4 drive availability in this state per connector as there’s no expansion occurring
I’ve seen dell and HP using low profile SAS/SATA expanders over 1 SFF-8643 and providing 6-8 drive expansion.
If you use the breakout cable instead of an HBA, you only have access to drives 0-3 and only SATA
As for power: is supplying just 12v best practice? definitely not, but sas backplanes have integrated buck converters to function off 1 rail when the other dies.
Additionally, many 3.5" enterprise drives can be ran off 12v exclusively (again, a failover mechanism)
5v exclusive is typically limited to SSD’s
This is basically a setup that’d be teetering on the brink of disaster every moment it’s turned on, but it would “work”
I’d be very thankful to learn about active backplanes with these SATA failover capabilities.
As a lay person with a relatively limited amount of interactions regarding the absolute product variety of the entire market I’ve never encountered such models but would be open to if I knew they could be operated this way.
Can you give a specific part number example where one could look up the technical descriptions/manuals that explain these failover modes?
The only thing I’ve encountered are passive SAS backplanes that use PCIe 12 V power input-only and generate their own 5 V rails for SATA drives.
we do data recoveries from failed servers regularly
we’ve had to do alot of shit to pull data from proprietary configurations
most of the experience is from, “we really don’t have time to wait for a shipped replacement, what happens if we bypass [blank]”
We’ve seen backplanes failed where we use a SAS extension cable and inject power separately, backplanes fail where an entire row is inaccessible, but the rest are fine, HBA’s and RAID cards fail where one port is not communicating, etc.
And when the drives are encrypted by certs on the TPM and no one has the recovery passwords, your options are severely limited.
None of this shit is done in production, but data recoveries are all about downtime.
Most recently it was a ML30 gen10 using the integrated software RAID controller with the bitlocker keys stored in the TPM.
No option to exfil the RAID array without the software drivers, and could not load the bitlocker key from the TPM without the entire array showing healthy.
There won’t be any specific models numbers provided because the whole “dual power/interface design for failover purposes” story is a complete bullshit. I am guessing you were well aware of that and were just setting TryTwiceMedia up to expose himself as a bullshitter he is.
But I also know that no one knows everything so who knows, maybe someone knows of some obscure proprietary backplanes someone else has never heard of…
Just because I can’t even imagine how and why such a thing would (electronically and economically) exist doesn’t mean that by contrast some mad engineer out there in a Chinese factory maybe didn’t see a reason for such a thing to not exist…
Okay, obviously you guys are correct and better at this than me.
Have a store front we should be sending these enterprise data recoveries to?
I mean, we have only failed to recover 1 array in the past year and after sending drives to a clean room they were unable to recover data as well, but obviously you guys are more capable than we are.
(That was a failed RAID card and 6 failed drives from a 12 drive RAID 5 array atop which ZFS was installed by an OEM)
Random guys on the internet with the username @Pie and @aBav.Normie-Pleb are all knowing, and probably could have recovered that.
A specific part number, manual or photograph of the backside of such a backplane would be a great first step to educate us.
General stories about data recoveries that have nothing to do with a specific backplane unfortunately don’t help much since no independent third party can verify that.
I apply the same standards to myself, that’s why my own technical posts are generally full of photos and screenshots so anyone can verify and correct me if I’m wrong in general or maybe misunderstand a situation.
go cut the 5v inputs to the backplane and plug the backplane into the MoBo using a breakout cable
doesn’t have an expander, but still functions on 12v only
it’s the most convenient example I had sitting here for voltage
I hope you have an imaginary shredder to shred your imaginary EE diploma. Neither of the backplane options for the Dell Poweredge T420 have 5V power inputs. The 12-pin power input connector only has 12V. And the 4-pin power connector which does carry 5V is in fact the output connector that the backplane uses to provide power to other devices like optical drives, etc. So the best example you were able to come up with is not just irrelevant but also completely wrong.
No one doubts the general existence of backplanes that generate their own 5 V rails from a 12 V input, be it Molex connectors (the 5 V pins from the connector aren’t actually used by the backplane), CPU EPS or PCIe power connectors.
Can also give you an example: The built-in passive backplane of a SilverStone CS381 that uses a PCIe 6-Pin power plug with no 5 V power inputs, but it also works with SATA drives that require 5 V.
The thing that raises our suspicions is the claim of an active SAS expander backplane that supposedly works with a SATA-only HBA. That’s not a “convenient example”, such backwards compatibilty would be something praiseworthy from an engineering standpoint since no one else seems to have that.
