Looking for a server chassis

I’m looking for a Rosewill RSV-L4412,

or something equivalent. Anyone have any ideas? I’ve checked ebay and my local craigslist for cases and come up empty. Can someone recommend an equivalent with 12+ hotswap bays?
Thanks!

See if you can find a Chenbro RM23812E3RP8 case. It’s 2U and has 12 hot-swap bays. Not sure if it’ll fit your config (mainboard/CPU/etc).

[edit: alternatively, here’s a 24 bay 4U chassis: Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4424]

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You may have an easier time acquiring this by checking for something like this from a more mainstream server oem. I recommend looking into what supermicro, dell, or Hp has out there. Dell especially is everywhere on the ebay market. I think what you are looking for would be called a “storage server” or specific to size a “4u” chassis. Hope this helps! I can help lookup some more specific chassis if you can provide more details to your requirements?

If you’re strapped on budget, then look for used, be sure they come with disk trays and backplane. Redundant PSU is nice to have, but for home purposes not that necessary.

If budget is not your main concern, then cheapest, solid cases for me has been Supermicro.
Mainly of course speaking of disk trays. With cheaper brands (like Chenbro) I had many problems with their solutions. Last time my disk stuck so much so I had to break tray to get it out. Also they don’t close properly.

Maybe they’re better now, and I love to hear it (mine youngest is like 10yo), but 10yo Supermicro works without the hitch since then. And I bought few 24x3.5" since then, and replaced all disks several times meantime, also without any issues.

Also when you calculate it “cheaper” cases aren’t that cheaper after all.
It usually comes to details like backplane type, so you have to buy more HBA-s or expanders, because they put many small backplanes instead one.

The rosewill is discontinued.

Istarusa has a 4u case that you can get in a bunch of configs.

http://www.istarusa.com/en/istarusa/products.php?model=D2-400L-M10SA

I’ll keep checking ebay/craigslist for deals @misiektw Supermicro is my go to as well for server parts.

@poomer
I’m just making a storage server. I’ve sourced 10-10tb drives to fill it and 2-1tb ssds for cache. So, I want a case that will allow me to hot swap the drives with a minimum depth possible. I’ve seen some built servers like this but some seem super long. Ideally I want a 4u chassis so I can run 120mm fans more slowly. This will sit in a room at home so noise is a factor. I’ve been consistently crawling around ebay to find something but usually its just full servers with proprietary software. I just want to be able to run Ubuntu or maybe Windows on them.

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Regarding size, seems like what you want is more akin to just plain array. So just disks and backplane with external SFF or IB. You can connect that directly to your computer or some low power server.

But as for quiet fans, I wouldn’t count on it out of the box :wink: Maybe you can replace jets with some low noise Noctuas. But without testing hard to say if there will be enough pressure.
Never really thought about it, because separate server room.

god I wish I could find this in a cheap ass chinese version. It’s exactly what I need but I don’t want to spend more on my case than I did on my cpus/mb lol.

Your case will outlast the cpu/mb/ram content of your server by several generations if you choose so. So, look at it as an investment, like a house.

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Believe me, I know. My server is in an in win I bought in 1997 lol. it’s just a pill I don’t wanna swallow.

FWIW… I love IStarUSA’s stuff. They make pretty good server chassis. Some of their stuff ain’t cheap, but like @Dutch_Master said, you could think of it as an investment.

And while Supermicro chassis are great and robust, the static pressure fan situation is usually not very house friendly.

Well its around half the price of Supermicro. And you will need HBA with 4 SFF ports and 4 cables, or expander.

And if you on such tight budget, then only way you buy something decent ,will be used.

Because that Intertech seems already as “cheap ass chineese” :wink: It may be good, because almost everything is chineese, but I wouldn’t count on anything cheaper. Trays usually elevate price, but even cheapest ones (usually horrible) are like $10 a piece.

rosewilll sells those hot swap bays separate right?

so get another model of the same chassis… and just get the compatible hot swap bays , right?

SATA is not a good idea with more than a few disks, I would say more than 10 miniSAS for sure.

My advice is: forget it. If something stops working you may spend days to troubleshoot this. Its fine for maybe one, two cages.
Also how this will be exactly cheaper? I cannot check RW, because they blocking Europe, but I saw them for like $60. So $480 for 8… Without the actual case.

Also here’s recent example of fubar with this. Bit diferent (miniSas backplane but with SATA reverse fanout), but point of failure pretty much the same.

You can’t get 8 of those in there. 3 max.

Also they work great. I have the case OP wants. And a separate hotswap bay in another machine. It’s been solid.

Right we were taking about Intertech, and I compared to its 24 drives.
And I thought about 2U, 3 disk cages, hence my 8x number. But still you wouldn’t fit this in standard 4U rack. It was already morning for me, so…

But 3 cages, yeah, that could work, still at least 12 points of failure for SATA alone, probably molex-sata power splitters on top of that…

And even then 3x60=$180 plus case price ($100? maybe). That almost $300 for 12 disk case?
And they out of stock everywhere. But Chieftec makes same thing same price. I even bought one for my server, but I plan only for 4-disk array, not 12-24.

Power splitters are not necessary for the rosewill bays. They use only 2 molex each.

Like I said originally though they are discontinued.

molex-molex splitter then, you need 6 for 3 cages. I guess depends what psu you have.

Yeah, sorry, missed that. But regardless Chieftec makes them too.

For what it’s worth, 120mm fans aren’t going to save you much on noise. The main issue with a hot-swap rack mount chassis is that there’s nowhere for air intake and exhaust except the front (filled with drive bays and typically a SAS backplane) and the rear (which doesn’t have a lot of space either due to I/O, PCI slots and power supplies). You need a fairly high amount of static pressure if your drive bays are full. Typically 38mm deep fans running at higher rpm than desirable in living space.

I have a Rosewill L4411 in my basement rack. I would not buy another one, and I definitely wouldn’t want it in living space. It’s not fully populated, and is running a low power board and CPU (Core i5-2405S), 10G Mellanox card. I’ve tried a few different 120mm fans, but in the end it’s either warm/hot or loud (choose one). The drive bays are crap compared to say Supermicro. The front door/filter setup is terrible. The handle brackets had to be modified to allow it to go into any of my racks. I long ago relegated this machine to just web server duties.

I would say that if you want 12 drive bays in living space… you don’t want a rackmount chassis. Get yourself a full tower that will accommodate your drives, many 120mm or 140mm fans, and maybe an AIO if it makes sense.

Any chance you have space somewhere to put a noisy machine? There are always many good options for 2U 12-bay ready-to-go servers on eBay for cheap (often under $400). I have three Supermicro servers in my basement (two 2U and one 1U), and they were cheap ($300 to $600). Came with CPUs (dual L5630, dual L5640, E3-1270 V2), one came with M1015 HBA, all came with RAM (48G for two of them, 32G for the 1u), all came with the hot swap cages (12 each in the 2U, 4 in the 1U) and some 2.5" cage adapters, the 2U ones came with SAS backplanes, two of them came with rails. I haven’t added much… Mellanox 10G PCI cards in all, an HBA for the second 2U, filtered front panels for the 2U ones, drives. Two of them have been running for 5 years, the other for 3.5 years. No problems at all. All are running FreeBSD and have ZFS pools.

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@nx2l Have you done this personally? I’ve looked at doing this but it looks like the fans on the case you posted are a bit different sized than 3-5.25" bays.

@dwm I have space in a root cellar that I could use but it gets very humid in there. Honestly, its just a 5’ crawlspace under my house that has power and lights. But, that’s about all I have where it would be out of earshot. I have a small house.

I think I will keep looking at ebay for some discounts but otherwise I will look for a tower and forget hotswap.