It's not super cost effective to go hot swap if you're purely into Chia for the profit. You're better off just 3D printing drive holders or using really anything cheap to stack them up with a fan and one of those Dell 5r10n SAS expanders (also requires a custom cable), those allow for 32 drives to connect to one SAS port. :D
@@PeterBrockie Funny you should say that, I'm actually 3D printing the 2.5" caddies that go in to these cages, and I've also 3D printed holders for 2x6 3.5" HDDs that I slap 12LFF Backplanes to. I'm in the process of figuring out how to increase the print volume of my current 3D printer (for as little as possible), so that I can make a holder for 4x 12LFF Backplanes with fan mounts on them. SAS expanders are wonderful when connecting to Final Destination Drives, in fact, I am currently using one that takes a single quad cable (SFF8088) and provides me with 6 quad cables (SFF8087), and I have hooked that one to 3 different 12LFF Backplanes (single SFF8087 to 12 drives), as a proof of concept of how many HDDs you can hook to a single Quad port on an HBA without it affecting farming. I am going to be adding 2 or 3 more of those Backplanes and I don't foresee any issues with adding those as I have seen 0 issues with the current setup (36 HDDs running off of a single SFF8088). I am sad to say that I think that you are missing one of the main reasons why I'm doing builds like these. I am running everything off of UPSes, and the bigger they are the more expensive they get, I am also limited to mainly 110v 20A circuits with 15A outlets (since I have more than a single outlet per circuit). I am trying to split the power requirements from a single PSU in a computer to an unlimited amount of PSUs (which are highly efficient and can be plugged in to other UPSes that reside on other circuits). These platinum grade 900W-1200W PSUs are extremely cheap and efficient, but they only output 12V. The beauty of these 8x SFF backplanes is that they are NOT switched (good for the speed required for plotting) and use only 12V and the 12x LFF backplanes ARE switched (good for more drives/fewer cables) and also only use 12V. While using breakout cables (such as SFF8087(or SFF8088 for external) to 4x SFF8482, or SFF8087(or 8088) to 4x SATA) is a great way to start, I have found that they can be a tad fragile, and I personally prefer using 8087 to 8087's hooked to a backplane. I am planning on making a few videos about farming setups once I am done with the plotting series, and I will definitely be talking about 3D printed solutions for physically holding the drives, but I will of course also be talking about how to connect as many drives as one can without risking losing out on block rewards. =)
@@JanisRode haha I looked them up on eBay and saw nothing but caddy-less ones for sale and my first thought was to print some caddies. I don't think the 12v only output is a big concern since you're just shifting the 12v -> 5v down conversion to the backplane rather than the PSU. It still needs to generate the 5v rail for the drives - if it's on the PSU or on a backplane it doesn't really matter. I'm running a ton of drives (I think I'm at 45 LFF, give or take) with a dual Xeon E5v2 (which is also plotting) and I barely get half the wattage of my UPS at startup (after that it's way lower), so unless you're trying to farm Chia with 10,000 100GB 15k RPM HDDs I think you're good (or your budget for large drives is so astronomical you can load a 15A outlet with a PB). :D I'm fooling around with 2 different farming approaches (which knowing me will take 6 months to show up on my channel). Modding a cheap DVD duplicator case for hard drives vs just buying a cheap-ish 4U case and converting to a JBOD. There's something very satisfying about plugging in one SFF-8088 cable and watching 25-ish drives show up. haha
Like always a very informative video by you. To extract pins from the connectors I simply use two stapler pins. Instead of different colors, we can also mark pairs with (o - * + #). Also for the 24 x 7 use of these drives we must use 120mm or whatever the size required for the cage to keep them cool.
Thank you!! =) I tried the stapler method and I just couldn't handle it, good job at managing that! That's a good point and different signs rather than different colors will probably be easier to read from a distance, for instance, if one were to record something.... hehe Yes! The SSDs that I'm testing now don't seem to be that bad, but the reason I even mentioned getting the fan and hooking it to the same PSU was that I had turned off my plotter for the night and forgot to turn off the cage, which had 15k HDDs in it. When I woke up, I had to wait several minutes after unplugging the cage to be able to touch the HDDs because they were so hot! Hence my advice to always plug the fan into the same PSU as the cage!! In the future, I will probably hook the breakout board that's attached to my server PSU to my internal PSU so that whenever I turn on the computer, the internal PSU will tell the external PSU to boot up. =)
Thank bud! I mainly like it for the fact that I can power them from a different PSU that I can run on a separate UPS. If you look at the background of the thumbnail you can actually see three of them, 2 with 8 15K SAS drives and 1 with 8 SAS SSDs. =) I also helps with thermals since they won't be heating up the computer case (if you can actually fit that many in a computer case!). Right now they are right next to where I sit so I can very easily swap out drives when I'm running tests, but later, once I have a more permanent setup, I may end up drilling a hole in a wall or a floor and place them in a different room to lower the sound and heat in my home office (and be able to use a completely different breaker since it would be in a different room). It would be similar to what I did with my watercooling system, where I drilled two holes in the floor and put the radiator in the basement.
@@levelnine123 Sorry, I forgot to hit the reply button and clicked away from your comment. =( I don't think that my wife would appreciate it if I were to punch a hole in the wall and put a server in there.... .... but... you never know until you've tried, right? =P JK, I think that it might be against code to do that, even if I were able to remove all the heat from it, due to it being a fire hazard... I think? I may look in to that if I get bored enough. ;) I updated the description with the types of SAS cables and HBA that I'm using, I hope that helps. The cables that I'm using are fairly long (2m), so I can really move them around. The power cable is a lot shorter, so I just need to move the server PSU with the Cages and then I'm fine =) I should definitely be able to make a smaller hole in the wall and put the brush type of pass-through wall plates on both sides of the wall and just pass the cables to the next room and have HDDs spinning there....
If you have a cage that doesn't step down 12v to 5v then I'd recommend getting a cheap desktop PSU, in that case it's more cost efficient for you to get something like a 600W range 80 bronze for something like 30-40 USD. If you have a cage like mine where it steps down the 12v to 5v, a used 1200w(220v)/900W(110v) 80 platinum server PSU for around 50-60 bucks would be a better investment in my opinion.
I actually use it as a cheap cache drive (8x RAID0), although I mostly use it to test out hardware. =) I have a similar solution for 12x 3.5" HDDs that are also run off of 12V only PSUs. Same principle when it comes to figuring out the pin out and rewiring them. =)
Also, if you need them for a write heavy application, you can get very fast 3.84TB 2.5" SAS drives, if you only need fast reads, you can get very fast 7.68TB drives. That means that you would be able to fit 61.44TB in a fairly small cage, which uses fairly little power and is considerably faster than HDDs. While the 2.5" SSDs are considerably more expensive than 3.5" HDDs, they are cheaper to run in the long run, and may also end up requiring less expensive solutions for your home (pulling new electricity, getting bigger UPSes etc to feed hard drives) At this point in time I am not going to be going all out on SSDs for actual semi-permanent storage, since I don't have the budget for it, but for someone who might, this solution could actually make sense even for long-term storage. =)
Thanks for recommending this earlier! It will help make use of those extra 2.5" 8 drive cages I have from DL380 G7 spare parts!
I HATE repinning cables but never saw that tool before now! Ordering one and checking it out!
Pro tip, bend those little "fingers" inward a bit and stick something small between them, that way they hug the little wings (if you get it in right).
Ive been waiting for this. Thanks that's game changing for chia
Also i love ur sense of humor, really. died at the end xD
@@adekgurwica5527
Been waiting 3 weeks to edit this one! I'm glad that you like my sense of humor, I'm going to try to add more of me to the videos XD
It's not super cost effective to go hot swap if you're purely into Chia for the profit. You're better off just 3D printing drive holders or using really anything cheap to stack them up with a fan and one of those Dell 5r10n SAS expanders (also requires a custom cable), those allow for 32 drives to connect to one SAS port. :D
@@PeterBrockie Funny you should say that, I'm actually 3D printing the 2.5" caddies that go in to these cages, and I've also 3D printed holders for 2x6 3.5" HDDs that I slap 12LFF Backplanes to. I'm in the process of figuring out how to increase the print volume of my current 3D printer (for as little as possible), so that I can make a holder for 4x 12LFF Backplanes with fan mounts on them.
SAS expanders are wonderful when connecting to Final Destination Drives, in fact, I am currently using one that takes a single quad cable (SFF8088) and provides me with 6 quad cables (SFF8087), and I have hooked that one to 3 different 12LFF Backplanes (single SFF8087 to 12 drives), as a proof of concept of how many HDDs you can hook to a single Quad port on an HBA without it affecting farming. I am going to be adding 2 or 3 more of those Backplanes and I don't foresee any issues with adding those as I have seen 0 issues with the current setup (36 HDDs running off of a single SFF8088).
I am sad to say that I think that you are missing one of the main reasons why I'm doing builds like these. I am running everything off of UPSes, and the bigger they are the more expensive they get, I am also limited to mainly 110v 20A circuits with 15A outlets (since I have more than a single outlet per circuit). I am trying to split the power requirements from a single PSU in a computer to an unlimited amount of PSUs (which are highly efficient and can be plugged in to other UPSes that reside on other circuits). These platinum grade 900W-1200W PSUs are extremely cheap and efficient, but they only output 12V. The beauty of these 8x SFF backplanes is that they are NOT switched (good for the speed required for plotting) and use only 12V and the 12x LFF backplanes ARE switched (good for more drives/fewer cables) and also only use 12V.
While using breakout cables (such as SFF8087(or SFF8088 for external) to 4x SFF8482, or SFF8087(or 8088) to 4x SATA) is a great way to start, I have found that they can be a tad fragile, and I personally prefer using 8087 to 8087's hooked to a backplane.
I am planning on making a few videos about farming setups once I am done with the plotting series, and I will definitely be talking about 3D printed solutions for physically holding the drives, but I will of course also be talking about how to connect as many drives as one can without risking losing out on block rewards. =)
@@JanisRode haha I looked them up on eBay and saw nothing but caddy-less ones for sale and my first thought was to print some caddies.
I don't think the 12v only output is a big concern since you're just shifting the 12v -> 5v down conversion to the backplane rather than the PSU. It still needs to generate the 5v rail for the drives - if it's on the PSU or on a backplane it doesn't really matter. I'm running a ton of drives (I think I'm at 45 LFF, give or take) with a dual Xeon E5v2 (which is also plotting) and I barely get half the wattage of my UPS at startup (after that it's way lower), so unless you're trying to farm Chia with 10,000 100GB 15k RPM HDDs I think you're good (or your budget for large drives is so astronomical you can load a 15A outlet with a PB). :D
I'm fooling around with 2 different farming approaches (which knowing me will take 6 months to show up on my channel). Modding a cheap DVD duplicator case for hard drives vs just buying a cheap-ish 4U case and converting to a JBOD. There's something very satisfying about plugging in one SFF-8088 cable and watching 25-ish drives show up. haha
Like always a very informative video by you. To extract pins from the connectors I simply use two stapler pins. Instead of different colors, we can also mark pairs with (o - * + #). Also for the 24 x 7 use of these drives we must use 120mm or whatever the size required for the cage to keep them cool.
Thank you!! =)
I tried the stapler method and I just couldn't handle it, good job at managing that! That's a good point and different signs rather than different colors will probably be easier to read from a distance, for instance, if one were to record something.... hehe
Yes! The SSDs that I'm testing now don't seem to be that bad, but the reason I even mentioned getting the fan and hooking it to the same PSU was that I had turned off my plotter for the night and forgot to turn off the cage, which had 15k HDDs in it. When I woke up, I had to wait several minutes after unplugging the cage to be able to touch the HDDs because they were so hot! Hence my advice to always plug the fan into the same PSU as the cage!!
In the future, I will probably hook the breakout board that's attached to my server PSU to my internal PSU so that whenever I turn on the computer, the internal PSU will tell the external PSU to boot up. =)
nice work. I'm exited what you will do with it external.
Thank bud! I mainly like it for the fact that I can power them from a different PSU that I can run on a separate UPS. If you look at the background of the thumbnail you can actually see three of them, 2 with 8 15K SAS drives and 1 with 8 SAS SSDs. =)
I also helps with thermals since they won't be heating up the computer case (if you can actually fit that many in a computer case!).
Right now they are right next to where I sit so I can very easily swap out drives when I'm running tests, but later, once I have a more permanent setup, I may end up drilling a hole in a wall or a floor and place them in a different room to lower the sound and heat in my home office (and be able to use a completely different breaker since it would be in a different room).
It would be similar to what I did with my watercooling system, where I drilled two holes in the floor and put the radiator in the basement.
@@JanisRode nice idea! 💡 you can place them like any spot you want ☺️ how connect the sas ports to the hbo? maybe new video "the hidden wall server" 😅
@@levelnine123 Sorry, I forgot to hit the reply button and clicked away from your comment. =(
I don't think that my wife would appreciate it if I were to punch a hole in the wall and put a server in there.... .... but... you never know until you've tried, right? =P
JK, I think that it might be against code to do that, even if I were able to remove all the heat from it, due to it being a fire hazard... I think? I may look in to that if I get bored enough. ;)
I updated the description with the types of SAS cables and HBA that I'm using, I hope that helps. The cables that I'm using are fairly long (2m), so I can really move them around. The power cable is a lot shorter, so I just need to move the server PSU with the Cages and then I'm fine =)
I should definitely be able to make a smaller hole in the wall and put the brush type of pass-through wall plates on both sides of the wall and just pass the cables to the next room and have HDDs spinning there....
If you need 5v what’s the best option? Find 5v on another cable?
If you have a cage that doesn't step down 12v to 5v then I'd recommend getting a cheap desktop PSU, in that case it's more cost efficient for you to get something like a 600W range 80 bronze for something like 30-40 USD.
If you have a cage like mine where it steps down the 12v to 5v, a used 1200w(220v)/900W(110v) 80 platinum server PSU for around 50-60 bucks would be a better investment in my opinion.
who will do storage based on 2.5 sas disks
I actually use it as a cheap cache drive (8x RAID0), although I mostly use it to test out hardware. =)
I have a similar solution for 12x 3.5" HDDs that are also run off of 12V only PSUs. Same principle when it comes to figuring out the pin out and rewiring them. =)
Also, if you need them for a write heavy application, you can get very fast 3.84TB 2.5" SAS drives, if you only need fast reads, you can get very fast 7.68TB drives. That means that you would be able to fit 61.44TB in a fairly small cage, which uses fairly little power and is considerably faster than HDDs.
While the 2.5" SSDs are considerably more expensive than 3.5" HDDs, they are cheaper to run in the long run, and may also end up requiring less expensive solutions for your home (pulling new electricity, getting bigger UPSes etc to feed hard drives)
At this point in time I am not going to be going all out on SSDs for actual semi-permanent storage, since I don't have the budget for it, but for someone who might, this solution could actually make sense even for long-term storage. =)