Nyago123

The Supermicro cage needs a 4U height so if the 2950 is a 2U then I'm pretty sure it won't fit. I've put these cages in a Rosewill RSV-4500 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091IZ1ZG) as well as an Antec 1200... across all my systems I have 12 of these. Only problem I have with the Rosewill is the drives are horizontal and upside down if you want to get 3 of these cages in there because of the way it deals with installation. For the Antec, the drives are vertical. Also, I recently picked up 3 of these on Newegg (from Newegg itself, not a third party) on sale for $82 each (before tax+shipping), so outside of eBay that's what I'd consider a "going rate" unless I was in a hurry to get one.

Data point: I picked up a used bare Supermicro X9DRI-LN4F+ plus two E5-2680v2's for $541 total shipped (including CA 9.25% tax on the CPUs) with the last eBay 15% coupon on May 4. So without knowing if the Natex package includes drive cages and power supply, I think it's reasonable but not TGBT.

I bought MyBook single drives which contain the WD80EZZX drives, not Red drives. The MyBook Duo's have Red drives (and are easier to open). If you want 4TB Red drives, the 8TB Duo is currently in stock... $349.99 for two drives, minus 15% = $297.49 = $148.75 per 4TB Red drive before tax (which is more than the OP's price listed above, so in this case shucking probably doesn't make sense). For the record, my price was $232.68 after 9.5% sales tax ($212.50 before). My price on 8TB Reds going the Duo route would have been around $256/drive after tax ($233.75 before). I might have bought 16TB Duos if I could have but they were and still are out of stock.

The 8TB Mybooks are back in stock... used the coupon to grab a bunch for shucking... average price $232.68

That is disappointing news. First time I've heard about bad shipping from B&H on the forums and I've had better luck but I'm only ordering drives in pairs not in your quantities so maybe that made a difference for me. Just to close the loop, B&H sent me 4 replacements which arrived Friday March 20. These were in their original OEM boxes with bubble wrap to generally cushion the contents. These survived the trip. I don't know why they sent the original 10 in just anti-static bags - I almost wonder if they were taken out of OEM boxes just to be squeezed into a smaller outer box to save on shipping expense. I am going to be very wary of ordering in quantity from them again in the future. Generally I also don't like how they handled the replacement process overall - even though this was their fault, they refused to give me any considerations - for example, with the RMA they charged my credit card for the new drives and then credited it back once the defective drives were received, and they wouldn't give me complimentary 2-day shipping to ensure the new drives went by air instead of ground. Thanks for making me feel really un-special, B&H.

These are starting to pop up here and there. Rakuten (buy.com) had some @ $239 but sold out quickly. I think CompSource has some at $249 as I type this: http://www.compsource.com/pn/ST8000AS0002/Seagate-394/Archive-Hdd-Sata-6gbS-8tb/ I had ordered 10 at B&H at the $249 pre-order price in January. I received them March 10 but they were packaged poorly (just thrown in loose) and 4 were DoA so I'm working out replacements. In hindsight, I should've just pre-ordered 20 from BLT and sold the excess to the good people on this forum for cost.

The T4 is much newer. The flip side of course is that you need to make sure the card will be supported for your OS (generally speaking - not actually specific to unRAID here). As a user of PT cards, I learned the hard way there is a caveat with them - there is a model number that had forward compatibility problems with PCIe 2.0 and a later model that fixed that. So if you're buying used you need to check on that: Intel notice.

Thanks OP... in for two

Still $165 at Amazon, but more significant than the absolute price, IMO, is that the prices seem to have held here with stock availability for some time- i.e. it's not some 'flash in the pan' deal that will bounce back up to $190 (I hope). That can only bode well for us storage freaks as we move to summer... I'm optimistic we'll get back into the $40/TB range by then.

Another vote for Remote Desktop Gateway here; I prefer jumpbox style implementations to VPN because I don't like the idea of bridging networks when the encryption for RDP is sufficiently strong, but it's a matter of personal taste and where you want to make maintenance tradeoffs. Really, your workplace should be closing outbound connections on 3389 (well, any port that isn't necessary for the viability of the business), so with RDG you'll be on 443. If you change your mind and ever want to go a step further with RDP: I have a Cisco ASA 5505 with Security Plus- i.e. full DMZ, with outside, DMZ, and inside interfaces, and a decent Hyper-V server with multiple NICs. I think you can do the same with pfSense for much cheaper that what I have. The model I use is basically the one in Section 3.2 here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2009/07/31/rd-gateway-deployment-in-a-perimeter-network-firewall-rules.aspx The DMZ has a standalone Windows domain. My inside network has a separate Windows Domain and a PKI. I set up a one way trust (DMZ trusts inside but not vice versa) between the domain controllers using Group Policy on both sides to specify that only the DCs may talk to each other via IPSec authenticating with a certificate derived from my PKI's root CA. That means to cross the DMZ-inside boundary, I open only UDP port 500 + protocol 50 (esp) + protocol 51 (ah). Unlike what the above MSDN article says, I do not have to open cross forest authentication ports or RADIUS ports. The use of IPsec for cross DC authentication is covered here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742429.aspx Yes, it's Windows 2000 era but it works - what's more amazing to me is how few enterprises probably use this 11+ years later (well, and how many allow traffic on 3389 outbound ). In the DMZ I have set up Remote Desktop Gateway with an SSL cert again signed by my PKI and a Network Policy Server on the inside. The gateway is also given authorization via GP to talk to the inside DCs for the purpose of credentials verification. This means I only open port 443 to the outside and 3389 exclusively from the DMZ gateway server to the inside workstation (actually, I probably should go a step further and change the default port). When you RDP, you specify the use of a gateway, the FQDN of the inside machine, your inside domain credentials, and you are forwarded over HTTPS via the gateway to the inside. Nothing else is on the RDG server, significantly reducing attack surface. In the worst case, if you somehow got into the RDG server using DMZ domain credentials (again, only 80 & 443 is open there and there are no web apps other than RDG), you'd still need inside credentials to get in. If you have inside credentials, I'm screwed but you really didn't need to hack my RDG server if so. I guess if I was really paranoid, the first inside domain RDP machine would just be a jumpbox with specific inside-domain user-only-login-from-outside rights credentials, then you'd have to RDP to other machines on the inside using admin credentials. Now if I could just get two factor authentication for any RDP use on inside machines, I'd be satisfied.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/cern_storage_disk_shortage/ These days I think we know the feeling... just tough keeping those 15PB around like you used to

In stock as I type this... limit 5 Edit: OOS now

Same price now at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VFJ9MK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Yeah, I also swore off 2TB and was cycling in 3TB, but I haven't bought an HDD since October because I'm being stubborn. And know this is crazy talk, but I'm actually considering deleting some files off my array to free up space...

Worked for me though I'm in CA so it was $117.96 after tax... thanks!

Not as good (especially in California), but Newegg has them for $119. Won't be surprised to see 3TB readily available below $100 by Xmas though.

Well, that's probably partly my fault because I just ordered some from there last week

Not as cheap (especially in CA w/sales tax)... but I've ordered from Monoprice a few times in the past. Might be a reasonable alternative if you're concerned about the seller. http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025406

Dang... I was holding out until it got down to $0.79...

PM sent... dunno if I'm first in line

So you're saying the 3.5" bays are really hard-fixed to 3.5" (unlike the Antec 1200)? If so, that's too bad... I would consider this if I can amp it up to 4x 5-in-3s...

I'm in California so my go to is usually Amazon, but given NewEgg carries a 8.75+% premium for me I've used Comp-U-Plus and TheNerds.Net as well. These places are not as competitive on commodity items like hard drives and memory, but they are often well priced on component items like SuperMicro motherboards and controllers. Comp-U-Plus has additional discounts for repeat customers.

I'm kinda seeing something like this myself in 4.7, but it's generally when the system is under stress. Right now I have 12 2TB data drives, of which 11 are under 60-70GB of free space and 1 is under 90GB, which may be a factor. I have a couple dozen open files on the unRAID server from file sharing. If I then (from Windows 7) mount a Bluray ISO from the array Daemon Tools or Virtual CloneDrive, start a playback on one workstation, then start a copy operation of a bunch of files from the array on another workstation, then try something like simultaneously copying a 40+GB BluRay ISO *to* the array using TeraCopy, I'll get a brief network drop invalidating any open network connections... it's only for an instant but it looks like some kind of peer reset. Once all the connections drop, the shares usually recover immediately and I can see them again. At that point I need to unmount any ISOs and remount. This is easily reproducible and the system is 24/7 stable otherwise; my mobo is a SuperMicro with onboard Intel NIC. I think it may have something to do with SAMBA on the unRAID side, and/or something involving trying to find a 40+GB block in the low space. Nothing appears in the syslog. Obviously, I'll be adding some more space soon.

I'm actually glad to see this thread pop up... although you can search these forums for quite a few tidbits here and there, it's nice to start consolidating in one place. I personally like the SuperMicro cages... enough that I have two of them. My first 5-in-3 was a Chenbro SK33502-BK-H which has served me well for nearly a year (yes, I did not go with the stock fan there either) but had a minor issue with certain Seagate drives: it would always leave the busy light on even when the drive was not being accessed. Additionally it didn't seem to keep the drives as cool as I'd like, though it's also at the disadvantage of being at the top of my case. So during a recent expansion and server upgrade, I bought an Icy Dock. It works but there are a few things I don't like: the fan's custom clip; the drive "trays" seem kinda fragile (they're really just rails); it takes 3 molex plugs whereas everyone else takes 2; the SATA ports on the bottom (well in the end I turned it upside down in my CoolerMaster HAF 932 case where it ended up); and it would develop noisy vibrations from the drives until I eventually put another 3.5" drive in a 5.25" bay mount flat in the bay on top of it. One thing I do like about the Icy Dock: it's shorter than the SM & Chenbro which mattered to me in my CoolerMaster case where I have a EATX mobo... the mobo comes right to the edge of the drive bays so any cage that's longer start to extend over it. And I do like the Icy Dock's look and drive lights. A little burned by the Icy Dock, I bought the SM cage. It's heavy and a tighter fit but I didn't have too many issues in either my Antec 1200 or the CoolerMaster HAF... originally I put it in the CoolerMaster and while installing bent some of the pins on the mobo header (e.g. power switch, reset switch, etc) because I was pushing and went too far. That's when I swapped- putting the Icy Dock into the HAF and the SM into the Antec. After feeling the SM did pretty well ... better than the Icy Dock... I bought another one and also put it in the Antec 1200. Yes, I did buy a bunch of Noctua NF-B9 fans for the SM cages so the base cost is a little higher- I didn't even attempt to run the stock fans. And I didn't bother with the fan casing; I just used some industrial strength Velcro to attach it. (Which may also be my replacement plan for the Icy Dock some day.) The SM cages run cooler than my Chenbro but the Icy Dock seemed to hold its own temperature wise. My Hitachi 7K2000 7200RPM parity drive when semi-active runs around 34C in my SM, but around 37C in my Chenbro. Didn't try it in my Icy Dock. The Icy Dock is currently housing 5 x 7200.10 750GB Seagates which are together in a RAID-10 array in a different server. So my ratings probably would be (with biggest cons): SuperMicro = good (cost due to fan), Chenbro = fair (cooling and Seagate drive issue), Icy Dock = fair (vibration issue) Since I already have a mish-mash of cages I may try a Norco next go around just for fun.

The deal is also available in store (which means "plus sales tax" of course). Not directly related, but I find it interesting that a 2TB hard drive is only slightly more than what it costs me to fill up my car each week...