I took the plunge and purchased the Norco 4220 and I have my parts coming in as I'm typing this now. I plan on using Unraid. I do have a question for anyone that has a similar build.

 

In what order are the drives numbered? I mean I wanted to number the cages but I'm not sure in which direction to number them. I appreciate any help.

The drives aren't numbered in any particular order.  You get to choose how to number them.  This is what I recommend, but feel free to change it as you wish:

 

Parity | Disk1 | Disk2 | Disk3/Cache

Disk4 | Disk5 | Disk6 | Disk7

Disk8 | Disk9 | Disk10 | Disk11

Disk12 | Disk13 | Disk14 | Disk15

Disk16 | Disk17 | Disk 18 | Disk19

 

The reason for this pattern is that your parity and cache drive (if used) should be connected directly to the motherboard.  When I build servers in this case, I always hook up the motherboard to the top row.  However, it doesn't matter one bit if you want to use a different row for the motherboard ports, it is up to you.

Forgive my ignorance, but with the cables you recommended, which I'm actually still waiting for hopefully tomorrow I'll get them, wouldn't those cables take up all the slots in the 4220? I was actually thinking of putting the parity and the cache on top of the cage where the dvd drive goes. Then just leaving the rest of the slots hooked up to the two cards. Does that make sense?

just curious why you choose 4220 over 4224?

Long story, I had ordered it and also ordered WHS, newegg had a promo and I was getting it for 49 bucks. Well Newegg voided my order, cause they ran out of WHS. So, I already received the 4220, and was so pissed off about the whole WHS thing that I took it as a sign, and decided to go the UnRAID route. Still pisses me off now.

Forgive my ignorance, but with the cables you recommended, which I'm actually still waiting for hopefully tomorrow I'll get them, wouldn't those cables take up all the slots in the 4220? I was actually thinking of putting the parity and the cache on top of the cage where the dvd drive goes. Then just leaving the rest of the slots hooked up to the two cards. Does that make sense?

 

Here's the what the cabling will look like in the pattern I illustrated above:

 

Motherboard SATA ports ----Reverse Breakout Cable---- Top row of 4220 (Parity - Disk3/Cache)

SASLP Card 1 ----miniSAS cable---- 2nd row of 4220 (Disk4 - Disk7)

SASLP Card 1 ----miniSAS cable---- 3rd row of 4220 (Disk8 - Disk11)

SASLP Card 2 ----miniSAS cable---- 4th row of 4220 (Disk12 - Disk15

SASLP Card 2 ----miniSAS cable---- 5th row of 4220 (Disk16 - Disk19)

 

If your motherboard has more than 4 onboard SATA ports, a couple will be unused.  If you want to squeeze two more drives into the top DVD area of the case, you can use these motherboard ports to connect them (using standard SATA cables).  I know that Norco has mounting plates for 2.5" drives in that area, but I'm not sure if 3.5" drives will fit.  A 2.5" cache drive would be fine, but I don't think you'll be able to find a 2.5" drive with a large enough capacity to be your parity drive.

OH ok now I see I still don't know where the in the world the Reverse Breakout cable could go on the first set. I suppose once the shipment comes in I will be able to figure it out. BTW I have the

Gigabyte 880GA-UD3H Motherboard. It has up to 6 SATA slots.

The SATA end of the reverse breakout cable will plug into 4 of the 6 SATA ports on your motherboard.  It doesn't matter which 4 you choose to use.  The miniSAS end of the reverse breakout cable will plug into one of the 4220's backplanes.  I like to use the top-most backplane for the motherboard ports, but ultimately it doesn't matter.  You can use the bottom one, or one of the middle ones if you like.

Ok gotcha. Thanks again so much in tolerating my ignorance. This Old Marine truly appreciates it.

Ok gotcha. Thanks again so much in tolerating my ignorance. This Old Marine truly appreciates it.

 

Semper Fi