I have this idea of making a custom case for my server. (Pretty much because the closet it lives in is small and a case made to fit the space can utilize the space so much better to get greater airflow. It might also be a fun project.) 

 

I really like the supermicro case and being able to fairly easily plug and unplug the hard drives so I thought using a backplane would be good idea. Not knowing a lot about them, I thought I would ask here for suggestions on what specific models to look at and what kinds of things to look for or avoid. (Such as older models maybe being slower.) 

 

Suggestions for a SAS card to go with it would be great too. 

 

You may wonder why I don't use the backplane in my current server, and that would be because I plan on using that as my backup server.

This is what I'm in the process of doing... 

3d print your own NAS with 24 hard drives - YouTube

 

BTW, you don't have to do it yourself. It would actually be faster and cheaper (not much) if I paid to have it made.

Edited April 29, 20233 yr by whipdancer

9 hours ago, whipdancer said:

This is what I'm in the process of doing... 

3d print your own NAS with 24 hard drives - YouTube

 

BTW, you don't have to do it yourself. It would actually be faster and cheaper (not much) if I paid to have it made.

 

I'm looking at the backplane so that it handles the power and data as opposed to hooking up cables to each drive individually. Granted, it would be cheaper to do it in a similar manner to the way he did it in the video. 

 

And yes, there will be 3D printing involved. 

I am leaning towards a supermicro bpn-sas2-846el1 for the backplane, which iirc is the same as what I have in my current server case. Probably only HDD's attached to it, so it should have enough bandwidth I think? 

 

Now to refresh my memory on SAS cards so I can find something that will work with this.