My work just gave me an old Belkin network switch rack and I thought it would be fun to mount my unraid box in there with the rest of my home network gear to clean up my home server closet.  I was about to buy a Norco 4224 then realized that it is 25" deep and my network switch rack is will only hold things 20" deep as it is a little shallower than your typical four post rack. 

 

Do any of your case aficionados have a suggestion of something similar I could use?  I would really like it to have a built in SAS expander and drive cages like the 4224 if possible but I realize that I may have to decide between those features and being able to mount this in my cage.

 

-Shane

I just had another thought, maybe I need to just go with a rackmount jbod case with a SSAS backplane?  In theory those should be cheaper than something like the 4224 but when I did a quick search for them they all cost twice as much.  Still, if there were one to be had for cheaper I would be open to the idea.

I don't know of anything cheaper than the Norco.  There certainly are other rackmount case options from manufacturers such as Supermicro and Chenbro, but they cost twice as much (or more).  I like your idea of a JBOD case with a SAS backplane - have you considered building one yourself?  Or taking some other old or cheap rackmount case and modifying it?  For example, Rosewill makes a few very cheap rackmount enclosures (such as this) that could be modified.  Newegg doesn't seem to carry them anymore, so you might have to hit eBay.  Once you have the chassis, you could then buy the same backplanes used in the Norco rackmount cases (link) and possibly even one of these to convert internal miniSAS to external SAS.  Add in a power supply (you'll need to implement a slight modification to power it on without a motherboard, something like this) and you have all the makings for an external JBOD box that you can use to expand your existing server.

 

Another idea - sell your Belkin network rack and use the money made off that to offset the purchase of a rack that will actually fit the Norco 4224 or other deeper cases.  Or build your own rack.

Hmmm....SuperMicro cases are all 25".  I may back off of the idea of putting my server in there and just put everything else in the network enclosure.  I just thought it would be neat to have everything in one tidy package but it's not worth spending thousands on.  I actually have  a full size HP rack as well but it seemed like overkill for just a few items, server, switch, cable modem, ps3, xbox, mac mini.

 

I will spend some time looking at regular cases or full depth cases first.  I actually have one of the supermicro cases at work with the built in SAS expander and trays which is what made me want to go that route at home, the cabling is just so clean and easy going that route.