D-316M Server Case Now Available To Order

[RobJ]

Originally, the Pro was 12 drives (Basic=3, Plus=6, Pro=12, all nicely spaced).  But as always, there were users begging Tom for just one more, or two more.  So with v4, he went to 14 drives, and sometime later he allowed 16 drives, then 20 drives with the first v5 releases.

[harmser]

How is the air flow with these D-316M cases? Do hard drives get sufficient cooling when there are 5 - 10 hard drives installed and running? Overall I like the look of these. They are pricy but I understand you usually get what you pay for. I don't mind spending more if they are in fact much higher quality.

 

Tom is a smart guy, i'm sure he did some QA/QC on these, specifically with HDD temps considering the important of these devices for UNRaid

The 3.5” drive cages have two fan settings: low and high.  We ship servers with fans set to “low” and the drives remain cool.  If your ambient temps are higher or all your drives are constantly being accessed then perhaps you would want to move the DIP switch on the back of the cages to the “high” position.  The 2.5” bays do not have a fan, however they are made of aluminum and have excellent thermal dissipation properties.  Use with laptop or SSD devices should not be a problem.

 

TomH

[harmser]

what happens when you get the optional 3.5 -> 2x 2.5" drive bay adapters to get 10x 3.5 slots and 4x 2.5 sots, (14x slots in total!).

 

You buy a pro license.

 

Yes, but the OP concerns still ring true.

 

Plus = 6

Pro = 24

 

10 or 14 are still more than 6, but significantly less than 24. A huge gap and waste of 14-10 drive slots.

Would it make you feel better if the Pro license was restricted to 14 slots, and a new Ultimate license level was introduced with no drive restrictions other than what the software could currently support? If so, how much more would you be willing to pay for this Ultimate license? In the past, the Pro license has expanded slots, without changing how much it costs. Perhaps that was a bad business decision?

 

Tom and I will have a discussion about this soon.  As itimpi pointed out, administration of the licenses can be a challenge.  I proposed to Tom that we have some special pricing for those who buy the case.  I will update you as soon as we've discussed and decided what to do to accommodate the various license requests we've had.  Thanks.

-TomH

[garycase]

... I proposed to Tom that we have some special pricing for those who buy the case.

 

That sounds like an excellent solution => perhaps a free Plus -> Pro upgrade for a single flash drive.

 

That would let those who have a Plus license buy the case and use it to its full extent;  and those who don't yet have a license to buy a Plus license but get a Pro key with the upgrade.

 

As for other increments ... An intermediate license would be okay, but I think the current scheme is fine.    It WOULD be nice if the Plus was bumped up to perhaps 8 drives, since a lot of motherboards now have 8 SATA ports.  If you are going to add an intermediate tier, I'd suggest 16 drives, to cover an 8-port motherboard with a single 8-port add-in card.    You could call it a Plus16 

 

[Mettbrot]

Would it make you feel better if the Pro license was restricted to 14 slots, and a new Ultimate license level was introduced with no drive restrictions other than what the software could currently support? If so, how much more would you be willing to pay for this Ultimate license? In the past, the Pro license has expanded slots, without changing how much it costs. Perhaps that was a bad business decision?

This.

I cannot see the point why people complain about something that they actually benefit from - if seen from the right perspective. You buy a special server case for easy expansion and hot swap hdd trays which is way more expensive than a normal tower but you can't afford 50 bucks more for a pro licence 

[StevenD]

I usually stay out of these discussions, but a "Pro" license is peanuts compared to what most of us spend on the hardware for our unRAID servers.  Just buy the Pro and move along.

[garycase]

Definitely agree ... as I noted earlier, "... I think the current scheme is fine."

 

Absolutely agree that the cost of a Pro license is irrelevant compared to the cost of a quality set of hardware and the drives to populate it.    [Of course I'm also routinely surprised at how many folks spend the cost of these systems to have fault-tolerance; but don't bother to keep backups of their data.  If your data is important enough to keep it available via a fault-tolerant server, surely it's important enough to back up !!]

 

 

[harmser]

Originally, the Pro was 12 drives (Basic=3, Plus=6, Pro=12, all nicely spaced).  But as always, there were users begging Tom for just one more, or two more.  So with v4, he went to 14 drives, and sometime later he allowed 16 drives, then 20 drives with the first v5 releases.

TomM and I had a chance to discuss the license options today.  As RobJ pointed out, as the number of drives increased in the array, Tom thought about introducing "Ultimate", but that many tiers rubbed him the wrong way, so he just kept on extending Pro for the same price.  So, some may think that they are paying for wasted slots, but the fact is that Tom never increased the price or created Ultimate.

 

D-316M comes with 10 3.5" bays. However, Plus key supports 7 drives while Pro key supports 24. So If I buy a Plus key with this case, I am going to be wasting 3 bays (2 if I use a cache drive). If I buy a Pro keys, then I can use all 10 bays but I am wasting 14 HDD capability.

Are you guys planning on either:

• Offering a 10 drive key?
  
• Ability to use 2 cases in a "cascade" setup and be use to use the Pro key?
  

Recognizing that a Pro Key would be required to support all the case drive slots, we've decided to offer a single 8GB USB2.0 preconfigured flash device with unRAID Server Pro key with the D-316M server case for a special price of $59 (instead of $139, $80 off).  We've already added this to the server case options.

 

TomH

[garycase]

Recognizing that a Pro Key would be required to support all the case drive slots, we've decided to offer a single 8GB USB2.0 preconfigured flash device with unRAID Server Pro key with the D-316M server case for a special price of $59 (instead of $139, $80 off).  We've already added this to the server case options.

 

That is a REALLY good value for anyone buying the case.  That's less than the price of a "bare" Plus license.

 

[IG82]

Originally, the Pro was 12 drives (Basic=3, Plus=6, Pro=12, all nicely spaced).  But as always, there were users begging Tom for just one more, or two more.  So with v4, he went to 14 drives, and sometime later he allowed 16 drives, then 20 drives with the first v5 releases.

TomM and I had a chance to discuss the license options today.  As RobJ pointed out, as the number of drives increased in the array, Tom thought about introducing "Ultimate", but that many tiers rubbed him the wrong way, so he just kept on extending Pro for the same price.  So, some may think that they are paying for wasted slots, but the fact is that Tom never increased the price or created Ultimate.

 

D-316M comes with 10 3.5" bays. However, Plus key supports 7 drives while Pro key supports 24. So If I buy a Plus key with this case, I am going to be wasting 3 bays (2 if I use a cache drive). If I buy a Pro keys, then I can use all 10 bays but I am wasting 14 HDD capability.

Are you guys planning on either:

• Offering a 10 drive key?
  
• Ability to use 2 cases in a "cascade" setup and be use to use the Pro key?
  

Recognizing that a Pro Key would be required to support all the case drive slots, we've decided to offer a single 8GB USB2.0 preconfigured flash device with unRAID Server Pro key with the D-316M server case for a special price of $59 (instead of $139, $80 off).  We've already added this to the server case options.

 

TomH

 

Supplying a Pro key at that price with the case is a great idea.  The idea that slots are 'wasted' with a Plus license is silly. 

 

I purchased a dual pack Pro unRAID licence after trialling the basic free license for a while back in 2008.  I cannot remember the exact number of disks at the time but it would have been 4-6.  That gradually expanded up to something around 14 so is quite clear that the Pro license was the right idea.

 

I am currently running 2x HP Microservers with 6 drives.  There are no thoughts that anything is being wasted, I do wish I could cram in some more drives but that is another issue!

 

I have a machine running Xen so am considering creating an unRAID VM and stuffing the case with drives so a Pro license would be required.  If/when I do this I will 100% purchase another Pro license (or 2) rather than getting a Plus and moving a Pro over from a Microserver.

 

The fact that Pro supports an increasing number of drives represents fantastic value.  The only way to avoid discussions about the gap between drives in Plus/Pro would be if there was a per drive licensing model.  I would much rather Tom spends his time on functionality of the core product than licensing models that add no value.

 

The current model is perfect and the simplicity of it is a massive plus point in favour of the product.