Hi,

 

Does anyone know the model or order number for the latest RPC-4220 release?  According to the Norco web site the case of the new RPC-4220 model has a better support for the back panel circuit board with cable holes at the middle and side of the fan board.

 

I hope Norcotek is reading this post.  Norcotek, how can we make sure a reseller like Newegg sends us the latest version?  Is there a special model number we should use when placing our order?  Many thanks!

Fan Board

I'm still waiting for the new fan board

I'm still waiting for the 120mm fan board..

I think the current version also has two USB ports on the Front Panel. 

Norco named this photo as model rpc4220ff.  Does this mean that this version of RPC-4220 is called rpc4220ff?

 

By the way, there are no air holes on the sides of this box - better cooling? 

According to the Norco tech support there is no change for the order and model numbers.  New stock arrived last week.  And sorry, I forgot to ask him about the new 120mm fan board. 

 

P.S. The Norco support is nice to talk to. 

 

Just ordered mine, fans NOT included.  My question now is can I use a temperature controlled fan with this?

 

http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=258

On the Norco 4220 case the GREEN light on the first tray on the second row does not light up.  I tried a different tray and still nothing.  Should it light up and what could be the reason it doesn't?

The lights on mine are a bit inconsistent as well.  Some are brighter, some are dimmer.  I haven't found any that don't work at all, but still, they look fairly haphazard.  If you look at how they work, the LEDs are actually located on the backplane, and the light is carried through a thin piece of clear plastic from the back of the drive bay to the front where you see it.  So it could be that piece of plastic is broken or out of alignment, or it could be that one LED that is just dead.  Either way, I wouldn't worry much about it.

On the SATA to SFF-8087 Mini SAS Reverse breakout cable, each SATA connection is labeled from 0-3.  Does anyone know how this corresponds to the actual drive bays from the front?  Does the 0-3 slots for each SAS drive plane go from left to right or vice versa?

I don't know off hand, but why does it matter?

To have a logical and ordered 1:1 mapping so that if the need arises for manual load balancing of buses and controller based on usage patterns.

I guess I'm with Rajahal on this. The only time load balancing matters is during parity checks or rebuilds, otherwise all interface cards are as fast as the disks they are attached to (even PCI cards). The only issue in my mind is the overall bandwidth of the interface card. A good rule of thumb is to fill you motherboard and then balance across multiple SASLP cards.

 

I used to try to keep my physical slots organized with my virtual slots and even had my ports (sda, sdb, etc.) aligned, finally I asked myself why I was doing all that. Now I have my disk1 share in my slot 6 location, and I'm fine with that. I keep a spreadsheet with all the information. Life is much simpler now.

Yeah, it still won't matter for bus balancing, etc.  That used to matter when most of us used PCI SATA ports, but now that PCIe cards are cheap and abundant, it really doesn't matter anymore.  PCIe x4 is fast enough that for all intents and purposes it is as fast as your motherboard ports.  I still always plug my parity drive into the motherboard directly, but that's just habit, it shouldn't matter anymore.

 

The only thing I've heard is that you should hook your cache drive up directly to the motherboard because of some danger with the SuperMicro card's HDIO_Get_Identity errors.  I don't fully understand the issue.

Given the current sale on the 4220, I am considering abandoning my CM Stacker and 5in3 Supermicro enclosure plan. I've got my motherboard, CPU, PSU, etc; I assume my standard PSU will work fine.  I'm tring to understand what else I will need in terms of cables.  I plan to use 2 SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 which will give me 22 SATA with my motherboard slots.  So... what the heck do I need in terms of SAS-SAS or SAS-SATA or SATA-SAS.  I admit I'm confused!  Also, do I need anything else in terms of fans or whatever?

The only thing I've heard is that you should hook your cache drive up directly to the motherboard because of some danger with the SuperMicro card's HDIO_Get_Identity errors.  I don't fully understand the issue.

 

There's no danger in HDIO_GET_IDENTITY errors, it's just annoying to get a flood of them in the syslog. The error occur when a drive in standby is queued about it's power state using hdparm. There's a workaround to detect power state from array drives without using hdparm, but non-array drives like the parity drive still need the use of hdparm.

 

So, when we move all non-array drives away from the Supermicro SASLP, the HDIO_GET_IDENTITY error is not generated.

1.  I believe that the HDIO log entry is actually causing a drive to spin up, and that unRaid is immediately putting it to sleep. Having this happen frequently is not good for the drive. For this reason I recommend against have the cache drive on a SAS controller.

 

2. I think you meant to say there was no unRaid command to detect spin state for the cache drive.

Given the current sale on the 4220, I am considering abandoning my CM Stacker and 5in3 Supermicro enclosure plan. I've got my motherboard, CPU, PSU, etc; I assume my standard PSU will work fine.  I'm tring to understand what else I will need in terms of cables.  I plan to use 2 SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 which will give me 22 SATA with my motherboard slots.  So... what the heck do I need in terms of SAS-SAS or SAS-SATA or SATA-SAS.  I admit I'm confused!  Also, do I need anything else in terms of fans or whatever?

 

I answered your question in this thread:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=8264.0

Got it, thanks Raj.

Yeah, definitely replaced the originals with Noctua's.

I swapped out the fanboard with the one I purchased from cavediver on the mediasmartserver.net forums.  Piece o' cake.

 

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009/09/02/forum-member-makes-120mm-fan-board-available-for-norco-rpc-4220-server-case/

 

Hi,

 

obviously the NF-P12 is a good choice.

 

Does anyone have a good suggestion for a replacement of the 80mm fans in the back of the case? Or is a replacement of those fans not recommended? I've read somewehere that they aren't that loud. (?)

 

Chris

The stock rear exhaust fans which are rated at 31.0 dBA were a bit loud for me. I replaced them with Noctua NF-R8's which are a nice gentle 17 dBA and still move 31 cfm (w/o the L.N.A./U.L.N.A.).

I found the rear 80mm fans to not be a problem, so I didn't bother to replace them.  They are standard single-thickness fans, not the double-thickness super loud fans that cool the drives.

Question, I'm using a MSI H55M motherboard, so I have 6 onboard SATA.  I'm looking at changing cases to the 4220, which means I'd like to total 22 drives (if I'm not mistaken I can somehow squeeze 22 in for a cache and parity?).  Sooo... 6 onboard + 2 SAS cards, no problem!  But how the heck does that work from a cable perspective.  I need reverse SAS cables from the motherboard.  Each supports 4 drives.  So I would have 4 and 2, what do I do with the other two?  Do I have to get a 2 port SATA expansion card for my PCI Express x1 slot and use them there?  Otherwise, I can't get up to the 4 drives needed on a SAS port.  Or am I missing some obvious math

 

Thanks,

Paul

The last two drives slots (drives #21 and 22) are for 2.5" laptop drives (or SSDs), and they are not hot-swappable.  You have to remove the lid of the case to access these drive mount areas.  So there's a max of 20 3.5" drives with the Norco 4220.

 

Also, unRAID's current limits are 1 parity drive, 20 data drives, and 1 cache drive.  So you could have drive #21 as a data drive, and drive #22 as a cache drive.  But both cannot be data drives (unless you use a 3.5" drive as a cache drive instead).

 

If you do this, I would recommend using any old SATA laptop drive as a data drive, and then a SSD as a cache drive.  Then use all your 3.5" drives as parity and data.

 

You could hook up the last two drives several ways.  If your motherboard has 6 SATA slots, just use the two unused slots with standard SATA cables (the 2.5" slots don't use backplanes).  If not, then you could add a 2 port PCIe x1 card (such as the SIL3132 at monoprice) and again use standard SATA cables.  Both of these assume you are already using four of your onboard SATA slots and 2 x SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards maxed out for the 20 3.5" drives.

 

The SuperMicro MBD-C2SEE-O would be a good choice for this type of build, since it can take two SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards and has 6 onboard SATA ports.  The SuperMicro MBD-X8SIL-F-O is another good option if you want IPMI and the ability to use an i3 CPU.

 

If you are interested in having 22 3.5" drives, check out the 22 Drive Beast based on the Norco 4224 that I just finished a few minutes ago.  This build hasn't been tested yet, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work.