[plug] [OT] Server Hardware "shops"

[Chris Hoy Poy]

I recently picked up a fractal design XL case from PLE [http://www.ple.com.au] - not rack mountable, but 11+ HDD bays that are quite accessible without much hassle. For $210 I am pretty happy.  

very quiet - I went with 6x 5900RPM 2TB drives + some inline SSDs, with OpenIndiana + ZFS for the OS (running on separate mirrored drives). [I have this in my media room atm because my laptop is louder then this system]
I've got a 4 bays left that I can put more drives in if I need to :) 

I didn't bother getting enough onboard SATA ports, you can get 8x SATA2 LSI cards (non-raid) for ~$300, the 16x cards aren't too bad either. 

Also, port expanders :) 

digicor [http://www.digicor.com.au] have been good providers too (in Perth anyway) for SuperMicro kit, which I find generally well priced and reliable.

//chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim White" <weirdit at gmail.com>
To: "plug" au>
Sent: Tuesday, 20 March, 2012 5:29:37 AM
Subject: [plug] [OT] Server Hardware "shops"

In the near future I'm looking at building my own server that will
eventually take upto maybe 8 HDDs for storage requirements, as well as
being a server for a number of functions.
For this reason, I'm probably going with 3-4RU cases, and hot swap
cages. I've seen a few cases with 7 5.25" drive bays, and seen a number
of 5 in 3 cages (5 3.5" drives in 3 5.25" bays), so assuming I have 1
for DVD, that allows upto 10 drives.

So the question is, where do pluggers go for their server hardware? I'm
ideally going for standard kind of motherboard with a few extra SATA
controllers to allow me up to 8 drives (plus an internal for OS).

To keep it semi On topic, this server will be running Linux, like all my
other machines around. :-P

Thanks

Tim
p.s. I'm assuming most people will direct me to online shops, this is
fine as I don't need a brick and mortar shop.
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