Recommend a server with lots of hard drive slots.

[Compman55]

Looking at the dell C6100:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerE...244405?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item27d494c635

Has 12 bays for SATA 3.5" drives, however you need to have 4 nodes installed to use all 12 bays. One node operates up to three drives.

So I don;t need a lot of power, specs, ram, etc.....just lots of hard drive bays that can all be used at one time.

Also in a server unit, do you need seperate OS's installed on each node? Or if all 4 are plugged in the same OS can reside for all 4.

 

[seepy83]

Looking at the dell C6100:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerE...244405?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item27d494c635

Has 12 bays for SATA 3.5" drives, however you need to have 4 nodes installed to use all 12 bays. One node operates up to three drives.

So I don;t need a lot of power, specs, ram, etc.....just lots of hard drive bays that can all be used at one time.

Also in a server unit, do you need seperate OS's installed on each node? Or if all 4 are plugged in the same OS can reside for all 4.

Can you give a little more info about your requirements? You just need a server with a lot of disk space?

I haven't looked at Dell servers in a long time and I'm not familiar with the C6100, but it to looks similar to a blade server type of solution that fits 4 physical servers into a 2U chassis.

 

[Compman55]

Lots of 1080P videos, backups, raw photo formats that are outgrowing my 2TB raid 1 array. So rather than going with expensive enterprise drives, or going with larger capacity 4GB drives with less reliabilty, I would rather just keep expanding.

I find most servers have a max limit of 3-4 drives per node / motherboard which sucks.

So storage is what I am after, and must run 2008 R2.

 

[theevilsharpie]

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/storage.cfm

 

[Compman55]

I did leave out one piece of info. I would like to find something used for $300-700. That supermicro looks sweet but a little out of budget.

 

[imagoon]

Dell R510. You might want to ask in the hardware forum also since this is the networking forum and other than the server having a network port, it has nothing to do with networking so you might get better responses over there.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I have a few of these...

supermicro CSE-846TQ-R900B

love em, handles my huge 4TB arrays great.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I did leave out one piece of info. I would like to find something used for $300-700. That supermicro looks sweet but a little out of budget.

You mentioned that you were looking for a server, but at your budget, you're not going to find much.

I assume that you already have a computer based on your previous comment, so instead of a new server, you may want to take a look at external storage enclosures. Here's what Newegg offers between $300 and $700.

Bear in mind that if you use an external enclosure, you may need to include some type of HBA for the computer you intend to connect to.

 

[imagoon]

C6100 is an ultra dense server. That one you linked for $349 has nothing in it (bare bones) and is basically a chassis. It would cost you far more than $700 to populate one of those units. It is not a "NAS" or "SAN" it is 4 discrete servers in one 2U box.