[vdr] Re: hardware 19" 4HU

[Emil Naepflein <Emil.Naepflein@philosys.de>]

On Sat, 13 Apr 2002 15:12:19 +0200, Karlheinz.Pischke@t-online.de
(Karlheinz Pischke) wrote:

> this chassis 
> 
> http://www.rackmountnet.com/rackmountchassis/rackmountchassis_4ud.htm
> 
> looks very similar to 
> 
> http://www.redaix.de/produkte/19gehaeuse/frame004-3.htm
> 
> which I baught this chassis and I'm on the way to build a systeem. 

If you type in RMC4D in google you find some more companies. The
manufacturer of this chassis seems to be Anova.

> Problems seen (so far):
> - comes without motherboard mounting kit 
> - can only use CD or DVD drive which is usually only for 
>   laptops (-> expensive)
>   -> I have such a drive now, but it has a NON-standard combined 
>     IDE power connector (-> sh.t) which is pitily also different
>     from 2.5" disk drives
> - same for floppy drive: you need a very small one (laptop ?)

This all is mentioned at the description. I wanted to use only 12 of the
disk for data with two promise SX6000 raid controllers. 2 others would
be mirrored system disks and 2 slots could be used for regular DVD-ROM
and Floppy.

> - IDE drive chassis are not exact enough -> dangerous to break
>   or bend the drive's IDE connector

That's bad. On the other side it shouldn't be necessary to replace the
disks very often.

> - difficult to wire the 16 IDE cables under the fan holder 
>   which is between the motherboard and the drive cage

May be you should use round IDE cables.

The problem is that there are no many alternatives for such a case if
you want to have a compact all-in-one server combining DVB-server and
file storage. I want to use at least 12 disks for Raid5. Regular cases
don't have enough slots.

Alternatives are:
- use normal PC and extent with Firewire disks 
  (expensive, large, software raid, complex to handle)
- use normal PC and extent with network storage (Ethernet and Fireware)
  (expensive, large, power usage)

Any ideas?

Emil