Chenbro Micom 4U 16-Bay High Storage Density Server Chassis (RM41416M2)

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Price: $675.00 $640.00   

Product Feature

• Product TypeSystem Cabinet
• Motherboard SupportSSI EEB
• Number of External 5.25" Bays:2
• Number of Expansion Slots:7
• Interfaces/Ports:2 x USB 2.0 USB Front
• Form Factor Rack-mountable
• Material Steel
• Number of Power Supplies Support 3

Product Description

Chenbro Micom 4U 16-Bay High Storage Density Server Chassis

Chenbro Micom 4U 16-Bay High Storage Density Server Chassis (RM41416M2) Review

This feels like a solidly built and roomy 4U rack chassis. The metal is thick enough that it does not sag when picking it up, the top cover fits well (the tool-less latching mechanism is a nice touch, but it requires the cover be removed vertically -- you can damage the latches if you 'roll' it off to one side or the other). Chenbro included almost everything I needed to put it all together -- screws for the removable trays, the fixed bays, the system board and power converter; two extra fans for special use if needed for processor cooling; various cables (including an extra-long floppy cable in case you still have a system that supports standard floppy drives); even an adapter for a slim SATA optical drive so you can use a standard power and SATA connection. The included power converter mounting plate allows a standard power converter to be installed normally or inverted (some modern power converters need to be flipped over because they have the fan where it would be against the chassis wall otherwise). It even includes air dams for the drive trays, to push airflow to the ones that are in use if you do not have 16 drives mounted in the removable trays. Chenbro is generous with power splitters and adapters and extensions, but I am uncomfortable using such things and prefer to avoid them.

It includes a fan midplane (5 high-yield fans drawing air across the drives in front and pushing it out the back of the chassis). These fans are NOT quiet; they move a lot of air. I suppose 120mm fans would have been quieter, but I wonder how easy it would be to set up something for those like what Chenbro uses to make the fans easy to replace while the system is running.

There are 16 removable trays, arranged in four rows of four. Each row sits in front of a single SAS backplane module, all of which connect together to a board that monitors the fans and provides a second activity light (green) per drive, arranged in a smaller space (same 4 by 4 layout as the drives). This monitoring board also provides LEDs for HDD activity (yellow), status for two network cards (green), chassis alarm (red), and power (blue), a buzzer to indicate faults such as power converter failures (if the power converter offers this) and fan failure, as well as the power switch, reset switch, and an alarm silence switch, plus two USB2 connectors. The HDD activity (yellow) and two network status (green) LEDs can be redefined for other indications if you like, but the power (blue) and fault (red) LEDs are dedicated purpose; the power and reset switches could be wired for other uses, but the alarm silence switch is dedicated. The individual backplane modules look well built and provide three LEDs for drive status: blue for present, green for active, red for fault, with green and red sharing one light pipe on the each tray and blue using the other. The individual backplane modules include two power connectors and one 4x SAS connector (apparently wired as 1x per drive). If you need SATA connections, you should be able to replace the backplane modules with another model (Chenbro offered SATA, SAS, and SCSI (SCA) backplane modules in their catalogue when I last looked).

There are three accessible fixed (not removable) drive bays. One of these is big enough for a 5.25 inch 'half-height' drive (a typical desktop optical drive, for example), one is standard 3.5 inch floppy disc drive sized, and one fits 11mm slim optical devices. These don't line up as nicely with the faceplate a I would have liked (the faceplate holes seem to be cut a tiny bit lower than the mount points) but it is close enough that things work properly.

There is also a 3.5 inch fixed internal drive bay. With all the accessible fixed and removable drive bays, I'm not quite sure what use this would be, but it does offer a way to put the last bit of space in the front section to use.

It has enough space for a system board of up to 13 inches front-to-back by 12 inches side-to-side. The myriad system board mounting points all use removable posts, so I expect any 'standard' system board arrangement within the size limit should work.

There is enough room for a power converter of nearly 13 inch length, so it may be possible to use a powerful redundant power converter (I was unable to find anything sufficient to meet my demands, though, so I settled for a relatively powerful non-redundant unit). A power converter is NOT included. If your power converter is shorter, and your cabling fairly flexible, you might be able to mount additional hardware in the extra space (it has places to add posts or screw things down).

There are holes below the fans in the midplane through which wires are fed from the power converter and system board to the front parts (the backplane modules and the bays and the monitor board). These are pretty large, which makes wiring fairly easy, but I had a lot of space left over once I finished wiring, so I filled these midplane gaps with foam rubber blocks once I finished the wiring (to prevent air simply circulating around the fans instead of flowing through the system).

I counted off a single star for one issue I encountered. The monitor board has a set of switches that control various features, one of which is 'staggered spin' on the drives on the backplane modules. If 'staggered spin' is disabled on the unit I have, the drive activity lights only work via SGPIO. This means that your drive controller has to explicitly tell the backplane when to light the drive activity LEDs if you are not using 'staggered spin'. If 'staggered spin' is enabled, the drive activity LEDs work based upon the activity indication offered by the drive. I don't know whether the activity LEDs work via SGPIO because the controller I have does not seem to support that feature (though I do know it can indicate faults through SGPIO). This is the only 'hotswap' device I own where the activity lights can not be driven by the drive if staggered spin is not enabled (I think Chenbro holds the pin on the drive interface at ground full time rather than releasing it some seconds after power-on when staggered spin is disabled).

Like everything else I see these days with blue LEDs, each blue LED seems about 10 times as bright as all the non-blue LEDs put together. I had to put label paper over the blue LEDs to dim them so I could comfortably look at the other LEDs nearby. Not worth a star in itself, but worth mentioning.

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