Time to renew my home server is approaching.
The new server will certainly have USB-C w/ Thunderbolt 3.0 capability.

Ideally, I wonder if an External USB-C Thunderbolt 3.0 HDD box that accommodates 4 or 5 disks makes sense. To make sense to me, it should

1. Expose the disks individually to the OS, so I can build some RAID arrays with them at the OS level
2. Allow hot swap (but, I can live without it)
3. Offer all needed bandwidth.
4. Be reliable. Good quality box. Nothing cheap that fails after 1 year. I am OK to spend more to have some peace of mind.

Do you guys know if such a thing exists? Theoretical Thunderbolt 3.0 bandwidth makes me think that such a thing could exist.

Any recommendation is welcome.

MediaSonic probably makes one. I have their USB3/eSATA versions.

EDIT: https://www.amazon.ca/Mediasonic-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B078YQHWYW
That's 10gb/sec USB-C, but not Thunderbolt.

Google also found the "OWC ThunderBay 4": https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/External-Drive/OWC/ThunderBay-4

Plus a Startech enclosure which may or may not still be available: https://www.startech.com/support/S354SMTB2R

Thank you Mark.

Reason I was looking for Thunderbold 3.0 is that I am not sure connection with the main unit would be stable and reliable enough otherwise with USB 3.0. These external disks should serve as file storage of files accessed quite often form other devices in my home network.

Do you think they can be used as reliably as internal units?

That all depends upon the software, I think. Linux USB 3.x has been somewhat unstable from time to time -- it seems to work well enough for me these days, but I only use it for removable drives.

The MediaSonic USB3/eSATA enclosures I have here are normally used in eSATA (port-multiplier) mode rather than USB3, simply because I don't want the extra complexity of USB3 conversion in the I/O path. More reliable and better, with Linux at least.

Cheers

Yes, eSata surely better on Windows too, from that perspective specifically.

I just *assumed* Thunderbolt v. 3.0 would be reliable because I think it *is* intended for permanently connected external storage devices AND daisy chain to monitors and what not. I'd be surprised if that was as unreliable as USB has often been (for me at least). But, just guessing here. And, I am sure there's a plethora of different flavors and versions of Thunderbolt 3.0 implementations out there.

I may just have to stick to eSATA w/ port multiplier as you suggest.

Question: is there any drawback to use eSATA-port-multiplier compared to standard HDD connected to "internal" SATA ports?

.... I mean, there are quite a few Thunderbolt 3.0 external enclosures for gaming-class *video cards*!!

One would assume that a multi-HDD counterpart is out there, but I can't seem to find any. I keep searching.

This unit by Fantec seems to do what I was hoping for:

https://www.amazon.it/QB-35US3-6G-Esterno-pollici-Ventola-Sensore/dp/B07DD1QZY7/ref=sr_1_42?__mk_it_IT=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&dchild=1&keywords=thunderbolt%2B3.0%2Bhdd%2Benclosure&qid=1587899602&sr=8-42&swrs=CD1D3103A6454A63DC87E5243AFBE406&th=1

eSATA is SATA, just with a different connector. There is no other difference.

Except.. with multiple drives sharing a single (e)SATA port, they obviously have to share the 6gb/sec bandwidth of the single port. With Thunderbolt, much more bandwidth is available for port-expanders which might be designed to use it.

And some motherboard SATA controllers are wired with port-multipliers in mind, whereas others omit the extra logic needed to share a single port with multiple drives.

I think I gave a link to one or two Thunderbolt native drive enclosures earlier too, I haven't used any of these though, and to even consider one it would have to have an alternate interface of some kind (eg. regular USB3) to enable drive access from non-thunderbolt systems -- I wouldn't want to be stuck unable to retrieve files when the primary system is kaput!

That looks identical in every way to the MediaSonic USB-3 enclosure I linked earlier, except for the branding. Not Thunderbolt, I believe.

You're right. I must have missed the USB 3.1 in the specs of the unit you linked. I mistakenly thought you only linked USB 3.0 units,for some reason.

Yes, Fantec and Mediasonic seem to be the same device. Fantec is relatively popular here. It's a German company that used to make cheap HDD enclosures back int he days, now making slightly more high-end stuff.

The best I could find are these two units then, both 10Gbps USB 3.1, which I am loosely considering "thunderbolt 3.0", but no, none of them are, as you point out.

So it seems Thunderbold 3.0 is currently only being used for external video cards.
But, after all, 10Gbps seems to be enough to accommodate mechanical drives, in terms of bandwidth right? Bottleneck is at the drives even with "only" 10Gbps USB 3.1. Right?

Any luck looking for either of these true Thunderbolt enclosures?



As for the others, USB 3.1 is faster than any mechanical drive. So the "bottleneck" is when accessing multiple drives simultaneously. Not an issue in Real Life, except for perhaps a high traffic transactional server or something.

For (EDIT: some) SSDs, the USB interface would be the limiting factor even with just a single drive.

So, as I was saying in my first post, I am looking into this because the time to rebuild my home server is approaching. No particular rush, but it is 10 years old and I am running out of disk space, so I am considering a complete rebuild which would bring a number of small benefits. Besides the obvious one of having 2020 technology vs 2010, one nice thing would be decreasing the actual box size.

So, incidentally, I've also started to look into HPE ProLiant Microserver Gen 10 and Gen 10 Plus. It was years since I checked HP Microservers, and Gen 10 is nice.

Not bad at all, actually.

But if you then need to have an external drive enclosure have you really decreased the actual box size?

I'd also mention that you can get NAS-style PC cases. I have an older one by Chenbro (which I'm not using; Synology's just easier).

Well, yes, compared to my current server case but...



... right. This is why I am also looking at the HP Microserver Gen 10 plus.

And, any recommendation on NAS-stype PC case is more than welcome. That will be my next step in trying to make my mind as to which venue to go for my next home server.

Thank you!

Odd that those HPE boxes use external power supplies (more space/clutter), and the "plus" versions don't seem to be offered with AMD processors.

Gen 10 Plus uses external PSU, Gen 10 (older) does not, and comes with AMD only.

What I don't like about the plus is that it does not come with a NVME slot for the OS. Ideally, I'd like to have two, actually.

But, it does have USB 2x bootable 3.2Gen2, so ironically one could boot from an external NVMe unit and leave the 4 HDD bays for storage only.

Or, one could go with an internal PCIexpress to NVME adapter on the x16 slot.

I suppose external PSU, despite the clutter, is better for heat/noise, and leads to shorter approvals processes for the product.

I agree it would be nice to have an internal slot for bootable SSD of some sort (the internal USB2 port doesn't really count here..).

Nice looking little box. I wonder how long the power-up-boot process takes. That is, time from power-on to when it loads the Linux kernel from storage.

A lot of server boxes take multiple MINUTES to do what should take a second or two.

I have Gen 8 microserver and whilst it's not fast to POST and get to boot it would be under a minute. I'd expect the Gen 10 to be similar.

It's kind of good in the sense that that's typical of servers/workstation grade hardware. Also being a NAS mine is rarely restarted. Is that really an issue for an always on machine?

I have an older N36L that I don't use that would have been slightly quicker but was also more consumer grade.

Not sure about approvals, especially for companies like HP which go though that process quite often. Meaning: not sure what benefit is there.

Heat and noise: yes and I am reading noise is precisely the reason for it. You have one less small fan in the box. This is also the reason why I am leaning more towards Gen10 Plus, rather than Gen 10. I don't need any particular power here, so Gen 10 would be OK and it comes with internal sata port for SSD boot. But I am afraid it is slightly more noisy, while Gen10 Plus is supposedly very quiet, which is something I want/need.
Also, I usually replace stock fans with Noctuas. Not sure I can do that with these. Still looking into this.


Now, with NVME on an external USB Gen2 enclosure should theoretically just work.
These guys here did a nice review job, and they mention this option specifically (see video index in description)
https://youtu.be/x-_CyKuJz9s

I was a bit reluctant to even consider booting from a USB external unit, but that starts to look like a somewhat compelling option.
I wonder if making a mirror between two external USB 3.2 Gen 2 units is pushing it too much in terms of reliability.

So, my home servers have been confiured like this for years: two boot/OS mirrored SSD drives, and two (yes, only two) mirrored mechanical drives for storage.

I can still do this with the 4 HDD bays, and be happy with it. But, if I could retain 4 bays for storage, I may move to some more flexible configuration where I do not have to replace both HDD at the same time when I run out of space. Which happens every so many years, but still.




Yes, all HP servers I've worked on take forever. They're designed to be on 24H. That would be the case for me with this unit as well. If not your case...

37 seconds for the Gen10 (Win 10, which is admittedly very fast) according to this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e9elDLDatI

I could not find any test for the Gen 10 plus.

I really wonder how quiet the Gen 10 plus is. No test I could find there, either.

Keep in mind that if this is your main server, you WILL be rebooting it often to maintain up-to-date security fixes. So boot times matter more than one might first think.

It's not the "boot Win10" or whatever time that matters, but rather how long it takes the BIOS to load the first stage of the O/S and pass control to it. After that, the times are dependent on the O/S and should be similar across different boxes.

Cheers

No, see, my main server reboots at night periodically by itself, as security updates are released. Reboots are "frequent" in that sense, but unnoticeable. Also, 70% of updates these days do not require reboot, I notice.



I did not refer to the OS boot time, but the boot time up to the point the OS is up and running, which is what you were asking, right?
The video I shared above shows boot time since the power button is pressed, so including POST and all. If video is accurate, POST is significantly faster than any full size HP Proliant server I've ever seen.

No, I was refering to how long the BIOS itself takes to do whatever the heck it does up to when it finally hands off control to software. That's the point at which the O/S then begins its own boot sequence.

So for my notebook, it's about five seconds (which is perhaps four seconds longer than needed).

For my systems, it's the time before GRUB (the software bootloader) finally loads.

Then considering usual boot time of Win10 from SSD, I'd assume no less than 25 seconds, from the video linked above. Possibly 30.

Keep in mind that is really fast for a HP *server*. No way to beat a *laptop* in that, I am afraid.

Should be good enough. My own box has internet facing servers on it. So boot time is "down time", which I like to minimize.

There are replacement BIOSs for many servers out there that cut it down to under two seconds. But probably only for the more common large rackmount kinds.

Cheers!

Thanks for that! I'm currently looking to upgrade my unRaid server and this may be a very good option! Ok, so it only holds 4 drives, but on the other hand, that's about the amount of drives I have now as well and it seems you can very easily add external HD's to it via USB 3.2. (the link you provided to that ServeTheHome review was very informative and they mentioned that as well).
Indeed a bummer they didn't include an NVMe option, they should really slap their hardware architect for that. But I still think this server a good option nonetheless. I haven't found any review for unRaid on this Gen10+, but I 'm sure those will pop up soon. This server hasn't been released long and it seems it's hard to come by at the moment.

That's cool, actually. I don't need it, but really cool.

Sure!
Yes, see, in my case price is *really* compelling.
Buying two new 12TB drives for my current box would add 4TB of storage and cost me €600 at best. Most likely more than that.
At little more I may get a Gen10+ + NVME+PCIe Adapter + 8TB drive.
And, in the process
- renew 10year-old hardware
- decrease occupied physical space
- gain more storage flexibility in the future.

Really compelling.

Thing is, so far replacing HDDs (in couples, as I liked havign a simple mirror in my home server) has been quite OK because prices of mechanical drives kept decreasing quite fast.
Not these days. Mechanical drives are quite expensive, all considered. So the whole economics has changed, as far as my personal approach to home server goes. I'd better have some more flexible storage that costs me a little (lot) less when in need of expansion.

Indeed. Prices have been stable more or less for at least two years now. I'm in the same board. Currently I'm using three 4TB HGST drives. (two for data, one for parity) + one 3TB WD drive for data and one 2TB WD drive as a cache drive.

I could just add another 4TB HGST drive, which would undoubtedly be the cheapest solution. It's just that the server is due for a hardware upgrade also since it's using more than 10 year old hardware. Still using an Intel E8400 Duo Core CPU, on a motherboard that was second hand to begin with. I have no idea how long this motherboard still has left, but I already had it happen a few times that the system simply had shut down. No idea why. Could be the PSU also I guess. In any case, I'd like to upgrade it ,and this HPE server look nice. But then I would have too many disks, so I would need to upgrade those as well eg to three 8TB drives. But what then with the old ones?

Aaah, decisions, decisions...

I still very much think that non-RAID storage, with a similar duplicate amount of capacity for full backups, is the best option.

RAID is not a backup, so if one goes with RAID1, then that doubles the drives cost (primary plus backup arrays), versus the non-RAID scenario. And non-RAID with backup protects against more failure modes (software, human error, ransomware..) at the slight expense of not being up-to-the-minute on the backup.

EDIT: unRAID of course tries to split the difference here, giving most of the properties of a RAID scenario without having to duplicate every drive. Kinda like RAID5, except the individual drives are still accessible in the event of an array failure.