I've been looking for a way to expand my storage for a project where I "need" about 200 TB and yadda yadda yadda I don't like existing cases, so here's my design: The Milk Crate DAS.
Two milk crates filled with HDDs, fans, a PSU, and a SAS expander
It's cheap. $8 a piece of the two milk crates (I like the real ones, not the flimsy crap they have at the discount store). The design has blocks of 8 drives mounted vertically with 2x 120mm fans on the bottom and 2x 120mm fans on the side.
The plan is to build the first part which includes one HDD block and the PSU and SAS expander and then connect the second which has just two HDD blocks.
I think I'll probably zip tie the two crates together to reduce the chance of cables being pulled from the SAS expander.
The whole thing should be stackable. Cables in to the pair are: 1. Power cable, 2. Two 8644s from the HBA on the main NAS, and 3. Optionally a single 8644 leaving the pair going to another pair with another 24 HDDs. Yikes! Cables going between the two crates are: 1. Two SATA power chains, and 2. Four 8643 to SATA cables.
I had designed some more fancy cases but the cost of the 3030 extrusions and rails and stuff was approaching the cost of a used NetApp so I figured I'd first start with this and put my extra money towards a few more used 12TB HDDs.
