Question 1

What Supermicro 45-bay JBOD model is Home SysAdmin using in this upgrade?

Accepted Answer

I’m using three Supermicro CSE-847 45-bay JBOD enclosures, model SC847E26R JBOD D1. They’re 4U shelves with 24 bays in the front and 21 in the rear. These are some of the most sought-after disk shelves for homelab use, especially when you can find them cheap.

Question 2

How many hard drives are you running and how are you consolidating them?

Accepted Answer

I’m running roughly 100 to 105 drives—honestly I lost track of the exact number. They were spread across three CSE-836 cases and one CSE-846, with some pretty heavy modifications. The plan is to keep one 836 for the actual computer and move all the drives into the three 847 JBOD shelves.

Question 3

How loud is a Supermicro CSE-847 JBOD shelf and can you make it quieter?

Accepted Answer

At stock startup it’s brutal, and once it ramps down it was still around 71 dB at about 2 feet away—way too loud for a house even in another room. I showed that the stock fan setup alone was eating about 37W at idle, so there’s definitely room to tune it. I ended up using a quieter drop-in fan option (and even found a cheaper Dell variant) while still keeping enough static pressure to push air through a packed shelf.

Question 4

What is the idle power consumption of the CSE-847 JBOD shelf?

Accepted Answer

With the stock fan configuration, I measured about 107W idle on an empty shelf. Pulling the fans dropped it to about 70W, which tells you how much power those fans can burn. With my quieter fan changes, I was seeing around 84W idle.

Question 5

Does a smaller wattage PSU reduce idle power on these JBOD shelves?

Accepted Answer

Not in my test. The original 1100W Supermicro 80 Plus Gold PSU idled lower, and when I tried an 800W Ableconn unit the idle power actually went up (around 98W). My assumption is the Supermicro unit is simply more efficient, and I may compare a Supermicro Platinum PSU later.

Question 6

What backplanes are in the Supermicro CSE-847 and how do the SAS expanders work?

Accepted Answer

The front backplane is a SAS2-846EL2 and the rear is a SAS2-847EL2, and the “EL2” versions have dual SAS expanders. That gives you primary/secondary paths for failover and supports multipathing. I also show how I changed cabling so I can run all 45 drives on one external SFF-888 cable and keep another port available for daisy-chaining more shelves.

Question 7

Why move away from modified CSE-836/846 cases with internal drives?

Accepted Answer

My old setup worked when disk shelves were expensive, but it’s a pain to service—any time I’m reordering drives or selling off lower capacities, I end up pulling the whole case. The little 50mm fan I used to cool the SAS expander also fails constantly, and that gets old fast. The 847 shelves are just a cleaner, more scalable way to run a big disk array.

Question 8

What drive temperatures are you seeing in the 45-bay shelves?

Accepted Answer

After about four days of runtime, my drive temps were hovering around 35 to 40C, which I’m totally happy with. It is winter and this is an unconditioned space, so I’ll re-check when summer hits. Even so, I expect it to run cooler than my original modified chassis designs.

Supermicro 45-Bay JBOD Disk Shelf Upgrade, Running 105 Hard Drives

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CSE-847 Case...

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