Advatronix Cirrus 1200: a Storage Server Under Your Desk
by Johan De Gelas on June 6, 2014 5:00 AM ESTA Look Inside
Since the Advatronix Cirrus 1200 is a mix between a desktop and a server chassis, we felt we should investigate the internals a bit more closely than we would with a typical rack server. First, we removed the storage bays.
The Cirrus 1200 chassis consists mostly of the two drive modules with six 3.5" disk bays in each. A large 120mm keeps the drive bays cool but the large 3.5" drive bays obstruct the airflow over the motherboard and CPU heatsink. As a result, a fan on top of the CPU heatsink is necessary, which is not optimal if you want a highly available and easy to service server. A larger heatsink positioned next to the drive module and not under the module with cooling provided by the large and easy to replace fan at the back would make the Cirrus more "server grade".
The RAID card and optional 10G Ethernet card on the left are cooled by two fans. One fan blows from the front and one blows from the left.
The last fan seems to be there for redundancy reasons as the front fan is enough to cool the heatsink of the RAID card. The fans are easy enough to reach, but we would prefer easier and faster hot-pluggable fans that can be replaced without using a screwdriver.
Three PCIe slots are available, but the Battery Backup Unit of the Adaptec RAID controller covers the third PCIe slot. Considering the target market of the Cirrus 1200, that is hardly an issue. In total you can get two 10G Ethernet and two 1Gb Ethernet interfaces, which should be sufficient for the target market.
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JohanAnandtech - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
The last point is where you make a reasoning error. Most enterprises just do not want to build their own fileserver, otherwise there would be not NAS market.sciencegey - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
I was using the last point as an example of what a SOHO could do, which this storage server is targeted at.tential - Saturday, June 7, 2014 - link
Why couldn't they just sell the case by itself.....I don't need a 4500 system, I need a decent case like that.
Aikouka - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
Yeah, I was hoping this was actually just a server case review. =(AdvatronixSystems - Saturday, September 27, 2014 - link
We do sell the case by itself! :)Please contact sales@advatronix.com if you're interested.
watersb - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
Thanks for reviewing this. Very interested in storage servers. But at these price points, I'm still in "build-your-own" territory.YouInspireMe - Sunday, June 8, 2014 - link
I have truly enjoy reading and have learned so much observing the high level exchange of knowledge here on this site I wonder if you could offer a little insight to a less knowledgeable fan of this sight. Other than it being headless and having lower power consumption what are the advantages/differences between a standard server and dedicated PC with sharing on a local network.JohanAnandtech - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
Thanks. Another advantage is the build-in BMC which allows you to do remote management (remote power on, remote console). The rest is rather obvious: very little time is needed to replace PSU and the disks. I would definitely like the latter in my desktop :-).CalaverasGrande - Monday, June 9, 2014 - link
this looks like a server from the 90's except with a powder coat finish! So it must be good?RoboKaren - Wednesday, June 11, 2014 - link
Why not look at the BackBlaze StoragePod 4.0 derived commercial product, the Storinator: http://www.45drives.com/products/If I had $5k to spend on storage, I'd give it a serious look.